Inspirations - The Keeper of Traken

The Keeper of Traken is the first story to be written by Johnny Byrne, and introduces the character of Nyssa. It also marks the return of the Master after four year gap. 
Producer John Nathan-Turner had been reluctant to include a story arc in his first season, but ended up with two back-to-back trilogies.
He was paving the way for the departure of Tom Baker as the Doctor and was worried. Baker had been in the role for 7 years (longer than Hartnell and Troughton combined, and 2 years more than Pertwee) and the producer was concerned that, to the public at large, Tom Baker was the Doctor, and the Doctor was Tom Baker. He was synonymous with the role. What chance would his new Doctor have in following him? JNT's first thought was to bring back an old companion to help bridge the regeneration - letting the public know that the new boy was still the Doctor they knew and loved. Elisabeth Sladen was approached about reprising Sarah Jane Smith. She declined, but the meeting did lead to a potential separate spin-off series for her. JNT next approached Louise Jameson with a view to her reprising Leela, but she too declined - something she has since said she regrets. Lalla Ward had already left the series, taking John Leeson / K9 with her, and so the only companion was the recently introduced Adric. JNT decided to create a new female companion to accompany him, once the idea of an old companion return had been dropped. More on her next time.

JNT had met Byrne whist working on All Creatures Great and Small, from whence his new Doctor was to come. Script editor Christopher H Bidmead had met Byrne, and pursued him for a story idea. Little did he know that Byrne had already been approached by JNT to be his first script editor. Byrne had turned the job down as he didn't want to move to London from Norfolk, where he had a young family. He lived in a house called "Keeper's Cottage", which might well have partially inspired the name for his story.
Byrne had some experience of TV science fiction, having been heavily involved with Space: 1999. He had previously associated with the Beatles and Pink Floyd during his hippie-poet days. He had already approached the Doctor Who production office with ideas, which had not met with favour from Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe.
Byrne's initial story line involved a society which was split between two factions - one religious and superstitious, and the other scientific and rational. The mystical lot were the Greys, and the scientists the Black. You'll see immediately that this would pose a problem for inclusion in Season 18 -as it's very much the background to Meglos, which Bidmead was already working on with its writers.
Any story with involvement from Bidmead would naturally have the scientists as the good guys, but ex-hippie Byrne was on the side of the mystical Greys. The villain of the piece was a character called Mogen - so even the name was a little too close to Meglos. Mogen would arrive in the middle of a well-ordered society and create discord and imbalance.
The main friendly character was a man named Hellas (as in the Greek for Greece), who had a daughter named Nyssa (the name taken from a town in Turkey).

For the inspiration for his idealised society, Byrne must have looked to Thomas Hobbe's Leviathan. This was written during the English Civil Wars of the mid-17th Century, when the world was "turned upside down". Hobbes argued that a nation could only be run smoothly if it was undivided, with a strong monarchical figure to oversee it, proposing a social contract between all classes. One phrase which appears in the book is "organising principle", and the Keeper of Traken uses this very phrase to describe himself and the bio-mechanical Source which he controls. The Keeper uses the power of the Source to maintain peace and harmony across Traken and its empire - even down to the weather.
Any evil influence which invades this realm is automatically petrified, eventually eroding to dust. In Byrne's first drafts, the invading malign creature was Mogen, who fails to be totally petrified and can move around like a living statue. In 1979 the BBC adapted the children's fantasy story of The Enchanted Castle (by Edith Nesbitt). This also involves people being turned into statues but who can move around. The story has a Narnia feel to it, as it is about a group of children finding themselves in a magical domain. Mat Irvine provided VFX for the series. Another well known story of statues coming to life is Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale. The BBC were in the middle of their TV adaptations of the complete works of Shakespeare at this time, and many see hints of these plays in The Keeper of Traken's visual style. The word "Elizabethan" often gets bandied about. This is certainly true of the costumes, but the set design is pure Art Nouveau. Just look at the metal tracery which surrounds the globe of the Source, or the decor of Tremas' apartments.
The Melkur - the renamed Mogen character - is based on another art style, that of the Futurists. The design is based on Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, a 1913 sculpture by Umberto Boccioni.

Byrne was asked by JNT and Bidmead to make some changes, as ideas for the regeneration were finalised. Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe had brought back the Master by having him appear in a decayed form, at the end of his own regenerations. This got round the problem of Roger Delgado's death, without having to cast a new incarnation. They also left the Master very much alive at the end of The Deadly Assassin, slightly regenerated after having absorbed some energy from the Eye of Harmony on Gallifrey. This was specifically so that a future producer / writer team could reintroduce the character, played by a new actor. JNT liked to employ people he had worked with on earlier productions - and one of these had been The Pallisers. Here he had met actor Anthony Ainley, and he was contracted to portray the new incarnation of the Master, in a set of stories which would bridge the Doctor's regeneration. The Master would be behind the Melkur, still in a decomposed form and out to steal the energies of the Source. At the conclusion, he would steal the body of Hellas, so Ainley would play this role as well under heavy make-up. JNT had a penchant for anagrams, as we will see, so Hellas became Tremas.
Appearing only briefly as the emaciated Master was Geoffrey Beevers, who had appeared in the series when his wife had been companion during Jon Pertwee's first season - Caroline John, as Liz Shaw. Beevers had appeared in an even briefer role as a UNIT soldier in The Ambassadors of Death. Peter Pratt's old costume from The Deadly Assassin had been found at a Doctor Who exhibition, where it had been on the point of being thrown away.

At this stage, the character of Nyssa had been written for just this one story, to act as a female companion alongside Adric. Companions were always created by the producer and script editor, then given to a particular writer to introduce in their storyline. The rights to the companion characters were always retained by the BBC. Late in the day JNT decided that he would like to retain Nyssa as an on-going companion, but she had been created solely by Byrne - so he was paid £50 every time she was used thereafter.
Byrne worked on drafts up to a certain point then took himself off on holiday, giving Bidmead permission to finalise the story as he and JNT saw fit. On his eventual return, Byrne claimed that he was happy with the changes they had made, which were mainly to tie the story in to the new story arc.
Next time: it's the end, but the moment has been prepared for...