Episode 46: World's End

 

Synopsis:

A man dressed in ragged clothing, with a futuristic helmet clamped to his head, stumbles into a river to deliberately drown himself...

The TARDIS materialises at the location, which sits beneath a bridge. The travellers emerge and the teachers are delighted to see that they appear to be back in London.

The Doctor is concerned about the derelict condition of the bridge and the rusting machinery round about. He points out to Ian that they have not seen or heard anyone. Even on a Sunday morning there should be some noise on the river - even if it is just the chimes of Big Ben.

Susan climbs up a steep slope to have a look around but slips and tumbles to the ground - spraining her ankle. Her fall also dislodges some building materials which in turn strike the bridge - causing a huge metal girder to fall and block the TARDIS doors.

The Doctor and Ian find it impossible to move, so they decide to head into a nearby warehouse in search of tools. Barbara bathes Susan's ankle and spots the body of the ragged man floating in the river.

When she returns to where she left Susan she is shocked to find the girl gone.

A man appears and beckons her to follow him.

Inside the warehouse the Doctor finds a calendar for the year 2164. They investigate a noise from upstairs and find a dead body, only recently killed. This is another of the men with the futuristic helmets. He was armed with a whip. The Doctor deduces that the helmet acts as an electronic receiver. They are unaware that they are being watched by a young man.

On hearing gunfire they head back to the river bank. On the way, they witness the passage overhead of a huge flying saucer.

Barbara has been led through the derelict surroundings to an Underground station entrance. Here she finds Susan in the arms of a man named Tyler. He is joined by an older man in a wheelchair - a scientist named Dortmun. A secret panel opens and the young man from the warehouse appears. He is David Campbell. He mentions seeing the Doctor and Ian but did not know if he could trust them. Barbara urges him to go and find them.

Ian is annoyed to find the women gone. Looking around, he discovers a poster behind the TARDIS, which forbids the dumping of bodies in the river - suggestive of plague.

As David watches from a warehouse window he sees the Doctor and Ian surrounded by a number of the figures with the strange helmets. When they try to communicate with them the men simply raise their whips. They find that all of their escape routes are cut off - apart from the Thames. They will have to dive in and swim to safety.

As they turn towards the river, they are shocked to see the sinisterly familiar shape of a Dalek rising from the polluted waters...

Next episode: The Daleks

Data:

Written by: Terry Nation

Recorded: Friday 18th September 1964 - Riverside Studio 1

First broadcast: 5:40pm, Saturday 21st November 1964

Ratings: 11.4 million / AI 63

Designer: Spencer Chapman

Director: Richard Martin

Guest Cast: Bernard Kay (Tyler), Peter Fraser (David Campbell), Alan Judd (Dortmun)

Critique:

Terry Nation had written The Daleks (AKA "The Mutants") as a 'hack job' - six episodes of adventure for kids whilst he looked for more satisfying work. He had only taken it on after being sacked by Tony Hancock and so was in urgent need of the money.

He was later asked to extend it to seven weeks, padding out the expedition to the city, but once submitted he claims to have forgotten all about it. He only realised it had been broadcast - according to him - when friends started phoning him up at the end of the first episode to ask what the plunger thing was. By the time he realised what a winner he had on his hands, he was regretting having wiped the Daleks out. 

A sequel was requested, and fortunately he remembered that Doctor Who was a series about a time traveller. He could simply show the Daleks at a time before they were destroyed on Skaro.

There wasn't much scope for a new story back on their home planet, so instead of us going to them, they would come to us. The series hadn't done an invasion of Earth story - despite these being prominent in science fiction films and novels. For every Forbidden Planet, there were ten Earth v. the Flying Saucers.

This becomes the first ever alien invasion of Earth story in Doctor Who.

With the reappearance of the Daleks, it also becomes the first ever sequel - though strictly speaking it is only the first instance of a recurring villain, as the story has nothing to do with the events of The Daleks beyond their inclusion.

Another first would be seen at the conclusion of the story - the first departure of a regular cast member.

In writing his new story, Nation had to take into account some significant changes which were planned, both in front of the cameras and behind the scenes.

Carole Ann Ford had already signalled her desire to leave the series during the making of the French Revolution story. Her agent had actually attempted to get her out of the series before her contract was up for renewal. (Her agent was her husband). 

In order to cover budgeted costs per episode, should Williams Hartnell and Russell both demand significant pay rises, a plan was in place to have Jacqueline Hill leave the series as well. A single female companion would replace the two originals - preferably a more junior actress who would not command a high fee. As it was, the pay rises agreed for the two male stars were not too high, and so the character of Barbara was saved.

The production team had a great many discussions as to who would replace Ford, as it was felt a young companion was essential for target audience identification.

Favourite to replace Susan was a young Anglo-Indian orphan named Saida. An actress was even earmarked for the role - Pamela Franklin. She had been acting from an early age - one performance of note being Flora in The Innocents (1961).

It was planned that she would feature throughout the story but disappear towards the end - only to turn up as a stowaway in the TARDIS after it had dematerialised.

Eventually the decision was made to wait until the following story to introduce the new companion, and so the character of Jenny was created to fulfil Saida's role in the earlier drafts.

Behind the scenes, David Whitaker was stepping down as Story Editor, to be replaced by Dennis Spooner. As the pair would be writing the next two stories, this is the last story to feature a Story Editor credit for six weeks.

To direct the story, someone with experience of handling the Daleks was chosen. It had been planned that Richard Martin would become one of the main directors on the series, and he had been trialled on The Daleks and on The Edge of Destruction. Verity Lambert liked his imagination and enthusiasm, though Sydney Newman had doubted some of his more far-out ideas when he had been involved in helping to set up the series (such as the TARDIS being a frame of mind rather than a physical space, and you had to believe in it in order to enter, otherwise you just stepped into an empty police box. This prompted Newman to scribble "Nuts!" next to his notes about this).

From this episode onwards the programme found a new home - one which would be its main base for the remainder of the Hartnell era. This was Riverside, which comprised two studios. (Studio 3 was a nickname for the local pub). Donald Baverstock, head of BBC1, was still proving non-committal regarding the series' long-term future. Newman decided to force the issue by threatening to cancel the programme rather than see it being poorly served at Lime Grove. 

The studios at Riverside were actually smaller than those at Lime Grove, but the facilities were much better.

As well as a new base of operations, this story contained a significant increase in location filming, thanks to the London setting. The city appears to have altered very little from 1964, despite being set two centuries in the future. We see a modern power plant attached to the side of Battersea Power Station, and later episodes will mention bases on the Moon, an Astronaut Fair and moving pavements - but had we not been told any of this we might have just assumed events to be taking place in the present day.

The Doctor and Ian find a calendar in the abandoned warehouse, which has a date of 2164 printed on it.

Nation originally intended the story to be set in 2042 - tying it in with an anniversary of the WWII Blitz. He envisaged the invasion having begun in the 1970's, which is why the city would not have looked so different.

There is some dispute about the dating of this story, not helped by the on-screen calendar. It will later be said that the invasion began with a plague some 10 years before events depicted here, and it is unlikely people would be producing calendars following an invasion and during an alien occupation. The warehouse has been abandoned, so the year must be around 2174. In a later story, the invasion will have been said to begin in 2157, and in another story these events take place in 2000 AD (which is what the Daily Mail also said at the time).

In studio, no Daleks props had been required - their only appearance this week being on film. The Robomen actors went uncredited. Originally, they were to have appeared dressed all in black, with only small metal discs attached to their foreheads to indicate Dalek mind control.

The collapsing bridge section took a lot of time to rehearse and had only been performed once during the afternoon. When it came time to record the effect in the evening a number of reshoots were required.

The Dalek saucer was not pre-filmed. A model was suspended in front of photographic blow-ups and recorded in studio on the night - and unfortunately it shows.

In the run-up to broadcast there was a huge publicity drive. As well as a trailer and a Radio Times cover, a couple of Daleks were taken to the Planetarium and Madame Tussauds in London. Lambert, Nation and Ray Cusick were in attendance, photographed posing with the Daleks. Daleks were also pictured in the street outside

It wasn't apparent in the broadcast episode that the Daleks had undergone a slight modification, as the base and rear of the casing aren't visible. Viewers were therefore unaware of the new energy-drawing disc and the bigger fender.

Publicity was also aided by the publication the week before of David Whitaker's novelisation of the first Dalek story - Doctor Who in an exciting adventure with the Daleks.

Viewers, especially the younger ones, were extremely disappointed with the episode, as they only got to see a Dalek in the closing moments.

The episode title is a play on the fact that there is a district of Chelsea known as 'World's End', after a famous pub which is located near there (at 459 King's Road), whilst also hinting at the fate which has befallen the city.

Trivia:

• A draft title for the story overall was "The Invaders". Other titles considered were "The Daleks" and "Return of the Daleks".
• At one point it was planned that Terry Nation would become the series' lead writer on futuristic stories - being given three stories per season to himself.
• To set the scene of a ruined, abandoned London, Nation suggested using clips from Seven Days To Noon - a 1950 movie about a scientist who threatens to blow up London with a nuclear device if the government doesn't disarm.
• David originally had the surname Sonheim, and later Archer.
• From this episode, the series moved to a later start time of 5:40pm, immediately following Juke Box Jury.
• Location filming for this instalment took place around West London on Tuesday 25th and Thursday 27th August. The bridge which the TARDIS lands under is Hammersmith Bridge. A taxi was on stand-by to take cast or crew to the nearby Charing Cross Hospital, should anyone become ill from the polluted Thames waters. 
• Inside the Dalek was operator Robert Jewell, wearing a wetsuit. He had difficulty manoeuvring the casing up out of the river, and so a cable had to be attached to pull it up towards the bank.
• Some scenes were also filmed further east on the Tuesday, featuring the warehouses of St Katherine's Dock. Barbara's pursuit of the resistance fighter (an uncredited Robert Aldous) takes place around the disused Wood Lane Underground Station, close to Television Centre. It had been built for the 1908 London Olympics and Franco-English Exhibition and had been closed since 1959.
• It's actually impossible to view Battersea Power Station at that angle from Hammersmith Bridge. It must have been photographed from the Pimlico district.
• The return of the Daleks had generated so much excitement that the viewing figures leapt to more than 11 million, with a high appreciation figure of 63.
• In the run-up to broadcast, the story was previewed in Ariel - the BBC's in-house staff magazine - with an image from the filming on Westminster Bridge.

• The BBC ran a trailer for the story which featured scenes from the third instalment where the Daleks are seen visiting a number of London landmarks.
• The actor we see playing the Roboman who walks into the Thames in the opening scene is Kenton Moore who would later play Noah in The Ark in Space. When we see his body face down in the river it is actor / stuntman / fight arranger Peter Diamond.
• The TARDIS landing site was recreated for the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff (below). This had also been seen in the 50th Anniversary drama An Adventure In Space And Time.

• The return of the Daleks was a big enough event for the serial to win another Radio Times cover. Inside was an article which mentioned some of the planned merchandise, due that Christmas, accompanied by the same image as used by Ariel - other than having another Dalek crudely superimposed at the bottom.