Episode 231: The Krotons (4)

Synopsis:

The Doctor tries to stop the Gonds from tampering with the foundations of the Dynatrope. They are attacking these with a pulley and chains, attempting to bring the whole structure down. 

Their actions cause the roof of the under-hall to crack open - and the Doctor finds himself buried by falling rubble...

Thara and Vana arrive, bringing a bottle of sulphuric acid which the Doctor had Beta prepare. Selris is shocked to see them as he had ordered them to flee to the hills.

Thara helps Zoe locate the Doctor who, fortunately, is unharmed. However, another section of roof caves in and Thara's leg is injured.

Within the Dynatrope, the Krotons have been alarmed at the violent rocking of their vessel and realise that they have been attacked. They see the Doctor and Zoe on their scanner, helping Thara.

Kroton 2 is sent to fetch them.

As the Doctor helps bind up Thara's leg, he notices that the Dynatrope appears to have been damaged in the attack.

He and Zoe then learn that Jamie had followed them into the machine some time ago.

He, meanwhile, has managed to get to the exit hatch out into the wasteland, but struggles to open it.

The Doctor and Zoe rush off to find him.

Eelek and Axus arrive and accuse Selris of putting lives at risk. A number of Gonds have been killed or injured, and he no longer had the authority of the council to take such action. Eelek states that he has prepared his own attack, using slings and fireballs.

Selris points out that his role is hereditary, and only Thara can replace him - but Eelek dismisses this.

Selris goes on to claim that his aim had been to draw the Krotons out of the machine, and in this he has been successful - for they a Kroton emerge into the Hall of Learning.

It demands that the two "high brains" be handed over to them. Selris explains to Eelek that this refers to the Doctor and Zoe. The Gonds are given fifteen minutes to produce them or face destruction, but Eelek learns from them that the Krotons will depart from this world if the strangers are handed over.

After it withdraws, Eelek tells Selris that he intends to do as the Kroton demands. They can rid themselves of the aliens without having to fight. Selris argues that the strangers are their friends and have tried to help them, but Eelek is adamant that they must be handed over to the Krotons.

The Doctor and Zoe arrive at the exit hatch just in time to see Jamie struggle under the door. They pull him to safety before the dispersal units can destroy him.

The Doctor then sends him to Beta to help manufacture as much sulphuric acid as he can, then he and Zoe return to the Hall.

Jamie assists Beta with his experiments, whilst Selris and Vana discuss how they can warn the Doctor and Zoe about Eelek's intentions. She tries to slip away but is caught by Axus. She drops the bottle of acid, and Selris picks it up.

Inside the Dynatrope, the Krotons confirm that they only have less than half an hour before they exhaust and revert to their basic elements. They observe Eelek capture the Doctor and Zoe as they return to the Hall.

As they are being forced into the Dynatrope, the Doctor urges Vana to pass him the bottle of acid.

Realising its importance, Selris leaps forward and enters the machine as the door closes behind him. He is able to get the bottle to the Doctor before being killed by the Krotons.

The Doctor begins questioning the aliens as to why they are needed, learning that four are required to operate the Dynatrope but only two Krotons survived the crash.

Ordered to take their places, they begin to waste time through various delaying tactics.

Jamie and Beta arrive in the Hall with a large quantity of the acid, to be told by Eelek that the Doctor and Zoe have gone into the machine, and that the entire settlement will be destroyed once it takes off as it is built around it. Everyone is to evacuate, but Vana resolves to stay with Thara, Beta and Jamie.

Beta leads Jamie to the under-hall, where they begin pouring the acid over the foundations.

The Krotons become increasingly frustrated with the antics of the Doctor and Zoe as they fail to co-operate - and the countdown to their exhaustion approaches.

Zoe then slips the contents of the bottle into the chemical tank to which the aliens remain attached.

The effects of the acid are almost instantaneous, as the Krotons begin to stumble around. The walls of the Dynatrope start to melt as the aliens collapse.

Jamie and Beta see the Doctor and Zoe rush out of the machine. The Doctor orders everyone out to avoid the toxic fumes as the entire Dynatrope dissolves.

He and his companions elect to slip quietly away as Beta, Vana and Thara celebrate the end of their servitude under the Krotons. Beta warns that there is still Eelek to contend with - but Thara vows to succeed his father and lead the council.

The TARDIS dematerialises.

Next time: The Seeds of Death

Data:

Written by Robert Holmes

Recorded: Friday 13th December 1968 - Lime Grove Studio D

First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 18th January 1969

Ratings: 7.1 million / AI 55

VFX: Bill King & Trading Post

Designer: Raymond London

Director: David Maloney

Critique:

The Doctor survives having rubble falling on top of him, yet Thara gets his leg broken. Robert Holmes wrote that the Doctor was able to avoid injury by ending up in a small cavity under the fallen ceiling, but this isn't evident on screen.

Holmes also had Selris fail to pass the bottle of acid to the Doctor. It fell on the floor as he was killed, but the Doctor caught the rolling bottle with his foot then managed to pick it up without the Krotons noticing. The broadcast version makes the Gond leader out to be a more heroic figure, sacrificing himself for the two strangers as much as for his people, after he had been a prevaricating figure up to this point. On screen, we don't get to see how Thara learns of his father's sacrifice, as a scene where the Doctor informs him of this was cut during rehearsals.

In the original story outline it was Jamie who poured the acid into the vat. The Doctor then arranged for the Kroton vessel to launch into space, to explode harmlessly above the planet.

Other than a reused sequence from Episode One (see below), the only filming for this instalment was done at Ealing on Thursday 14th and Friday 15th November. On the first day the destruction of the Krotons was filmed. One of the aliens was seen to fall on its back, with its dispersal unit firing up into the air. A polystyrene head was made which had acetone poured over it, to show the Kroton dissolving.

Friday was the model work day. The Dynatrope model was also made from polystyrene, with the same technique used to show it melting.

Studio recording on Friday 13th December was not done in story order. The opening shot with Thara and Zoe was recorded at the end of the session, to be edited in later. By this point in the evening Wendy Padbury's PVC-paper dress was beginning to show obvious signs of wear and tear, and Gilbert Wynne shielded Padbury in such a way as to conceal a tear in the shoulder. Later in the evening, Troughton had to do the same. Padbury had hoped to keep the black and red outfit after production. Repairs were made so that Zoe could be seen wearing it at the start of the next story.

Maloney had a smoke effect superimposed over the picture to indicate the collapse of the under-hall. 

When Zoe asks to borrow his braces, it was originally intended that the Doctor would instead produce a length of rope from his pocket to secure the splint for Thara's injured leg. This was changed to him using his handkerchief.

James Cairncross is initially seen to wear a face mask over his mouth only, with his nose uncovered - but in the next scene he has both nose and mouth covered.

The departure of the TARDIS was simply the footage of its arrival in Episode One played back in reverse. (Which creates a continuity issue, as the TARDIS had relocated to a ledge halfway up the mountain in the previous episode).

Following broadcast of this episode, the BBC ran a short trailer for the next story featuring clips with narration.

16mm film copies of The Krotons were still being sold to overseas buyers as late as 1974. The first episode had been made using 35mm film and so a copy was kept by the BBC Film and Videotape Library, which also held the 16mm prints of the second and third episodes. The BFI held 16mm copies of all four episodes, and provided the BBC with a copy of the final instalment to complete the story in the Library.

The original videotapes of episodes two to four had been cleared for wiping in July 1969.

A highlight of this story has been the interplay between the Doctor and Zoe. We saw it in the second episode, which focuses mainly on the pair, and it's on show again here as they attempt to delay the Krotons long enough for them to either exhaust or for the acid to work:

The Doctor: "Now then, where do you want us to stand?"

Kroton: "Unimportant"

The Doctor: "Oh. Well I'll stand over there then"

Zoe: "Oh. Oh Doctor, I wanted to stand there"

The Doctor: "Oh my dear. Oh well, you stand there, and I'll stand here. Better still. A much better idea - I'll stand here and you stand over there" 

The Doctor then struggles to put on his headset, wearing it sideways at first and then having it spring off his head.

Frazer Hines has frequently stated how much he disliked this story, citing low production values and its rushed quality, but I suspect it is also due to the fact that Jamie has so little to do at times, especially in this final instalment where he simply helps Beta mix up some chemicals.

So that was The Krotons. Does it really deserve its lowly place in fan opinion? I think not. It's unfair to damn a story just because of the bottom half of the monster, and some low budget production values. It was designed to be a cheap show, to offset more expensive stories around it, but actually sports some imaginative sets. The Gond costumes might look like romper suits, but we've seen far worse - and just in this season alone (Dulcians, I'm looking at you...).

Rubber skirts aside, the Krotons are impressive in form and size, with their distinctive booming voices.

The use of a granite quarry for the filming works very well, making it stand out from lots of the other quarry-as-alien-planet locations we see in the programme, especially when we go into colour and every sandpit begins to look the same.

Above all else, we have a good, solid, storyline from Holmes. The Kroton plan might lack logic, but Holmes' script doesn't.

It's never going to be hailed a classic but, on the whole, it stands up really well as a product of its time.

Trivia:

• The ratings end almost 2 million down on the opening episode indicating, I suspect, more the unique viewing patterns of the festive period, rather than any growing dissatisfaction with the story itself.
• Wednesday 22nd January 1969 saw Junior Points of View broadcast reactions of young fans to the news that Patrick Troughton would be leaving the programme. Viewers urged him to stay. Opinions on the new monsters were divided.
• The Krotons was selected for a repeat screening as part of The Five Faces of Doctor Who season in the second week of November, 1981. It was chosen as it was the only complete four part Troughton story in the archives at the time. As well as plugging a longer than usual gap between seasons, Producer JNT also wanted to remind viewers that there had been other Doctors before Tom Baker, and so help them to accept Peter Davison as his replacement.

• Screened on BBC 2 over four consecutive evenings, Monday to Thursday, the ratings for the repeat were pretty consistent - 4.4, 4.6, 4.6, 4.5 million viewers.
• A Kroton was to have featured in The War Games - seen on the video screen as part of the Doctor's defence. However, it was found that the costume was too badly damaged to be used.
• Philip Madoc features in the audio adventure The Return of the Krotons - but not as Eelek, as the story revolves around another Dynatrope on another planet.
• Krotons feature in the Eighth Doctor novel Alien Bodies, by Lawrence Miles. This gives their home planet the name Krosi-Aspai-Core. One of the creatures has a name - E-Kobalt. In this they are a formidable foe, with an expanding empire.
• As The Krotons went into production, Holmes had already been asked to submit other scripts for the series. Dicks liked how quickly he wrote, as well as his range of story ideas. One story he put forward was "Aliens in the Blood", which dealt with a community of super-evolved human beings on a remote Scottish island. He expected the title to be changed as he didn't think it had enough "zing" for Doctor Who. It eventually saw production in 1977, but not as a Doctor Who story. Starring Peter Cushing and Vincent Price, and renamed Aliens in the Mind, it was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Busy on other projects, Holmes allowed it to be adapted by its producer Rene Basilico.
• Elements of his first story for Doctor Who will find their way into Holmes' final completed one - Trial of a Time Lord (Parts 1-4) - aka The Mysterious Planet. We have a community of humanoids ruled over by a robotic villain, who lurks in a high-tech lair and is never seen - relaying its commands via a leading member of the community. It manipulates what the community are allowed to know, and has also taken two members of this community to live with it, mirroring the 'Companions of the Krotons'.

Inspirations: World Enough And Time / The Doctor Falls

The two-part Series 10 finale was to have been the swansong for both Steven Moffat and Peter Capaldi.

For the latter, it would be his regeneration story - and technically it still is.

That's because it is during the events of The Doctor Falls that the Doctor sustains the injury which will trigger the process. Indeed, it actually begins - but he refuses to go through with it.

Wandering outside into a frozen landscape, he encounters his earliest incarnation, who is about to go through the same thing - and is equally stubbornly trying to stem the inevitable.

Had the series ended here (and there are some who wished it had, bearing in mind what was to follow) then things would have come full circle. The first and last regenerations coming together.

We are therefore catching an unseen moment from The Tenth Planet. Presumably it's the few seconds before Ben and Polly join the Doctor in the TARDIS at the conclusion of the story - though perhaps he wandered outside during the third episode, when he was supposed to be lying down in the crew room?

The reason this didn't turn out to be the end of an era it was supposed to be was, of course, Chris Chibnall. As I've previously mentioned, Moffat took him out to dinner to sound him out about taking over as showrunner, only to hear how busy he was with Broadchurch. He therefore decided not to raise the subject.

Later, when he had been approached and had accepted, Moffat assumed he would want to launch his new Doctor in the 2017 Christmas Special. 

On hearing that he simply wouldn't be ready, Moffat decided that he would have to contribute a festive Special himself - not wanting to lose the prestigious slot. There had been a Special every Christmas since 2005, even when Moffat himself hadn't been producing a regular series as happened during Capaldi's tenure.

The Doctor Falls would have to be amended to lead into something else, rather than act as a full stop.

One of the reasons Moffat brought back the Zygons for The Day of the Doctor was because David Tennant let it be known how much he liked them, and Capaldi had often stated how much he loved the Mondasian Cybermen - so we can assume their inclusion was a sort of parting gift for him.

Moffat had been unimpressed with the Mondasian Cybermen ever since he had seen them in a photograph in the Radio Times 10th Anniversary Special back in 1973, but Capaldi had pointed out how they could do a lot better these days, whilst still retaining the features which made them creepily effective.

During a Comic-Con panel, someone said they would like to see the Twelfth Doctor meet the First - to which Capaldi responded that he knew exactly who could play him.

This was David Bradley, who had played William Hartnell in the 50th Anniversary origins drama An Adventure in Space and Time.

Cybermen had featured regularly throughout Moffat's time in charge, either in series finales or in the penultimate episode of the series.

They were in Capaldi's first series finale, and so would also be in his last.

That first finale, from Series 8, had introduced Missy. Her inclusion this time was a foregone conclusion as her potential redemption formed this year's big story arc.

Michelle Gomez had also made it known that she wanted to leave the series along with Capaldi and Moffat.

Exploring the Master's character further had been something which Moffat had wanted to do before leaving the series. John Simm was on record as saying he did not expect to ever play the Master again, now that the role had been recast, but stated that he would be open to a return. (He had been upset not to have been invited to take part in The Day of the Doctor).

Moffat then considered how much fun it would be to see Missy meet another incarnation, sparking off them in the same way the Second and Third Doctors had in The Three Doctors.

It was decided to hold off such a meeting until after Missy had been firmly established, and such an event would make for a suitable series finale.

The hospital setting of the opening episode was inspired by the illness of Moffat's mother, as he was spending a lot of time visiting her.

The Master would be using a disguise throughout the first half of the story - something he had been using ever since his first appearance in Terror of the Autons when he donned a mask to play a telephone engineer.

Initially, it was to be faulty automatic guidance system which caused the colony ship to become trapped in a time loop - allowing the colonists to evolve into Cybermen. Moffat's son was an intern at CERN, and he explained the concept of time dilation due to gravitational forces such as those found close to a Black Hole.

Having the Cybermen appear in different stages of evolution simply allowed the reuse of old costumes, going back to 2006. 

Moffat was inspired to revisit the origins of the Cybermen after re-reading Gerry Davis' novelisation of The Moonbase - Doctor Who and the Cybermen. Davis had written an origins story back in the 1980's, which had been rejected by Eric Saward, and Big Finish had also produced the audio Spare Parts, which saw the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa visit Mondas.

RTD had also come up with an origins story, but one set on an alternative Earth.

As well as writing out the Twelfth Doctor, the series finale was also to see the departure of companion Bill Potts. Moffat wanted to challenge himself and thought of the worst thing you could ever do to a companion, then see how he could get out of it with an upbeat conclusion.

Bill could therefore be converted into a Cyberman, but salvation already existed in the form of Heather, introduced in The Pilot. She loved Bill and had wanted her to come away with her to explore the universe as an artificial intelligence anyway.

Missy tells Bill and Nardole that the Doctor actually is called "Doctor Who" - a reference to the times during Gerry Davis' period as story editor when the Doctor did seem to use this appellation - signing a note "Dr W" in The Underwater Menace, having WOTAN call him by this name in The War Machines, and having him call himself Dr Von Wer (German for "Who") in The Highlanders.

The Doctor employs some Venusian Aikido - a martial art often employed by his Third incarnation.

Of the planets where Cybermen have evolved, the Doctor mentions Planet 14, from where the Cybermen recognised the Doctor in The Invasion, and Marinus. This planet, which was the setting for The Keys of Marinus, was revisited by the Sixth Doctor in the DWM comic strip "The World-Shapers", when it was seen that the Voord eventually became Cybermen.

The First Doctor states: "You may be a Doctor, but I am the Doctor. The original you might say!". This is a mix of two lines - one by the Fourth Doctor in Robot, and one by the First in The Five Doctors.

Next time: "The Two (Grumpy) Doctors". It's the end, but the moment has been (hurriedly) prepared for...

R is for... Recon Dalek

An obscure 9th Century legend told of a powerful creature which devastated the land. It took the combined might of three armies to defeat it. Its armour was destroyed, whilst it was cut into three parts which were to be buried in different parts of the world, ranging from England to an obscure Pacific island. Custodians were employed to guard over each of the pieces for all time. Unfortunately, the English Custodian was waylaid by bandits and killed before he could bury his piece in the designated place. It lay abandoned and ignored, eventually being buried beneath what would become Sheffield's City Hall. 

In 2019 a group of archaeologists uncovered the remains and subjected them to ultraviolet light. This reanimated the creature, and it was able to teleport its other parts to its location and reconstitute itself. It then mentally enslaved one of the archaeologists - a young woman named Lin - to use her to build new armour for itself.

First, it had to retrieve one of its old weapons which was being guarded in a special vault - locating it after having Lin access UNIT files.

The creature then had her take it to a remote farm where it could force her to construct its new shell from whatever material lay to hand.

The creature was a Reconnaissance Dalek - a special breed sent out as an advance scout to planets which the Daleks planned to invade and colonise. They were amongst the first Daleks to leave Skaro.

The TARDIS had landed at the dig site and the Doctor had identified the creature. She traced the Recon Dalek to the farm but was too late to prevent it gaining its new piecemeal shell and armaments. An army unit then tried to stop it, but was completely destroyed.

The Recon Dalek needed to fulfil its original mission, and so travelled to GCHQ, the UK Government's communications centre, so that it could contact Skaro and summon an invasion force.

The Doctor was able to employ an adapted microwave oven to destroy its shell. The mutant survived, but was sucked out of the TARDIS and into a supernova.

Some genetic material survived in the remains of the shell, and the businessman Jack Robertson arranged for it to be hijacked. He then reverse-engineered it to create Defence Drones, based on its design. These were sold to the UK Government to be employed as an additional police and security force. They were purely robotic. However, the scientist working with Robertson on the project - Leo Rugazzi - had cloned the Recon Dalek mutant from its genetic traces, and it took over his mind. He was compelled to set up a secret laboratory where thousands more mutants could be bred. These were brought to life with ultraviolet light and teleported into the Defence Drone shells. Faced with a new Dalek army already established in Britain, the Doctor decided to fight fire with fire and invited a Dalek Death Squad to come to Earth. 

They saw the new Daleks as genetically inferior creatures and wiped them out.

 

Appearances: Resolution (2019), Revolution of the Daleks (2020)

• The Recon Dalek was the first fully remote-controlled design, with no human operator inside.
• To conceal its involvement in the 2019 New Year's Special, it was codenamed "Kevin" in the scripts.

R is for... Rebec

Around the year 2540, the Thals sent a mission to the planet Spiridon to investigate a Dalek scientific outpost which had been established there. The ship crashed and the commander was killed, and next in seniority was the medical officer Taron. The Thals then learned new intelligence about the Daleks' activities on the planet but contact with the first mission had been lost, and so a second ship was sent. A young woman named Rebec was a member of this party.

They had come to warn Taron's group that there was actually a huge army of Daleks being gathered on Spiridon, some 10,000 strong. The Daleks were experimenting with invisibility techniques -  a natural ability of the natives on this hostile world.

It transpired that Rebec was the lover of Taron, and had so volunteered for the second mission to be with him. However, he proved unhappy that she had come - explaining that his feelings for her might adversely affect his decision-making and ability to lead. The second spaceship had also crashed, so for all they knew this had become a suicide mission. Taron had reconciled himself with this likely outcome, but Rebec's presence now complicated matters for him personally.

The Thals were able to get into the Dalek base with help from the Doctor. At one point Rebec hid inside a captured Dalek casing, with some of the others disguised using the huge furry cloaks the Spiridon slave workers were compelled to wear.

A well-placed bomb activated an ice-volcano, which flooded the chamber in which the Dalek army was stored - and the Thals were able to escape the planet by stealing the spaceship of the visiting Dalek Supreme.

Played by Jane How. Appearances: Planet of the Daleks (1973)

• Rebec was named after Terry Nation's daughter Rebecca.
• Jane How is best known for playing Jan Hammond, the mistress of Den Watts, in EastEnders.

R is for... Reapers

Large winged reptilian creatures which were attracted to "wounds in time", or temporal breaches - such as when Rose Tyler changed the timeline by saving the life of her father, Pete. He should have died when she was a baby, but she intervened to stop him being hit by a car.

The Doctor described them as "antibodies", come to clean the wound - though he also described them at one point as bacteria, infecting it. He claimed that they targeted the new, and age was a defence against them, which is why he gathered a wedding party - which included baby Rose and her parents - inside the church.

The Reapers had scythe-like tails and a second mouth in their chest, which they used to consume their victims. They targeted sentient beings, and physical structures could act as a barrier against them. They could, however, attack a TARDIS. They reduced the Doctor's to its external Police Box shell.

When Rose handled her baby self, it created a new paradox which gave the Reapers the strength to break into the church, and the Doctor was consumed by them.

They could not be destroyed - only banished back to their own domain once the temporal breach had been closed, by time resuming its intended course. Pete Tyler achieved this by sacrificing himself in front of the car that should have killed him.

With the breach healed, their victims were returned with all memory of them forgotten.

Appearances: Father's Day (2005)

• The Reapers are never named on screen.
• The scythe-like tail is a remnant of an earlier production design, where they looked more like the traditional image of the Grim Reaper.
• Spin-off material claims that they usually inhabit the Temporal Vortex, and are related to Chronovores.
• See also "What's Wrong With... Father's Day" for some inconsistencies regarding the Reapers.

R is for... Ray

A young woman from South Wales whose friend Billy worked as handyman at the Shangri-La holiday camp. Regarded as a bit of a tomboy, she was a skilled mechanic and she and Billy had a shared passion for motorcycles - though she had originally taken this up as a means of attracting his attention. 

The Doctor and his companion Mel met Ray when they visited the camp in 1959. Mel had been travelling on an alien tour coach which crash-landed here after colliding with a satellite, and the Doctor had been forced to follow them down. Onboard the coach was Delta, a refugee from the Chimeron race who were being hunted to extinction by the Bannermen, led by Gavrok.

Ray quickly realised that Billy was falling in love with Delta. She helped the Doctor defend Delta and the Chimeron princess whom she was guarding, after the Bannermen arrived on Earth.

Billy left Ray his prized motorcycle when he elected to leave Earth with Delta and the princess.

Played by: Sara Griffiths. Appearances: Delta and the Bannermen (1987)

• As Season 24 was being put together, both Ray and Ace were developed as potential companions to replace Mel, as Bonnie Langford was planning on leaving. Sophie Aldred had auditioned for both roles.
• Lynn Gardner was originally cast as Ray, but suffered a serious accident whilst rehearsing with the motorbike and was forced to withdraw. As she was under contract, she was instead given the role of the Iceworld announcer in Dragonfire.
• Big Finish would later make Ray a companion of the Seventh Doctor, after she stowed away aboard the TARDIS some years after the events at the holiday camp.

John Leeson 1943 - 2026

It has been reported this evening that John Leeson, the voice of K-9, has died.

He took on the role of the robot dog in The Invisible Enemy but left at the end of Season 16, only to return for Season 18 to see K-9 out of the show.

He made a swift return, however, in the K-9 & Company spin-off, then reprised the role for the revived series as well as a number of the later Sarah Jane Adventures. There was also an Australian series of K-9 adventures.

As well as K-9, he also played refinery technician Dugeen The Power of Kroll.

You can add to this all his audio appearances. Only recently it was announced that he would be playing opposite Tom Baker once more - as Dr Watson to Baker's Sherlock Holmes on an audio project.

RIP.