The Doctor and Jamie have come across the Dominator spaceship. They look around, and the Doctor wants to venture inside - but they suddenly see Toba, flanked by a pair of Quarks, on a nearby ridge.
The Quarks ask if they should destroy...
Toba resists the urge to kill them, as his commander Rago has instructed that captives be taken for examination.
The Doctor and Jamie are brought into the spaceship, where the Quarks are used to molecularly bond them to a wall. Jamie is then given a physical examination which, apart from signs of recent rapid learning, show him to be relatively weak in comparison to a Dominator, having only one heart. Rago declines to carry out a similar examination of the Doctor, arguing that it would be a waste of resources as he is likely to be the same.
At the survey unit, Zoe continues to impress Cully due to her questions. He has tried to contact his father, Senex, but video reception is poor. Unable to communicate properly, Senex arranges for the two young people to travel to the Capitol by travel capsule. Balan sets the destination control on the small, two-seat, rocket-like craft.
Cully and Zoe arrive at the Capitol in only a few minutes, and enter the council chamber. Councillor Bovem is disputing with his colleagues when they arrive. On hearing that Zoe and her friends come from another world, this sparks a debate about life on other planets, and Zoe can see that the Dulcians are a bureaucratic people who debate issues endlessly.
Bovem accuses Cully of being a troublemaker, who is allowed to get away with things only because his father is their Director. At that moment Senex arrives. He dismisses the council in order to speak with his son and his friend privately.
Zoe tries to back up Cully's claims of spaceships and robots on the island - but has to admit that she hasn't actually seen these for herself. She is sure that the Doctor and Jamie will be along shortly to confirm what Cully has said.
They, meanwhile, are being subjected to a number of relatively simple tests in the Dominator spaceship.
The Doctor quickly realises that to appear intelligent might actually work against them. Best to pretend stupidity. He asks his companion if he can manage this...
In each test, therefore, the pair deliberately perform badly.
The survey team continue their work, and Balan explains away the lack of radiation here as indicative that its effects only last 172 years. He is becoming irritated that Teel and Kando are preoccupied with what Cully claimed to have witnessed.
The Doctor and Jamie are next taken by Rago to the war museum, where they are asked to explain the weaponry on display. Again they feign stupidity and ignorance.
Rago is suspicious, and so the Doctor claims that there are others on this planet cleverer than he and Jamie. It is they who know about the weapons. Rago notes that there must be two different species on Dulkis, and they must find representatives of the superior race to examine.
In the meantime, the Doctor and Jamie are allowed to go free so long as they do not interfere with their mission - their lack of intelligence making them no threat.
Frustrated that no-one believes them, Cully decides that they must get back to the island and find proof. In order to secure a travel capsule, they will have to use subterfuge. Zoe must change into Dulcian clothes to get past the capsule operators.
The Doctor and Jamie arrive back at the survey unit to learn that Zoe and Cully have already gone to the Capitol. They will follow, as they can now confirm Cully's story.
After they have gone, Balan realises that they will get no work done until his students have seen this spaceship and its robots for themselves, so they set off to find them.
Rago and Toba are working on their drilling calculations when they see the three Dulcians approach their ship. Toba wishes to send the Quarks out to destroy them, but Rago orders they be taken for examination.
The trio are permitted to wander inside before being captured.
Teel is given the same physical examination which Jamie underwent, and this time differences are noted. Dulcians have two hearts for instance. The Doctor appeared to have been telling the truth about the two races, and these other Dulcians may well prove a suitable slave labour force.
Rago and Toba split up to search the island for more people like Teel, taking some Quarks with them.
Toba soon comes across the survey unit. He orders the Quarks inside, to scan and record all technological data.
Cully and Zoe land back at the unit only moments after the Quarks have withdrawn to the hillside nearby, where Toba gives the order to destroy the building.
The pair find themselves trapped inside as the unit begins to collapse around them...
Written by Norman Ashby
Recorded: Friday 25th May 1968 - Television Centre Studio TC4
First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 17th August 1968
Ratings: 5.9 million / AI 55
VFX: Ron Oates
Designer: Barry Newbery
Director: Morris Barry
Additional cast: Walter Fitzgerald (Senex), Alan Gerrard (Bovem), Ronald Mansell, John Cross (Council Members), Freddie Wilson (Quark).
Small travel capsules featured in the scripts even when the survey team were originally to have arrived on the island in a much bigger craft, as this would have contained one of them. They were described as cigar-shaped, with two seats, one behind the other. The curved door opened upwards on hinges.
Three Quarks were constructed by the freelance father and son team of Jack and John Lovell to Martin Baugh's design. The sketch had them in gold, but they were made from fibreglass in a gunmetal grey colour. The head was made from frosted perspex.
All three were operated by boys from a drama school, who were pleased to be featuring in the series. They were chaperoned throughout the production.
They wore box-like boots on their feet, and could see through an aperture just above the gun arms. Manipulating these was the main task for the boys. It was intended that whenever the Quarks were called upon to carry out any tasks, such as recharging or employing their molecular force, the arms would wave in and out.
Despite the difficulties of walking around in the suits in the middle of a sand and gravel pit, they did so without complaint.
In studio the Quarks were often bodily lifted, to quickly move them from set to set.
It is never clear just how many Quarks are on the ship. It appears to be 12, but try counting them as you watch the episodes.
As with the Servo Robot in the last story, there is something rather endearing about them, with their short stature coupled with the child-like voice. But then that was the intention - cute, but deadly.
It had been decided to film all of the explosive effects on location for the entire serial on the first day - Thursday 25th April - at Gerrards Cross. This included the attack on the survey unit building, which in this instance was a forced perspective model. Whilst the script stated that Toba employed only two Quarks to attack the unit, all three were filmed doing so.
Also filmed on this day were Balan, Teel and Kando approaching the Dominator spaceship, with a high shot taken, to be seen on the scanner inside the ship as viewed by Rago and Toba.
The following day, the travel capsule model was filmed at the Puppet Theatre in Television Centre. The same footage would be used in the third episode. A close-up image of the underside of the spaceship model was taken, to be viewed by the survey team.
Filming at Ealing on Tuesday 30th and Wednesday 1st May included the close-up of the Doctor's foot as he is given an electric shock from the floor. This was actually Chris Jeffries' foot as Troughton was not present.
Frazer Hines was required, as both he and Giles Block had to be filmed being bonded to the wall by the Quarks. This was simply filmed in reverse with the actors pressing themselves up against the wall then moving forward. The wall going from vertical to horizontal was achieved later in studio through tilting camera angles alone.
Joining rehearsals on Monday 20th May were Walter Fitzgerald, playing Senex, and Alan Gerrard, playing Bovem. Fitzgerald had worked with Patrick Troughton on a number of productions, both on TV and in film, whilst Gerrard would play four different roles in Coronation Street as well as appearing in series such as The Avengers. He had previously been directed by Morris Barry in soap The Newcomers and in Z-Cars.
Originally cast as statues were four young actresses, who would appear in the background of the council chamber. This was dropped just before recording. It has been claimed that these were to have moved very slowly, but they were simply to have stood motionless.
Last minute alterations were made to the script to reduce the council chamber scenes, including Cully claiming to have found a pile of travel passes in his father's chambers, and he only had to forge his signature to use them.
There was a visit to the studio on Friday 24th May by some of Troughton's family, as his daughter Jo wanted to meet Ronald Allen.
Of concern to Troughton was the sequence where Rago has Jamie fire a ray gun in the Doctor's direction. He never liked being too close to explosives such as flash charges, and the first attempt had already gone wrong when the charge failed to ignite. On the second attempt, the charge detonated with a bigger blast than expected and damaged the museum wall.
Three new sets debuted this week. Most impressive is Newbery's spaceship interior. He made use of reflective materials which appeared to create moving patterns when light was shone on them in a certain way. One side had a black drape against which white ropes and canes were suspended on wires, to simulate a navigation star-chart. There were also small illuminated panels depicting Quarks, which would flash in later episodes to indicate when one of the robots was under attack, and the light would go out when it was no longer functioning.
The travel capsule was simply a tube with two seats, built onto the side of the survey unit set. It had a small opening at the front to allow camera access. The hatch now slid to the side instead of opening outwards. This jammed at one point and almost crushed Arthur Cox's hand.
To indicate the capsule taking off, an inlay effect of a white iris opening up from blackness was employed. This could be reversed to show it landing at its destination.
The other new set was the Dulcian council chamber, which employed a background cyclorama depicting futuristic buildings, one of which - the broken egg-like sphere - is oddly reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch. The set was dressed simply with comfortable chairs and TV monitors built into pedestals.
Three recording breaks were planned for the evening. Two were to position the examination table for Jamie and then for Teel, and the third was to allow Wendy Padbury to change into her Dulcian costume.
One of the Quark performers tripped over and the head fell off.
Flash charges were detonated around the survey unit set and lightweight debris was dropped from above for the climax to the episode.
A number of scenes were cut for timing reasons - mostly those involving Zoe and Cully. These included a couple of scenes in the travel capsule, where Zoe worked out their speed - 90,000 miles per hour - from the planet's circumference and their travel time to the Capitol. Cully also stated that the travel capsules had a manual override control, but it was so long ago that anyone had used it that people had forgotten where it was.
In the council chamber, he also told Zoe that his father was employed simply to maintain the old order established by previous Directors - to prevent aggression and suppress the yearning for adventure.
On approaching the spaceship, Balan was to have suspected that it was some new form of travel capsule designed by their own people, and Kando thought that, if so, it must have made a forced landing here.
If the second episode of The Dominators has a problem, it is lack of incident. Naturally we get an exciting cliffhanger, as Zoe and Cully arrive back at the survey unit just as Toba is blowing it up, but prior to that we have people going back and forth, and people talking in rooms.
It is the scenes between the Doctor, Jamie and the Dominators which are the most enjoyable - but they hardly move the plot on.
The Doctor and Jamie spend almost the entire episode as captives, undergoing a variety of intelligence tests. These start off in the spaceship - a wonderful Barry Newbery design - and then move to the museum.
These tests do allow for some humour to be displayed. The Doctor quickly realises that an intelligent enemy is going to be seen as more of a threat to the Dominators, so decides that he and Jamie should play dumb:
The Doctor: "Just act stupid. Do you think you can manage that?"
Jamie: "Och aye, it's easy" - then realises he's just been insulted.
The scene where the pair have to get off the central dais, only to find the floor electrified, provides a bit of clowning as they shock each other when they hold hands.
We also have a bit of sexual innuendo when Rago states that he is going to "probe your physiological make-up", to which the Doctor responds, alarmed, "Do what?".
But Rago isn't so easily fooled.
Rago (to the Doctor): "Are you such a fool? You have intelligent eyes...".
The Doctor, of course, is following his usual special technique - of keeping his eyes open and his mouth shut, as he once told Eric Klieg on Telos.
He takes careful note of Rago's message to their fleet commander about "Materials being readily accessible" on the planet...
We are introduced to the leading council of Dulkis, and can see what Cully was talking about last time - his people really are bureaucratic and unadventurous.
When Teel reports that communications have been switched off at the council's end, he retorts:
"Typical Dulcian behaviour. Something strange, something you don't understand and you switch off - " taps his head - "up here".
Balan simply accepts as fact that, as the radiation has disappeared, its effects must last only 172 years. The phrase "facts are facts" crops up over and over again from the survey team members.
We join the council as they debate the use of a piece of land for recreational purposes, and Bovem makes it clear that this has been discussed over and over for a considerable time, and so declares that they need to come to a decision. Then, when Zoe arrives claiming to be from another planet, this sparks off another debate.
Last week there was mention of a "new type of robot". This suggests that the Dulcians have robots of their own, and the debate about recreational land suggests that they have little need to work on this planet. It may be peaceful, but it is a somewhat indolent society, resting on its scientific achievements.
- The ratings fail to improve, slipping below the 6 million mark. Launching a new series in August was clearly proving a bad idea.
- Walter Fitzgerald was an accomplished character actor of the 1940's and '50's, appearing in movies such as The Winslow Boy, Around the World in 80 Days, The Cruel Sea, In Which We Serve and The Pickwick Papers, which also featured William Hartnell. The two also appeared together in Strawberry Roan and The Ringer. He had previously appeared on TV opposite Patrick Troughton in Paul of Tarsus, and the 1950 film adaptation of Treasure Island.
- Senex was to have been named Somex - from the Latin for sleep.
- Bovem's name derives from his bullish temperament.
- It's a great pity that Rago didn't begin with the Doctor when he conducted his physiological probing, or studied him as well as Jamie, as it would have helped resolve the continuity issue of the Doctor's second heart. We only hear of it for the first time in Spearhead From Space, and the Doctor just underwent a thorough physical exam from Dr Gemma Corwyn in the previous story which failed to note it. In The Sensorites he mentions a heart, singular, and Ian listens to his heartbeat in The Edge of Destruction without comment - all of which would suggest that he does not have a second heart in either of these incarnations.
- Two-hearted species can't be all that common, yet here we have a planet of twin-hearted aliens, who just happen to be visited by two different twin-hearted species on the same day - the Doctor and the Dominators. It's implied the latter have two hearts, as they see Jamie's single one as a weakness.
- Radio Times featured artwork of the Quarks on the programme listings page this week, and Walter Fitzgerald was named first in the guest cast:
