What's Wrong With... The Macra Terror

One of the biggest issues with The Macra Terror is that no-one can quite agree on what the Macra actually are. This is a problem caused by the script development process. Ian Stuart Black's original story idea was for something called "Dr Who and the Spidermen", then "Dr Who and the Insect-Men".

Let's get it out of the way now - spiders are not insects. They belong to the arachnid family, but a lot of people lump spiders and insects together - especially children. Anything with more than four legs is a "creepy-crawly".

Gerry Davis, the story editor at the time, had looked back through stories already produced and noticed that spiders hadn't featured before. One was to have appeared in the very first story, back when it was hoped that a tale about the TARDIS travellers being shrunk to miniscule size would have opened the series. It was decided then that the effects wouldn't be manageable, and the inclusion of a "giant" spider would go against Sydney Newman's "No Bug Eyed Monsters" dictat.

Huge insects would have to wait until the miniscules idea was finally attempted with Planet of Giants which opened the second season, although in this all the insects tended to be dead or, like the giant fly, die before they can actually threaten the TARDIS crew. And there aren't any spiders.

The closest we did get to a spider was the Animus in Season 2's The Web Planet. Here there are alien creatures which look like Earthly insect life - woodlice, ants and butterflies. The Animus is described as being spider-like, but the realisation on screen is more of a multi-tentacled creature than a spider.

Black's story title changed again to "Dr Who and the Macras". The inspiration for this came from a visit to the Natural History Museum by the designer Kenneth Sharp, where he saw a tiny crab species called Macrocheira Kaempferi, named after its discoverer and the fact that that it looks like a human hand.

Sharp's design went off to Shawcraft Models to be constructed, and it turned out to be a huge crab. It was a massive prop, the size (and cost) of a small car. Whilst the script called for a number of these creatures, only one prop was built, so only one could ever been seen at a time. It was extremely difficult to move around and position in studio.

Whilst the Macra became crabs, the script did not keep up with design developments. One line of dialogue, for instance, is "The colony is in the hands of grotesque insects!". The Macra are also referred to as being like "germs" and "bacteria".

The other big problem with The Macra Terror is the Doctor's actions here. He appears to be gleefully committing genocide. They are intelligent creatures - being able to take over at least one person's mind initially to set up the hypnotic devices which then influence all the other colonists and visitors. They use the humans to mine the gas they need to survive, operating complex machinery themselves. What is not at all clear from the script is where the Macra come from. Have they arrived after the colony was founded and taken over, or - as is more likely - are they the indigenous lifeform? If the latter, were they forced underground by the colonists and are simply trying to fight back, or make the most of the bad situation they find themselves in? They manipulate the humans, but there is no indication that they harm them in any other way - like prey on them for food. If they don't exist elsewhere on this planet, or in colonies of their own off-world, then the Doctor is engaging in an act of genocide when he helps destroy them. In the next story he'll simply let the villains get away with a slap on the wrist, but then they are humanoid. The implication here is that it's okay to kill the Macra because they are monstrous and non-humanoid in appearance - despite the programme already having broadcast stories about never judging by appearances.

[We'll later discover that the Macra do survive into the far future (Gridlock), but that wasn't known when this was transmitted].

The Macra depend on the gas to survive, and it's seemingly only available in underground areas. Fresh air stuns them - so how come they can wander about in the open on the surface at night? The atmosphere doesn't change when the sun goes down, as the Doctor, Medok, Ola and his guards all move around at night without any difficulty.

And how did the Macra get by before the humans arrived to mine the gas for them?

Only one photograph exists of the Macra - apart from screen grabs from the few brief clips that survive (where they are hard to make out). The producer wanted them to be used in advance publicity - and hoped for some pictures of the prop alongside some young ladies from the cast who were appearing as colonists (the dancers and majorettes). Davis, on the other hand, favoured holding them back for the end of Episode 1 big reveal, which is why we got a couple of pictures of the Pilot and Ola instead, or a couple more of the Controller being menaced by a big claw. 

A claw was needed early, as it had to feature in the cliffhanger at the end of the previous story. At this stage in the series' production, episodes were being made only a week before they were to be broadcast.

The claw menacing the Controller brings us to a dodgy plot point. The Macra go out of their way to convince the colonists that they don't exist, and yet they are happy to have the Controller go on a big TV screen and be menaced by one of their number. The colony has also been led to believe that their Controller is the smartly dressed individual who appears reassuringly in photos around the place, and yet they allow him to be seen as a haggard and frail old man, who is clearly not the person whose voice they continually hear.

The claw on the full size prop has a longer top pincer than the bottom, yet the one that menaces the Controller has pincers of equal length.

Lastly, the character of Chicki changes appearance between Episode 1 and Episode 4. (The actress who plays her in the first episode - Sandra Bryant - asked to be let go as she had another job, and the part was recast with Karol Keyes for Episode 4).