Episode 210: The Dominators (1)

SEASON 6

PRODUCER: Peter Bryant (The Dominators - The Space Pirates), Derrick Sherwin (The War Games)

SCRIPT EDITOR: Derrick Sherwin (The Dominators - The Mind Robber, The Space Pirates), Terrance Dicks (The Invasion - The Seeds of Death, The War Games)

REGULAR CAST: Patrick Troughton (The Doctor), Frazer Hines (Jamie), Wendy Padbury (Zoe)

Synopsis:

A fleet of saucer-like spacecraft is travelling close to the planet Dulkis, and one of the ships breaks formation to land there.

It touches down on a rocky uninhabited island and two humanoid figures emerge. In command is Navigator Rago, who is accompanied by his Probationer, Toba. Toba reports that the radiation they came in search of has been successfully absorbed.

They are members of the warlike Dominator race, who claim to be the Masters of the Ten Galaxies.

Rago points out that the planet's crust is thin here, and the natives may be suitable as slave labour. When Toba relishes the idea of destroying them, Rago cautions this should only happen if necessary. He then orders robots named Quarks, of which there are several on board, to begin surveying and marking out drill sites...

Just off the island, a small domed craft is approaching. On board is a young man named Cully, who is accompanied by three friends - Wahed, Etnin and Tolata. He has organised this unofficial trip to the vicinity of the island, which is strictly out of bounds apart from regular visits by students. The place is known as the "Island of Death" as some 172 years ago it was used as an atomic testing site and is heavily irradiated. Cully is the rebellious son of the Dulcian leader, and is frequently in trouble over his many unauthorised activities such as this tour.

His three passengers question if they really are where he claims - they could be visiting any stretch of coastline. Suggestions they get out to explore are dismissed by him due to the radiation. The craft has a warning system to alert them if they get too close, triggered by the radiation count. However, they suddenly notice that this has failed and they are speeding towards the island. 

The craft runs aground.

The trio use this lack of radiation as proof that Cully has tricked them, and leave the craft to look around. Cully chases after them, as he remembers they haven't paid him yet.

He is about to catch up with them when he hears them announce that they have seen a strange craft and unfamiliar robots, which they want to look at. 

Toba observes them approach and orders the Quarks to destroy. Cully is horrified to see his three friends gunned down without warning.

He had managed to duck down under cover, and decides to slip back to his craft - narrowly missing the arrival of a battered blue Police Box.

When Rago is informed of the deaths of the natives he is angry. They should have been captured for assessment.

The Doctor emerges from the TARDIS with Jamie and Zoe. He is exhausted from producing mental images of his last encounter with the Daleks for Zoe's benefit, and on recognising that they are on Dulkis - which he has visited before - he realises that this is the perfect spot for a holiday. The Dulcians are a friendly, peaceful people.

Cully is approaching the beach but discovers that Toba and the Quarks have gotten there first. Once again Toba orders destruction, and the craft explodes.

The blast is heard by the Doctor and his companions, and Jamie questions his earlier comment about the people here being peaceful. They go to see what has happened, and soon come upon a ruined building.

Inside is a collection of weaponry - and mannequins made up to look like the victims of radiation sickness. Zoe suspects that this war museum has suffered atomic blast damage, but the Doctor is adamant that the Dulcians he met before rejected violence of any kind.

Worried that they are walking about unprotected in a radiation zone, they are about to return to the TARDIS when they are confronted by three figures dressed in hazmat suits...

A short time later the trio of figures - Educator Balan and students Teel and Kando - are discussing the strangers in their survey unit. They have come to carry out the weekly survey of the island.

The Doctor and his companions are in a decontamination chamber, but Teel is surprised that they show no trace of radiation. Balan therefore agrees to let them out.

They are told about this island being a nuclear test site, and is a prohibited area due to the radioactive fallout from the weapon detonated here 172 years ago. Such tests were then banned and the Dulcians pursued their current pacifist ideology.

The Doctor and Zoe are puzzled by the lack of radiation.

Rago is once again reprimanding Toba for his rash actions in destroying the craft on the beach before examining its technology. They too are curious about the lack of radiation on the planet - other than what was here when they landed.

Drilling sites have now been identified and marked out.

Cully finds one of these sites - identified by a star-shaped indentation on the ground - beside the TARDIS. He hides as Rago and Toba arrive to inspect it. Toba enquires if the box should be destroyed.

After they have gone, he is discovered by Teel and taken to the survey unit.

The Dominators come across the museum building and realise that the lack of radiation must have been due to a single atomic test here in the past. They note that all the weapons seem ancient, and Rago orders that locals must be taken alive to be questioned about their current weaponry.

Cully is brought into the survey unit and starts to tell everyone about the spaceship, and of the robots which attacked his three friends. Infamous for his tricks, Balan assumes that the Doctor and his companions are they, and he is telling tall tales again.

On hearing that the men from the spaceship were talking about destroying the TARDIS, the Doctor and Jamie rush off to check on it.

Zoe stays behind, and makes a friend of Cully when she shows an enquiring mind - something he accuses his own people of lacking. He tells her that his father is Senex, leader of the Dulcians. Teel reports some strange interference preventing them contacting their capitol, and Cully claims this to be the work of the robots he saw.

The Doctor and Jamie find the TARDIS untouched, and examine the star-shaped mark. They see tracks leading away and decide to follow them.

They lead them to the spaceship and they begin to look around. The Doctor wants to go inside, but they suddenly spot Toba standing on a rocky outcrop nearby, flanked by two squat box-like robots - Quarks. Their arms, with built-in guns, extend from their bodies and take aim at them.

The robots ask the Probationer if they should destroy...

Data:

Written by Norman Ashby (Henry Lincoln & Mervyn Haisman)

Recorded: Friday 17th May 1968 - Television Centre Studio TC4

First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 10th August 1968

Ratings: 6.1 million / AI 52

VFX: Ron Oates

Designer: Barry Newbery

Director: Morris Barry

Guest cast: Ronald Allen (Rago), Kenneth Ives (Toba), Arthur Cox (Cully), Johnson Bayly (Balan), Giles Block (Teel), Felicity Gibson (Kando), Nicolette Pendrell (Tolata), Malcolm Terris (Etnin), Philip Voss (Wahed), John Hicks, Gary Wilson (Quarks), Sheila Grant (Quark Voices)

Critique:

The production of The Dominators was a very troubled affair - so much so that its writers, Henry Lincoln and Mervyn Haisman, would come to take their names off it...

They had enjoyed great success with the programme by devising the robot Yeti and their Great Intelligence master, providing two scripts for Season 5 featuring these - The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear. These had been commissioned under the Innes Lloyd / Peter Bryant partnership, with Derrick Sherwin only becoming involved with them in the latter stages of their second story.

A third Yeti story was being considered, but for their next project they were asked to come up with a new monster that might replace the Daleks. Terry Nation had now relented in his refusal to allow their use in the series, but there were cost implications in their use and Bryant wanted other alternatives to join the Cybermen as recurring monsters.

Lincoln and Haisman were happy to oblige, as they hoped to exploit their new creations financially, just as Nation had with the Daleks.

The pair began with their monster before developing the story in which they were to feature. These were to be robots called Quarks, after the subatomic particles. They made a sketch of how they envisaged it - a box-like affair which travelled on a pair of caterpillar tracks, and with thin jointed arms to which different implements and weapons could be attached. For a head there was a revolving dome with eyes on either side, and atop this were antennae. The Quark was deliberately planned not to resemble the human form too much - the writers having carefully noted Ray Cusick's Dalek design.

In the same way that they had wanted the Yeti to look cuddly, yet be capable of extreme violence, the writers wanted child-like voices for the Quarks, which would contrast with their destructive capabilities.

This sketch of theirs would later form part of the breakdown between writers and production office...

As for the story itself, Lincoln and Haisman looked to current world events. 1968 had seen political disturbances across Europe and the USA, including student-led protests, which followed on from the rise of the Hippy peace movement the year before. The writers regarded this counter-culture as indicative of a slackening of morals. Taken to extremes, people would simply refuse to fight, preferring to give in. They would be unable, or unwilling, to defend even the peaceful principles they stood by if threatened by someone who did not share their views. Thinking this might make for the basis of a Doctor Who story - one where a peace-loving race were threatened by an alien aggressor - they ran it past Bryant on 1st January 1968, and he agreed that this could be developed further. Another story - "The Dreamspinners", by Paul Wheeler - had been dropped after its first episode had been submitted, and so the timescale for production would be tight. The writers first had to complete work on the Tigon horror film The Curse of the Crimson Altar, which was to star Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff. The deadline for their scripts was for the end of February so that production could get underway in April.

Problems began to arise when, in late January, Bryant and Sherwin requested changes - notifying the writers when they attended studio recording on the third episode of The Web of Fear. 

These included a reduction in the amount of model work, and the news that Patrick Troughton would be unavailable for location filming - so any exterior scenes where the Doctor needed to be seen clearly on camera would have to be recorded in studio. The actor had negotiated an exemption from location work on two of the stories for Season 6 as part of his latest contract renewal.

Concerned by the extent of the changes, a meeting was asked for - but this was delayed. By the time they all met and agreed to make the changes, the writers assumed that their deadline would have been extended to accommodate them - only to learn that the original deadline still stood.

Sherwin relented on this but, unbeknownst to the writers, he wasn't terribly keen on proceeding with the story at all.

The main thing to take note of here is that this was supposed to be a six part story...

In the original script for this episode, the Dulcians were Dulkians. Balan and his students were to have arrived on the island in a much larger craft, and they would be based inside this, instead of a separate survey unit building. This was changed so that only the smaller travel capsules could be used, giving an excuse why only two people could ever travel at a time.

One scene discarded early on featured Rago reporting progress to his headquarters. (If by video-link, or a cut to an actor on another set, it would have necessitated a third Dominator costume - which may be why it was dropped).

Location filming got underway on Thursday 25th April at Gerrards Cross Sand & Gravel Pit, Buckinghamshire - the same location Morris Barry had used for the surface of Telos in The Tomb of the Cybermen. Another sandpit in Kent would also be used for exteriors of the planet, and the production team would return to Gerrards Cross the following week to film other sequences for later in the story. This was because not all the footage required was completed, so a day's filming at Ealing was sacrificed to return to the location.

Ronald Allen was unavailable on the first day of filming, and Troughton would be doubled by Chris Jeffries where necessary throughout. On this day was filmed the destruction of Cully's travel craft. This was a scale model, filmed in forced perspective.

Another forced perspective shot was for Jeffries and Frazer Hines standing in the foreground looking towards the spaceship - filmed at the Kent location on Sunday 28th.

With Allen absent on the 25th, scenes were filmed of Voss, Terris and Pendrell - playing Cully's hapless friends - briefly exploring the island before meeting their nasty fate. A special hexagonal mask was placed over the camera lens to give the Quark POV. This would also be employed in studio.

Being on film, a special inlay effect was used for the deaths of the trio, though it was only applied to a shot of Pendrell. Peter Netley of the BBC Graphics Department masked off the actress' face on a single frame of film and used an optical printer to add footage of oil floating on water over her features.

The interior of Cully's travel craft was recorded at Ealing on Tuesday 30th. Arthur Cox had injured his ankle the day before on location at Gerrards Cross and so was wearing a cast on his leg. Camera angles had to be planned to work round this, with Cully mainly seated.

Photographs of the landscape taken on location were placed behind the windows, for when it reached the island.

This filming completed the work required from Voss, Terris and Pendrell, and they would not be needed for the studio recording.

Giles Block would later state that the actors playing Dulcians had a gold sheen sprayed on their faces.

Model work took place on Friday 26th April in the Puppet Theatre at Television Centre. This included the landing of the Dominator spaceship, which was attached to a rod at the rear away from the camera. Talcum powder was used to suggest jets, and it had working retractable legs. The fleet of ships seen in the opening shot were based on jelly moulds. Cully's travel craft, which had the appearance of a lemon squeezer so probably was, was also filmed - being pulled along through a bed of dry ice.

Following two weeks at Riverside, the series returned to Television Centre, which would be its home for the duration of this story - though not always in the same studio.

Joining the cast as the two Dominators were Ronald Allen, who had been a regular on the soap Compact which had been produced by Morris Barry, and Kenneth Ives, who had been a stuntman with Derek Ware's outfit HAVOC. Johnson Bayly had also appeared in Compact, and had also featured in its short-lived replacement soap 199 Park Lane, which Barry had also been involved with.

Rehearsals were not a happy time for Wendy Padbury, as she felt that Barry bullied her as the newest member of the cast - disciplining her as a means of keeping everyone else under control. Despite having been an actor himself, Barry was much more of a technical director than an actor's director, and Hines has also been highly critical of him in interviews.

During camera rehearsals, publicity photographs were taken of Allen and Ives outside the spaceship entrance and inside the museum, as well as images of the regulars with the survey team. Portrait shots were also taken of Felicity Gibson as Kando.

The main sets were the landing sites of both the spaceship and the TARDIS, the war museum and the survey unit. The landing sites both made use of large photographic blow-ups of the landscape as a backdrop. These photographs were taken at the story's other location, near Maidstone in Kent.

Barry Newbery constructed the museum as two linked sets - exterior and interior. He employed hexagonal bricks to suggest an alien building technique. As the exterior had to be shown in a more damaged state later, this construction method also helped.

The interior was dressed with a number of props from other stories as well as generic "ray guns" from stock. Of the previously seen items, note a Cyberman saucer from The Moonbase, also directed by Barry, hanging above the door, and suspended from the ceiling nearby is the base of the Gravitron probe from the same story.

The survey unit had various plants dotted around as set dressing, and there were three TV monitors on which scientific displays could be projected. Geometric logos were added to the walls and doors, again to suggest its alien nature. Strip lighting was used on the control panels.

Dry ice was employed as decontamination fumes.

Only one recording run-on was planned for the evening's recording - to move the cast from the museum set to the survey unit and to allow the Dulcian actors to remove their protective suits.

A flash charge was built into the museum wall for when one of the weapons is tested by Toba. Oddly, the budget-conscious Morris Barry decided not to use mannequins made up with radiation burns, and employed two extras instead. Like the death of Tolata, the make-up is rather gruesome for the time slot and family audience - more so because they are clearly people and not dummies.

One sequence was cut for timing reasons, the end of a scene in the survey unit after the Doctor and Jamie have left to check on the TARDIS. Zoe learned that Cully was unpopular as he didn't conform to the Dulcian "mindset", and an attempt was made to contact Senex by video, with Cully telling her that they were about to hear "Words of wisdom and a gentle reproof from on high...".

The director preferred the use of stock music in his productions to save on budgets, but for this story he relied on Brian Hodgson of the Radiophonic Workshop to provide special sounds. He created 81 pieces in total, including making a new master copy of the TARDIS materialisation. 

This was one of four stories where Hodgson provided the entire soundtrack - the others being The Wheel in Space, The Mind Robber and The Krotons. Some of the special sounds heard here had previously been used in The Moonbase.

Sheila Grant spoke her lines as the Quarks very slowly, to be speeded up for the finished episodes. Her laugh was also sampled and this was modulated to provide all of the different sound effects for the robots, such as when they recharge or employ their molecular force.

The Dominators is a story which has a poor reputation, and for several reasons. The main one cited has always been its mean-spirited politics. The writers come across as conservative reactionaries, opposed to - or at the very least alarmed by - the global peace movement popular with young people of the time.

There's nothing original about this in the series. We saw similar arguments from Terry Nation back in his first ever Dalek story, in which the TARDIS crew challenge the pacifist ideals of the Thals - encouraging them to fight or risk death. I was never terribly keen on the message then, and am not here either. 

There are a number of parallels with The Daleks, so that's certainly what Lincoln and Haisman were using as their model. We have the blond, good-looking pacifists versus aggressors, an irradiated landscape, and squat metallic monsters with potential for marketing.

We'll come back to the plot and its politics as the story develops.

In this particular episode we only have a couple of fairly minor issues. 

No offence to him, but Arthur Cox was one of those actors who looked middle-aged even when he was young. If you wanted to get someone to play a rebellious youth then I'm sure there were plenty of other actors who might have suited the part better, visually.

Then there are the costumes. Martin Baugh is trying for a classical Grecian style, with a touch of toga in the robes for Balan and Etnin, and skirts for the younger Dulcians, including the "boys". The idea was that the robes got longer the older you were. The female costume was a diaphanous skirt worn over a leotard. The outfits just about work on Teel and Kando as younger people, and on Balan as the older figure. The costume does not do Arthur Cox any favours at all...

The Dominator costumes, on the other hand, are really rather good. They could have been kitted out in plain uniforms, but Baugh has given them these big hunched shoulders, like the carapace of a turtle. We don't know if their actual shoulders go that far up, or if it's just a fashion design, like the big shoulder pads of the '80's. As they are a warrior race, I personally think it unlikely they'd opt for such a restrictive suit unless they had to, so like to think this is their actual body shape. 

If you're going to have humanoid aliens, then altering their physique somewhat is a good idea, rather than just sticking ridges on their face / heads a la Star Trek.

The bickering between the pair is interesting. Is Toba simply surly and insubordinate by nature, or is this what all Dominator crew relationships are like? If so, you wonder how they managed to master ten galaxies. Then again, this might just be braggadocio, as we've never come across them before or since.

The Quarks are held back to the cliffhanger and on film only - their appearance somewhat spoiled by Radio Times and Reveille publishing photos of them in advance (see below) - so we'll talk about them next time.

The effect used for the deaths of Cully's friends is quite horrific. As mentioned, we see Tolata freeze then the oil on water effect is overlaid on her face - as though the skin is melting. This could be achieved as this sequence was on film, so couldn't be replicated for the studio work.

There's only minimal VFX work on view here - just the spaceship fleet, Rago's saucer and Cully's lemon squeezer - with one establishing image of the ziggurat-style survey unit building, which looks like a glass shot. The saucer model is okay, if a little clichéd, but shots of it superimposed over a landscape coming in to land are unsatisfactory as it becomes transparent.

As an opening episode, there isn't really all that wrong with this. The villains are introduced, their purpose in coming here made clear: they've come to get something this planet has, which might require slave labour to get it. Drilling is mentioned. We also hear that their ship has absorbed the radiation on the island. They aren't simply invading.

The Dulcians are sketched in thanks to Cully. In his travel craft, and at the survey unit, he says quite a lot about this society, and we can see the survey team's lack of imagination backing some of his accusations up. There's little excitement - hence Cully coming up with his schemes, which are never authorised. They are also slaves to facts, as Kando points out when informed that the TARDIS travellers are not native to Dulkis: "We are taught to accept facts, being foolish to contemplate fantasy in the face of reality. You are here. This is fact. That you come from another planet I accept because I have no other means of proving it". 

Balan merely finds the idea they are alien to be "interesting", and matter-of-factly says he'll note this in a report.

Cully's description of his own people? "Vegetables, the lot of you. You don't live, you exist".

We are on an uninhabited island, with only four groups of visitors present - so there's a reason for the limited number of characters we see. It isn't a planet where the cities only appear to have a dozen or so people living in them.

There's even a bit of humour in the script, courtesy of Troughton and Hines as the Doctor looks around the spaceship exterior:

Jamie: "You're not thinking what I think you're thinking, are you?"

The Doctor: "That, I think, Jamie, depends on what you think I am thinking".

Trivia:

• Season 6 gets off to a slow start, ratings-wise, and with a disappointing appreciation figure - perhaps due to the launch being in the middle of the summer.
• The serial still did well against ITV, however, which was plunged into industrial action following a major shake-up of the regional franchises. An emergency schedule of repeats was being broadcast against the first few episodes of this story.
• This story was originally earmarked for Douglas Camfield to direct.
• Lincoln and Haisman seem to have adopted the Terry Nation naming convention, where planets are named for some aspect of their nature - political, geographical or climatic. Dulkis, derives its name from the Latin dulcis, meaning sweet.
• For many years fandom claimed that the original title for the story was "The Beautiful People". (That title was also claimed as a working one for Destiny of the Daleks).
• Cully's friends Wahed, Etnin and Tolata get their names from the Arabic for One, Two and Three.
• 'Cully', meanwhile, is either an archaic word for a gullible, easily fooled person, or slang for a pal or friend. In the story, Cully is more likely to be the trickster rather than the person tricked - so he's simply friend to the TARDIS crew.
• Senex is Latin for "old man".
• Kando means "beautiful" in Bengali.
• Ronald Allen will return to the series in 1970, to play Ralph Cornish in The Ambassadors of Death.
• Malcolm Terris will be back to play the treacherous Co-Pilot in The Horns of Nimon, who famously rips his trousers during his death scene. As this formed part of the cliffhanger, viewers got to see it happen again the following week.
• Sheila Grant will go on to play Jane Leeson in the opening episode of Colony in Space.
• And Arthur Cox is one of that select group of actors who appeared in both the classic era of the programme and 'NuWho'. He played Amy Pond's neighbour Mr Henderson in The Eleventh Hour.
• The weekly Reveille magazine published a set report in late June, illustrated with a photograph of a Quark in the Dominator spaceship. As well as the report, there were comments about the programme in general from Terry Nation, Kit Pedler, Peter Bryant and Bill Roberts (of Shawcraft Models). Larry Leake, who then ran the Doctor Who Fan Club, also contributed.

• Radio Times featured the start of the new season as one of its highlights for the week, illustrated with a photo of Rago with the Doctor, as well as providing a short plot outline with a photograph of the Quarks on the day's programme listings page:

Story 317: The Story & The Engine

In which the Doctor and Belinda travel to the city of Lagos in Nigeria, where his favourite barbershop - Omo's - is to be found...

In the shop, three young men listen as an older man has his hair cut. Images appear on the window, illustrating what he is narrating - the story of how a mysterious blue box appeared in the sky during a forest fire and saved a village, when a man in its doorway hosed down the flames until the inferno was  quenched. This was when the older man, who is Omo, first met the Doctor and became his friend.

A red light comes on above an inner doorway and the building shakes, and one of the younger men - Tunde - states that they need the Doctor now...

The TARDIS materialises nearby. It is 2019, and the Doctor sets up the Vindicator then tells Belinda that he is going to get his haircut. She will wait in the TARDIS.

He approaches the shop, which sits in an alleyway, and sees a sign warning people to turn back. There are also Missing Persons posters on the wall depicting four people - Omo, Tunde, Obioma and Rashid.

The shop appears to be boarded up and derelict, but the Doctor enters. The door slams shut behind him and, at the same moment, a red light flashes in the TARDIS and a klaxon fills the air.

In the shop, however, the light is green. Omo tells the young men that he knew the Doctor would come.

Obioma has just had his hair cut, but isn't leaving.

Demanding to know what has happened to the shop, Omo explains to the Doctor that it is under new management, and the Barber appears. He explains that this is his establishment.

The light turns red and a klaxon sounds - and Obioma's hair grows back.

Rashid begins to tell a story, and the light reverts to green.

The Doctor sees images moving on the window - but they are of monsters he has fought.

Omo explains to the Doctor that the chair, window and the Barber's clippers are all interconnected - and he must tell a story. The Barber states that "it" needs feeding, and is always hungry. He leaves for the back room, and a woman enters bringing food. Her name is Abby, and the Doctor has a vague recollection he has seen her before.

As the door closes behind her, the red light once again comes on, the klaxon sounds, and Belinda experiences the same in the TARDIS.

Abby follows the Barber into the back room, and the others explain that she is his assistant. They both used to work for her father but he was cruel to her and so they left him.

The pair are now keeping the men here, until they reach their destination. The shop is really in motion.

Omo explains that the Barber turned up one day with his own clippers and offered him a free haircut. He felt a strange sensation, like an electric shock. His door keys would no longer work, and he tried to keep people from entering but the shop seemed to accept a select few of Omo's best customers - the three young men. They are now forced to remain here and tell stories.

The Barber returns, with the red light and klaxon sounding. He asks who wants to go next, and the Doctor volunteers. When the cape is placed over him in the chair, he feels an energy surge and finds himself immobilised.

Instead of stories about his many alien enemies, he elects to tell the story of an ordinary incident which happened to Belinda at the hospital where she works. Despite having a family event to go to, she stayed on to look after a particular patient. Two weeks later they came back to thank her.

When he finishes, the green light comes on and the chair releases him. The Barber reports that the batteries are full, and the Doctor's hair grows back.

Abby reappears and the Barber informs her that with the Doctor's stories they will reach their destination rapidly as he is powering the Engine. She will be able to assume the throne and rule. He goes to check on the Engine. Abby uses a device to lock the door behind him. 

In the TARDIS, Belinda asks the ship to locate the source of the light and sound - and an image of the barbershop appears on the scanner.

She leaves the ship and begins making her way there. As she gets closer, she sees a little girl walking alone who stops to look at her. She loses sight of the child - unaware that she resembles Captain Poppy, whom the Doctor and Ruby met on a space station orbiting the planet Pacifico Del Rio...

The Doctor is angry with Omo for having tricked him into becoming trapped here. He manages to open the front door using his sonic screwdriver - only to find himself being sucked out into a mysterious void. He drags himself back inside and discovers that the barbershop is actually sitting on the back of a gigantic mechanical spider, moving through a region known as the Nexus, travelling along what the Barber calls the World Wide Web. The doorway contains a space-time compressor.

However, moments later Belinda walks in from the alleyway, having ignored the warnings to turn back. She tells the Doctor about the red lights and alarms sounding in the TARDIS.

The Barber claims a number of different identities - all deities famed for story-telling, mischief and trickery. The Doctor denies this, stating that he has met some of them personally and doesn't recognise him. The Barber then states that he was human once, and is the person behind their stories - who made sure they got out into the world.

Abby then claims that he also made the Nexus.

The Doctor then recalls where he has seen her before. She is Abena, daughter of Anansi. She accuses him of having once abandoned her, when he was in another incarnation - that of the "Fugitive Doctor".

When the barbershop gets to the heart of the Nexus, the Barber intends to destroy the old gods and end their stories - taking over himself. The Doctor believes this could destroy the human race.

The Doctor is forced into the chair and Abena begins to cut his hair. Another of his stories is needed - to speed the spider towards its destination.

However, Abena has cut a pattern into his hair - a map to what lies beyond the inner door of the shop. She has come to accept the Doctor's warnings about the Barber - of how humanity needs stories - and accepts that he was unable to help her in their earlier encounter. 

The Doctor and Belinda pass through into the back and through a maze of book-lined corridors. 

The map leads them to the Engine Room, where a large organic structure sits. TV monitors show excerpts from the Doctor's life, in all of his incarnations. The Barber tells him that he has provided an eternity of stories to power the Engine - but the Doctor begins sabotaging it. He warns that the power will overload.

Everyone flees - the front door now leading back into the alleyway. The mechanical spider attempts to follow them out, but the Doctor uses the sonic to force it back inside.

It explodes in the Nexus.

The Barber has survived, now a powerless human being - his all-consuming purpose now gone. Those he made captive refuse to hold it against him as he was simply a victim of his obsession. He goes back into what is now an ordinary barbershop, and the Doctor tells him he will return soon for a haircut and to hear his story. Abena will leave to make a new life for herself, and the others return to their families.

Belinda tells the Doctor about the strange child she saw, and he thinks this was probably just leakage from his stories...

The Story & The Engine was written by Inua Ellams and first broadcast on Saturday 10th May 2025.

Ellams had been developing a script with Chris Chibnall for Series 13, when this was cancelled due to the pandemic and replaced with Flux.

Last time, I said how Series 15 was following the same pattern as Series 14. Does this still hold? Yes it does, as the fifth story of each features the Doctor's current ethnicity as a key feature.

As mentioned in discussing The Well, Ncuti Gatwa had wanted to do a story involving Nigerian deities, which RTD2 had failed to fit in with his own plans for the Pantheon of Discord. Knowing his star wanted to do a story based in Africa, Ellams was approached on Gatwa's recommendation - unaware that Ellams had already reached out to the showrunner. 

Inua Marc Mohammed Onore de Ellams II was born in Nigeria in 1984, but moved to England aged 12, and three years later to Ireland. He is best known as a poet and playwright.

For inspiration, he looked to one of his best known plays - Barber Shop Chronicles, staged in 2017. This featured scenes from six different barbershops across the UK on one particular day, set against the backdrop of a Chelsea - Barcelona football match. Characters discussed a range of issues including racism, homosexuality and masculinity in the black community. For research, Ellams had visited barbershops in London and across Africa and recorded hours of candid conversation.

The same setting had formed the backdrop to a popular Channel 4 sit-com named Desmond's, which ran from 1989 - 1994. Norman Beaton played the title character, who ran a barbershop in Peckham, South London.

The story certainly shows its stage inspirations, as it is set almost entirely within the confines of Omo's barbershop and concentrates on the stories a small group of people tell in this situation. As well as the limited cast and setting, it is also dialogue-heavy. We do have some interesting visual imagery - the mechanical spider with the building on its back, the stories being animated on the windows, and the Engine Room with its huge gourd-like structure and multiple TV screens.

Welcome as these visuals are, we are for the most part stuck with a small group of (mostly) men talking in a room for much of the running time - and what they have to say isn't always clear. This is partly due to the sound mix, partly to do with accents, and partly to do with reams and reams of expositional dialogue. Truth be told, I really didn't understand it on first viewing, and had to visit a transcript site later to find out exactly what it was I had just watched.

In a nutshell, it is about the power of story-telling. Gods exist purely through the myths and legends told of them, and someone has to ensure these are told. 

The Barber at first claims to have been all of these deities, but then claims only to have been the one to disseminate their stories and so keep them alive. The Doctor seems to think that the human race can't exist without stories.

You could say that all this is a metaphor for Doctor Who itself. The customers are the writers, with RTD2 acting like the Barber - the showrunner ensuring the series (the Story Engine) is fed and gets to its destination, i.e. a critical and popular success. We see lots of clips from previous stories feeding the Engine - the programme relies heavily on continuity with its past (even if egregiously abused).

Or, the Engine is the TARDIS, with the Barber as the Doctor and Abena the companion, having adventures (stories) as they travel along. The Barber also claimed to have had different incarnations in the past.

Actually, it's ironic that, if RTD2 is the Barber, then he should succeed where the latter failed. He has killed the gods (the Doctors) by ending their stories (the current hiatus) and the human race (the fans) are being left to suffer...

The main guest artist this week is Ariyon Bakare, who plays the enigmatic Barber. His work includes appearances in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and Good Omens, and he is well known for playing Lord Boreal in His Dark Materials. In 2025 he won a Best Supporting Actor BAFTA for Mr Loverman.

This is his second appearance in Doctor Who, having played the leonine alien Leandro in The Woman Who Lived.

Abena is Michelle Asanti, who has also appeared in the series before - as the neighbour of Maebh and her mother in In The Forest of the Night. She has featured on a number of Big Finish audios.

Omo is played by Sule Rimi, who featured as Lt Gorn in Andor and appeared in the 2024 remake of The Day of the Jackal.

The trio of customers are Stefan Adegbola (Rashid), Jordan Adene (Tunde) and Michael Balogun (Obioma). 

Adegbola had previously appeared in Aliens of London and The Magician's Apprentice, and theatre work includes productions at the Globe and with the RSC.

Adene has appeared in The Sandman and Young Wallender, and Balogun has worked with the National Theatre as well as an appearance in TV series Sherwood. Balogun and Sule Rimi had worked with Ellams on a production of Barber Shop Chronicles.

Anita Dobson makes another cameo as Mrs Flood, this time playing Belinda's neighbour once again, seen when the Doctor tells the story of her day at work in the hospital.

Also making a return is Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps, as Poppy. We also get a cameo from Jo Martin as the Fugitive Doctor. This is very brief, and confuses as the Doctor isn't supposed to remember anything prior to the Hartnell incarnation.

Overall, visually impressive on occasion but a storyline I found difficult to get into. A story about story-telling, it naturally depends very much on dialogue and, whilst this is rich in metaphor and poetic as befits its author, is confusing on first viewing. Once you have an idea of what it is about then it does benefit from a second watch.

Things you might like to know:

• This story was originally intended to follow Dot and Bubble in Series 14, acting as a companion piece. In the first story, the Doctor's ethnicity was held against him, whilst the next story would have seen him able to embrace it.
• This is a very rare visit by the TARDIS to the African continent. It first arrived there in The Chase, when it visited a funfair in Ghana - though the Doctor wasn't even aware of the location at the time. Other than trips to Egypt in The Daleks' Master Plan and Pyramids of Mars, the only other visit I can think of is when the Doctor collects big game hunter Riddell in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, when he also picked up Nefertiti from Egypt. Egypt seems to be a popular destination as the Doctor also went there on one of his Christmas trips with Abigail and Kazran in A Christmas Carol.
• Controversially, the Lagos setting is of concern as gay people are persecuted in Nigeria - making it a poor choice as one of the Fifteenth Doctor's favourite places.
• Drone footage of a Lagos street market was filmed specially to act as establishing shots, whereas the entire production took place in Cardiff. The market scenes employed some 80 extras.
• Ellams has a cameo here, playing the market stallholder encountered by Belinda.
• Every previous Doctor is seen on the Engine Room TV screens - apart from the Seventh. Intended was a clip of the Doctor confronting Davros from Remembrance of the Daleks but this doesn't appear. Either it was cut, or that particular TV screen simply wasn't visible in the footage used.
• Rashid tells a story about the cellist Yo-Yo Ma visiting Botswana. This was an actual story told to Ellams by singer Bobby McFerris, which he later adapted as a poem.
• The Doctor claims that the TARDIS usually cuts his hair for him.
• The clips seen in the Engine Room come from the following stories / episodes: The Daleks, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Tomb of the Cybermen, Spearhead From Space, Pyramids of Mars, The Five Doctors, The Ultimate Foe, Night of the Doctor, The Doctor Dances, Voyage of the Damned, Vincent and the Doctor, The Zygon Inversion, Heaven Sent, The Woman Who Fell To Earth, The Power of the Doctor, The Giggle, The Church on Ruby Road and Boom.

Episodes Cutaway - The Evil of the Daleks Repeat

The Wheel in Space brought Season 5 to a close, with The Dominators and The Mind Robber being held over to begin the sixth season. 

In order to fill the schedules whilst the programme was on its summer break, Peter Bryant arranged to repeat a Doctor Who story. This was only the second time in its history that fans were given the opportunity to rewatch any episodes - the first time being when An Unearthly Child was broadcast again the week after its debut, immediately before The Cave of Skulls, due to the real life drama of the JFK assassination and a major regional power outage.

The British summer is known for two things - Wimbledon and rain (usually at the same time) - so there were nine Saturday evening slots in total to be filled, which included a two week break for the annual tennis tournament. 

As Season 5 had been the first not to include a Dalek story, and there was a recent seven part story featuring them available, The Evil of the Daleks became the natural choice.

Rather than simply broadcast this story as an out of context repeat screening, it was decided to link it in with the ongoing narrative of the Doctor's travels. After finding new companion Zoe trying to stowaway aboard the TARDIS at the conclusion of The Wheel in Space, the Doctor would recount one of his earlier adventures in order to let her know what travelling in the TARDIS might entail if she persisted with her decision to join them:

Zoe: "I want to go with you"

Jamie: "Well, it's impossible"

The Doctor: "Now Jamie, it's not impossible. It's something we have to decide. You may change your mind"

Zoe: "No I won't"

(The Doctor removes a headset from behind one of the TARDIS roundels).

Jamie: "What are you going to do?"

The Doctor: "I'm going to show Zoe the sort of thing she may be in for"

Zoe: "Thought patterns?"

The Doctor: "Yes. Only I'm going to weave them into a complete story for you. Have you ever heard of the Daleks?"

Zoe: "No"

The Doctor: "Then watch..."

On the TARDIS scanner we then see the cliffhanger sequence from the end of the opening episode of The Evil of the Daleks. In this Kennedy is rifling the contents of Edward Waterfield's safe, unaware that a Dalek has just materialised behind him. He notices too late and tries to flee - only to be exterminated. 

This is from Episode One and not the surviving second instalment which reprises this sequence, as - according to DWM - there are a few frames which don't feature in the latter.

This particular clip was chosen purely because it marks the first sighting of a Dalek in the opening episode, and we - and Zoe - get to see it in action.

Clearance to use the clip was obtained on Thursday 4th April, after the decision to repeat the story had been finalised the week before.

To further tie-in the repeat screening with the ongoing series, Patrick Troughton and Wendy Padbury recorded some special dialogue on Friday 31st May, during the recording of the third episode of The Dominators. This was then played over the opening scene of the first episode:

The Doctor: "Now as I remember Zoe, it all started when Jamie and I discovered someone making off with the TARDIS"

Zoe: "But what about those Daleks you showed me?"

The Doctor: "Coming to that Zoe. Just let me show you the story from the beginning..."

Linking the repeat further, the Doctor would later comment on how exhausting it was to project the mental images when he and his companions emerge from the TARDIS onto the surface of the planet Dulkis in The Dominators...

Data:

All episodes went out at 5.15pm.

Episode 1: Saturday 8th June 1968 (6.3 million / AI 50)

Episode 2: Saturday 15th June 1968 (5 million / AI 52)

Episode 3: Saturday 22nd June 1968 (6.3 million / AI 51)

Episode 4: Saturday 13th July 1968 (5 million / AI 49)

Episode 5: Saturday 20th July 1968 (5.1 million / AI 50)

Episode 6: Saturday 27th July 1968 (4.2 million / AI 51)

Episode 7: Saturday 3rd August 1968 (5.5 million / AI 49)

Trivia:

• The repeat screening of the third episode had a higher audience viewing figure than that for its original broadcast (6.1 million).
• This particular episode was hit with a technical fault, during a scene between Jamie and Mollie as she told him about the closed-off wing of Maxtible's house. Viewers were treated to a bit of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, playing A Banda.
• Apart from brief cameos in The War Games and The Mind of Evil, this would be the last appearance of the Daleks on TV within the context of the series until their return, in colour, in January 1972 with Day of the Daleks.
• Radio Times publicised the repeat with a full colour backpage spread in the issue dated 8 - 14th June:

• The listing for the opening episode featured artwork by Victor Reinganum, whilst that for the third instalment included a photograph of guest actor Marius Goring as Theodore Maxtible. The summary mistakenly claims the Doctor and Jamie to be in Victorian London:

• The repeat got its own novelisation from Target, written by Frazer Hines, in October 2023. It was also given away free, with new artwork, with DWM 609. Though credited to Hines, the inside reveals that he collaborated with Mike Tucker and Steve Cole. There was also an audiobook, read by Hines, which used the same Lee Binding artwork as the 2023 novelisation.

Episode 209: The Wheel in Space (6)

Synopsis:

Jamie and Zoe are making a hazardous spacewalk between the Wheel and the Silver Carrier rocket. The space station's crew have begun destroying the approaching meteorites and they are in danger of being caught in the explosions...

In the communications centre, Leo Ryan is angry and accuses the Doctor of sending the youngsters to their deaths. He insists that this was a risk which had to be taken as there is something on the rocket which he needs, then sadly informs him of Gemma's death which he has just witnessed on the visiphone.

Jarvis Bennett has been sitting quietly in his chair for some time in a near catatonic state, seemingly oblivious to all that is going on around him - but he suddenly snaps out of this on hearing of his friend's death. With everyone preoccupied, he gets up and quietly slips from the room after switching off its protective forcefield.

The Doctor tells Leo of Gemma's final warning - to switch to the sectional air supply. She gave her life to give this information as the Cybermen are about to poison them all.

Leo complies, and then Bennett appears on the visiphone advising that they should reactivate the forcefield. He is in a corridor nearby, determined to get revenge for Gemma's death.

A Cyberman appears and Bennett launches himself at it. It proves a futile gesture as, after a brief struggle, it throws him across the corridor then blasts him with its chest unit. His death is witnessed by the others on the monitor.

Vallance has been instructed to inject ozone into the air supply, but the procedure fails. The Cyberman he is assisting contacts its Planner, which deduces that someone on board the station knows their ways. Vallance is ordered to look into the Cyberman's communications device and picture in his mind everyone on the Wheel, so that this person might be identified.

Jamie and Zoe, meanwhile, have safely made it to the rocket. He tells her about the object they have come to find - the Time Vector Generator - and they quickly locate it and prepare to make the return journey. Zoe uses the rocket's communications equipment to try to contact the Wheel to provide them with an update - but accidentally breaks into the Cybermen's frequency. 

They see the mental images produced by Vallance. When it comes to the Doctor, he tells them that he doesn't know this recent arrival - but the Planner recognises him as a known enemy. He must be lured out of the communications centre and destroyed.

In the centre, something large is spotted on the radar. It is seen to change course and move towards the station, and the Doctor deduces that this is the Cybership. Leo asks Casali if he is able yet to contact Earth for assistance, but the technician responds that he needs spare transistors to finish repairs - and these will have to be fetched from the Power House. 

Someone will have to go and get them.

Jamie and Zoe depart from the rocket, in order to warn the Doctor of the planned trap for him.

Leo and Tanya study blueprints of the Wheel's layout and realise that the only way to get to the Power House without going through the corridors is through an emergency air shaft.

Flannigan then appears on the visiphone to tell them that he has locked the Cybermen in one of the workshops, but doesn't know how long he can keep them there.

The Doctor then insists that he will go to fetch the spares. Flannigan will meet him in one of the corridors.

As the Doctor is about to leave, he warns Leo and the others to seize Flannigan as soon as he comes into the centre through the forcefield. He advises they check the back of his neck for a metal plate.

A Cyberman orders Flannigan to go to the communications centre and destroy the forcefield as soon as he is admitted.

The Doctor arrives in the Power House through the air shaft, and immediately spots a bottle of mercury which he pockets. He then starts looking through the electronic equipment, a plan forming in his mind...

Jamie and Zoe arrive back on board - to be greeted by the sight of Gemma's body.

As they leave the Oxygen Store they meet Flannigan, who agrees to escort them to the communications centre.

Vallance is accompanying the other Cyberman, and they realise that the Doctor has not come by the expected route. Vallance then recalls the emergency air shaft.

As soon as Flannigan enters the centre with Jamie and Zoe, the crew overpower him and a metal plate with transistor is applied to the back of his neck, breaking the Cyberman hypnotic influence. He quickly recovers, vowing to get even with the monsters.

The Doctor appears on the monitor to report that he has found the spares they need, and Jamie informs him of the plan to trap him. He asks Jamie to use the air shaft to bring the Time Vector Generator to him - then has to break transmission as he reports that company has arrived...

The two Cybermen have entered the Power House.

The Doctor is able to get them to confirm some aspects of their invasion plan before one of the creatures steps forward to kill him. However, he has rigged up a powerful electric field just inside the door, and this destroys the Cyberman. The other attempts to shoot him, but the field blocks its weaponry.

It is forced to withdraw.

Jamie then emerges from the air shaft with Flannigan, who arms himself with a bottle of quick-setting plastic. The Doctor gives them a metal plate to use on Vallance when they find him, then sets about making adjustments to the X-ray laser. As Flannigan and Jamie leave, they ask him to contact Leo.

The Doctor calls him and tells him that he is going to boost the power of the laser, and is told that the Cybership is fast approaching.

Donning spacesuits, Jamie and Flannigan go to the loading bay where the last Cyberman is to be found with Vallance, also in a spacesuit. Flannigan pretends to still be under hypnotic control, claiming to have captured Jamie.

A group of Cybermen have begun to spacewalk from their ship towards the open outer airlock doors. Jamie quickly overpowers Vallance and fits the plate to his neck, whilst Flannigan destroys the Cyberman by spraying the plastic into its chest unit.

The Cybermen reach the airlock door and begin to push their way in as Flannigan tries to close it. 

The Doctor fits the Time Vector Generator into the laser's capacitor bank and notifies Leo that it is ready. He opens fire, and the Cybership is destroyed.

Flannigan then activates the neutron forcefield - and the Cybermen are sent hurtling off into space.

A short time later, Leo is contacting Earth to inform them of what has happened, having assumed temporary command of the Wheel. Zoe has gone to escort the Doctor and Jamie to the Silver Carrier to retrieve the TARDIS. Left alone with Jamie, she is curious as to why they won't explain anything about their craft. He bids her goodbye.

The Doctor is refilling the fluid links with mercury when Jamie enters the TARDIS. They are about to depart when the Doctor spots the lid of a large chest gently closing. Inside they find Zoe, who asks to go with them. She wishes to experience life after years of simply studying it, and recent events have opened her eyes to how cloistered her own life has been. Jamie is quick to dismiss her request but the Doctor is willing to accept her - so long as she knows what she is letting herself in for. He removes a headset from a wall panel and puts it on, telling them that he is going to present mental images on the scanner. He will weave these into a complete narrative, and asks Zoe if she has ever heard of the Daleks. He begins to relate to her their last encounter with them...

Next time: The Dominators...

Data:

Written by David Whitaker (from a story by Kit Pedler)

Recorded: Friday 10th May 1968 - Riverside Studio 1

First broadcast: 6.05pm, Saturday 1st June 1968

Ratings: 6.5 million / AI 62

VFX: Bill King & Trading Post

Designer: Derek Dodd

Director: Tristan De Vere Cole

Critique:

This was the last time Doctor Who used the credit 'Story Editor'. From Season 6 the title would become 'Script Editor'.

Dialogue about how the Doctor would get to the Power House without going through the corridors was added in amendments made in early March.

Whitaker advised that a woman's legs, wearing Gemma's distinctive uniform, could be shown, without revealing the face (which would be seen using the photographs taken during the recording of the previous episode).

The final scene in the communications centre, with Casali establishing radio contact with Earth, was only added during rehearsals for this episode.

Zoe did not hide in the wooden chest originally. The Doctor was to have spotted her crawling into the TARDIS on her hands and knees before hiding behind a chair.

This episode affords us our only glimpse of the Cybermen as they were originally designed for this story.

The main difference between filming and studio recordings was the suit. This was designed by Martin Baugh to be a lightweight vinyl material, light grey in colour, attached to which were small rectangular junction boxes, two of which were mounted on the shoulders. Thin rods were connected to these along the arms and legs.

During the filming at Ealing on Friday 22nd March of the spacewalk in this episode, it was found that the rods kept coming loose, and the thin vinyl wrinkled easily and was in danger of tearing. Unhappy with the costumes, De Vere Cole requested that they be redesigned before the story went into studio.

Some elements constructed by Jack and John Lovell such as the helmets and gloves were retained but the main suit was replaced entirely by two-piece diving suits sprayed silver. The shoulder-mounted junction boxes were moved to the upper arms.

The material already filmed of the Cybermen spacewalking and trying to force their way through the airlock doors was retained for broadcast - so this is the original design's only appearance in the programme, as you can see below. The Cyberman ranks were swollen by having a third costume, worn by Tony Harwood, at the rear. This was one of the old Mark II versions, unmodified. The footage was also mirrored to double their numbers.

It should be noted that the Cybermen on film wore their chest units - actually Mark II versions - mounted the correct way up with the circular weapon at the bottom, which was how the Lovells intended them to be worn.

Apart from model shots of the Wheel, rocket and Cybership, filmed at the Puppet Theatre for use throughout the serial, the shots of the Cybermen being flung off into space were also filmed on Thursday 21st March. These were simply photographs of the creatures, cut out and mounted on cardboard.

Studio recording returned to Riverside and like the previous episode it was decided to use 35mm film rather than 625-line videotape. This was due to the fact that the episode was to be recorded out of order, thanks to some of the cast having to change in and out of spacesuits for parts of the action. For instance, Jamie is seen to be wearing his at the beginning of the episode, and again later in the loading bay, but with his normal gear in between and then again at the very end - necessitating three costume changes over the course of the evening if the episode was made in story order. All the scenes of people wearing the suits could be recorded together.

Hines recorded both of his spacesuit sequences first, ending with the struggle in the loading bay. A break then allowed him to go off and change into his usual costume for his mid-episode scenes and the final TARDIS sequence.

Other recording breaks included one to replace the radar scanner in the communications centre, and another to fix kirby wires to Michael Turner for the sequence where he is picked up and thrown by a Cyberman. Perhaps recalling how bad this physical effect had looked in The Tomb of the Cybermen, this was only to have been seen on the visiphone screen. During the struggle, we can also see a piece of the Cyberman's piping coming loose.

As in previous episodes, a halo of light was superimposed over the Cyberman's chest unit and the screen alternated between positive and negative. This same over-exposure effect was used for when the Cybermen are blasted off into space by the forcefield. The oscilloscope wave was used as Vallance was hypnotically given fresh orders, and superimposed over still images of the cast which represented Vallance's mental images of the crew.

A spark was superimposed over the shot of the Cyberman killed by the Doctor's trap.

The final recording break was to set up the TARDIS scene, which used only a minimal set of console, wooden chest and two walls, one of which was a photographic blow-up in a poor state of repair.

The end credits rolled over a close-up of Zoe's face as she concentrated on the Doctor's mental projections.

The closing sequence was designed to lead into a repeat broadcast of The Evil of the Daleks which began the following week - which we'll look at separately in the next post. The clip chosen came from the cliffhanger to the first episode, rather than starting from the very beginning with the theft of the TARDIS from Gatwick Airport - chosen as it is the first time a Dalek appears in the story.

It is usually referred to as a fluff from Troughton, but knowing his mischievous nature one suspects that his reference to the "sexual" air supply instead of "sectional" - that's what it sound like - was probably deliberate.

Unwinding in Studio 3 - the pub across the road from Riverside - after recording, Troughton expressed his dissatisfaction with the recent stories to Peter Bryant. He felt the scripts to be repetitive and lacking in depth, and he wanted to see new monsters introduced - though he did like the Cybermen, which he was pleased to hear would be back next season. He was told about the plans Bryant and Derrick Sherwin had about reformatting the series, basing it in the England of the near future. It would be more action-orientated, with the Doctor working alongside Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart and Professor Travers in their fight against the Cybermen.

It's a disappointing ending to the story, with the threat of the Cybermen and their invasion fleet dealt with far too abruptly. The VFX leave a lot to be desired as well, what with flimsy cardboard cut-out Cybermen and the comic book style explosion of the Cybership. Things aren't helped by the frantic cutting of these sequences.

It's certainly not one of Whitaker's better scripts, and is generally regarded as the weakest of the 1960's Cyberman stories. The writer did once state in an interview that he didn't think there was enough material to fill six episodes, and the opening instalment is almost a self-contained one wherein the Doctor and Jamie have an adventure with a Servo Robot on a derelict spaceship. It was this concern about the lack of material which caused Whitaker to make the story more of a character piece in its first half, with the Cybermen only getting onto the Wheel at the midpoint of the story.

Character pieces only work, however, if those characters are people we can invest in, in one way or another. Leo and Tanya are very thinly sketched, whilst Bennett - who should be the most interesting character - descends into a form of manic-depression seemingly out of the blue. He goes from being annoyed about other people's theories to acting as if everything is going well, to catatonia in the space of an episode. Even Gemma, an ally of the Doctor in particular and whose death comes as a complete shock, can be a bit of a cold fish - advising Zoe but incapable of empathising with her when she starts questioning her conditioning and how she actually fits into this society.

The only really true human beings on the Wheel are Duggan and Flannigan, the former of whom is killed off relatively quickly and the latter of whom spends some time under hypnotic control. They are the only 'real' characters we see.

We've already mentioned the problematic dating for this story - complicated by Zoe's later talk about the Hourly Telepress of the year 2000 in The Mind Robber. The Cybermen recognise the Doctor in this episode purely from his appearance, but The Moonbase is specifically dated to the year 2070, and events on Telos were said to occur after the Cybermen had not been active in the galaxy for five centuries. The Telepress business definitely suggests an early 21st Century dating for Zoe's time, so before the attack on the Graviton base. When we take into account the Doctor's additional knowledge about the use of neuristors as defence against Cyber-hypnotism, it becomes increasingly more likely that there has been some unscreened Cyberman adventure during the Second Doctor's lifetime - which might go to explain the reference to 'Planet 14' in their next encounter...

This episode survived because it was retained by the BBC as an example of Doctor Who's fifth season, along with the third instalment of The Enemy of the World.

It brings the fifth season to a close - a run which has since become known as the "Monster Season". It began with the Cybermen and ended with them as well, and in between we had Yeti - twice - Ice Warriors and Seaweed Creatures. We even segue into a repeat run for the Daleks.

Only The Enemy of the World stood out from the rest with its James Bond trappings and purely human antagonists, but it at least had the novelty value of the chief villain being a doppelganger of the Doctor to help it stand out.

It had been another year of relative stability, both on-screen and off. Innes Lloyd had passed on the Producer baton to Peter Bryant in a smooth, planned fashion, having groomed him for the role for some time before stepping down. After the slight hiccup of Victor Pemberton as Story Editor, this role had been quickly filled by Derrick Sherwin, who had brought his own assistant - and intended replacement - onboard in the shape of Terrance Dicks, whose association with the television series will continue on and off for the next 15 years.

As for the TARDIS crew, Debbie Watling had appeared as Victoria in every story, thanks to her brief glimpse on the scanner and a credit in the first episode of the final story. This introduced new girl Zoe, but she is technically just a guest character up until the closing moments when she elects to stowaway on board the ship. Watling had also given plenty of notice regarding her departure, only ever intending to stay for a year. Though increasingly unhappy in his role as the Doctor, Patrick Troughton had agreed to stay on for one more season, by which time he would be financially comfortable, and Frazer Hines was happy to carry on a little longer as Jamie, despite pressures from his agent to get into films.

These weren't the only clouds on the horizon of Season 6. The ratings were falling overall, and the audience appreciation figures were only matching the peaks of Season 2 right at the very end.

William Hartnell had always insisted that Doctor Who would last 5 years. It would, though sadly without his presence. His departure at the end of The Tenth Planet had been the biggest upheaval to date for the series, but even bigger changes would lie ahead before the decade was out...

Trivia:

• This story ends on a high appreciation index figure of 62, beating Episode 2's score - but we also see the lowest viewing figure for this story, more than 2 million down on its peak for the fourth instalment.
• This episode was scheduled for the later time of 6pm due to an England-Germany international football match on Grandstand, but went out five minutes later than planned.
• The BBC commissioned an Audience Research Report for this episode, which highlighted the performances by Troughton and Hines as well as the spacewalk scenes. However, there were a number of negative comments about the lack of variety in the monsters and the use of complicated technical jargon. It was felt that the series was becoming repetitive.
• Junior Points of View on Friday 7th June echoed the complaints about the overuse of Daleks, Cybermen and Yeti in the series - though one youngster suggested the Doctor for Prime Minister.
• Tristan De Vere Cole was never invited back to direct Doctor Who. Peter Bryant was unhappy with him discussing the scripts with Whitaker, Pedler and Sherwin during the planning stages - arguing that such discussions should go through him as producer. He complained about this in his Director's Report, which was a document completed after every production and sent to his boss Shaun Sutton. As well as his complaint about his direct dealings with the writing team, he also claimed that De Vere Cole had gone over budget. This latter issue automatically led to a director being barred from returning to a series. In actual fact, the story did not go over budget.
• This would prove to be Peter Hawkins' final work on Doctor Who - though he would be heard again by viewers when The Evil of the Daleks was repeated over the summer. He had first joined the series in December 1963 for The Survivors - the second instalment of The Daleks - working alongside fellow voice actor David Graham and Brian Hodgson of the Radiophonic Workshop to develop and perfect the Dalek vocals - with input from directors Christopher Barry and Richard Martin. What they came up with helped popularise the monsters - and thus the series - as they could be easily impersonated by children. A variation of what they helped create continues to this day, Hawkins being the stated inspiration for Nicholas Briggs' performance. As well as his Doctor Who work, the actor is fondly remembered for classic children's series such as Captain Pugwash and Bill and Ben. Hawkins was forced to retire in 1992 due to ill health and died, aged 82, in 2006.

• Wendy Padbury and Eric Flynn would be reunited on screen in 1971 when they both joined the cast of children's adventure series Freewheelers. She was a regular across several seasons, skipping the seventh to have a child, whilst he only featured in a handful of episodes.
• We will meet Tanya Lernov again, and revisit the Wheel, for Zoe's departure scene in the final episode of The War Games.
• A clip of the confrontation between the Doctor and the Cybermen in the Power House was used for the flashback sequence in Earthshock (2), though the Cyber-Leader's dialogue describes the events of The Tomb of the Cybermen - that story still being missing in 1982.
• One of the photographic portraits taken of Patrick Troughton, as used by the Cyberman Planner to identify their enemy, was employed by the BBC for publicity purposes - made into cards which could be sent out to fans requesting autographs.

• It is, of course, a coincidence too far that the rocket's communications system could just happen to intercept an alien transmission, sent by alien technology - and not an ordinary message at that, but a mental projection...
• The Mark III Cybermen never reappeared in the series, but they do have a sort of afterlife - or at least the helmet does. This has turned up in a number of exhibitions, invariably attached to the wrong body, such as at Blackpool in the 1970's when it was paired with a Mark II suit and later with a Revenge version (images below from the Blackpool Remembered 7485 e-book - highly recommended):

• Helmets on their own could be seen at the MOMI exhibition on London's South Bank in the early nineties, as well as at the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff and in the current Worlds of Wonder touring exhibition:

• And a mixed costume Cyberman was photographed for the Radio Times in 1969, with a Mark III helmet on a Mark II body (and with a Mark IV chest unit). This even made it onto the Troughton variant cover for the magazine's coverage of the 50th Anniversary: