Sunday 9 January 2022

On This Day... 9th January


In 1965, The Rescue delivered its second - and final - episode, titled Desperate Measures. Bennett was revealed to be Koquillion in disguise, covering up a series of murders. With him dead, Vicki was invited to join the TARDIS crew, becoming the first new companion since the series began.
The only other instalment to make its debut today was another Part Two - that of Terror of the Autons. This was in 1971. This was a somewhat controversial episode. It featured a troll doll which came to life and strangled someone, and a plastic chair which smothered another. To round things off, a police officer's face was pulled off to reveal a featureless Auton beneath.
There were complaints about children being scared to take their teddy bears to bed at night, for fear they came to life and throttled them, whilst the police complained that the cliff-hanger might prevent children from approaching a policeman for help.
A few years later, Robert Holmes was being interviewed by Barry Letts' boss for the post of Script Editor on Doctor Who. He was told that some idiot had once written a story about policemen's faces falling off, and this sort of thing was to be avoided. Holmes kept quiet that he had been the culprit...

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