Sunday 1 January 2023

Episode 52: The Powerful Enemy


Synopsis:
The TARDIS materialises in a cavern. Ian and Barbara are concerned that the Doctor appeared to sleep through the procedure.
The ship's arrival is noted on the control panel of a nearby spaceship, by a girl named Vicki. She runs and tells her companion, a man named Bennett. He tells her that the ship sent to rescue them won't be here on the planet Dido for another 72 hours, and the location on the panel suggests the mountains, where no spaceship could safely land. He instructs her to go and check. She radios the rescue ship and they confirm they are still three days away.
The Doctor tells Ian and Barbara that he recognises this planet. He has visited Dido before, and found its people to be friendly. 
The teachers decide to explore and follow a tunnel. This brings them out on a mountain ledge from where they can see a spaceship wreck, and the ruins of a settlement. They spot that the ship - the UK201 - has a Union Jack flag emblem and realise it comes from home. 
They are confronted by a savage-looking insectoid creature who demands to know who they are. It sends Ian into the tunnel to fetch the Doctor, and when he has gone it advances on Barbara. She stumbles and falls from the ledge. The creature then uses a jewelled club-like implement to cause a rockfall in the tunnel.
The Doctor rushes from the TARDIS and Ian informs him about their attacker. The Doctor is surprised  as he found the Dido people to be passionate about preserving life as there were so few of them. They start looking for an alternative way out of the cavern and follow another tunnel.
Vicki finds Barbara and helps move her to the spaceship. Koquillion visits and goes to see Bennett. Later, he emerges from his room to tell Vicki that Koquillion killed the strangers on the mountain. Vicki reveals the hidden Barbara. He does not seem happy about this, especially when they talk of overpowering Koquillion. He argues that they must do nothing to jeopardise their lives until the rescue ship arrives.
The Doctor and Ian follow a passage that leads to a narrow ledge over a deep ravine. They discover that some savage-looking creature is following them at the bottom of the ravine. They come upon a wall sculpture depicting the features of Koquillion. A metal ring on a cord is easily pulled out. It has been oiled, and they realise that it is part of a trap. A number of sharp blades begin to emerge from the sculpture, trapping Ian and moving inexorably towards him - threatening to force him off the ledge and plunge into the ravine where the creature is waiting...
Next episode: Desperate Measures

Data:
Written by: David Whitaker
Recorded: Friday, 4th December 1964 - Riverside Studio 1
First broadcast: 5:40pm, Saturday 2nd January 1965
Ratings: 12 million / AI 57
Designer: Raymond P Cusick
Director; Christopher Barry
Guest cast: Ray Barrett (Bennett), Sydney Wilson (Koquillion), Tom Sheridan (Voice of rescue ship captain / Sandbeast).


Critique:
This was the first episode of the programme's second recording block, both Planet of Giants and The Dalek Invasion of Earth having been held over to open the second season as broadcast.
With the future of the series more secure, and the programme's production moved to Riverside Studios (much better than Lime Grove though the catering facilities were so bad that the cast started bringing in their own. Hartnell brought in Fortnum and Mason hampers), the decision had been made to wait and introduce the new companion in a short two-part story dedicated to her launch.
Two actors were under consideration - both hailing from Liverpool Thanks to the Beatles and the Mersey Sound, Liverpool was the trendy British location. Not that Maureen O'Brien or Denise Upson would be expected to use their native Scouse accents. The BBC was still all about Received Pronunciation at this time - "BBC English".
Of the two candidates, O'Brien won the role. She had just helped set up the Everyman Theatre in her home city. Her partner was working in London, so a job with the BBC would mean she could see more of him, and her agent simply thought TV exposure would be a good thing.
She would quickly realise this to be a mistake. Mellowed now, O'Brien was famous for her negative attitude towards the series for many years, refusing to engage with fandom.

Her uncompromising nature made itself felt right from the start. When Sydney Newman suggested she get a shorter hairstyle, dyed a dark brown, she told him she would change her appearance on leaving the show - not on arriving - and if he wanted a dark haired girl why not just get Carole Ann Ford back?
Ford visited to wish her replacement well on Monday 30th November, the first day of rehearsals - a visit which also helped settle Hartnell, who did not like change. Little did he know that the end of this second season would usher in a period of almost continual change, both behind the scenes and in front of the camera, until he left the series.
Luckily, Hartnell found in O'Brien a keen ally, who would be as passionate as he was about the scripts and who would back his arguments. She also found that she could help him keep his anger and frustration in check. His, as yet undiagnosed, arteriosclerosis was beginning to affect his memory.

The name they finally settled on for the new companion was Vicki. For a long time it had been Tanni, and scripts can be seen called "Doctor Who And Tanni". Before either of these, Milli and Lukki (pronounced "lucky") were considered. Millie was inspired by the My Boy Lollipop singer. Clearly a short and snappy two syllable name was the preferred option.

When I wrote the "Inspirations" post on An Unearthly Child, I pointed out the resemblance of the Doctor and Susan, hiding out on Earth, to the magician Prospero and his daughter Miranda on their island, from Shakespeare's The Tempest. The similarity with the Bard's late play is much more of a fit here. Vicki is Miranda, stranded on her desert island (Dido), with Koquillion taking the place of the monstrous Caliban. Bennett is a magician only in that he can appear to be in two places at once, in two different forms.
To conceal the fact that Bennett is masquerading as Koquillion, the alien was credited as "Sydney Wilson" in Radio Times. Of course, no such actor exists. The name was made up from Sydney Newman and Donald Wilson, the series' creators.

To ease the changeover of story editors, Spooner was commissioned by Whitaker to write The Romans, whilst he wrote The Rescue. This way Spooner could concentrate on his story, and basically edit himself, and Whitaker could do the same with his two-parter. As it was generally taboo for story editors to write for their own shows, neither of these two stories has a story editor credited.
Partly due to these arrangements, it was decided that The Rescue should be made back to back with The Romans, being treated as a six part adventure with two settings, introducing Vicki to the series in a futuristic story and in an historical adventure. 
As it was Spooner found Whitaker's scripts overlong and lacking in humour. He added the charming TARDIS scene with the Doctor sleeping through the landing. The episode ended up just over 26 minutes long, even after Spooner's cuts. In studio, the production had overran by 15 minutes. In-lay shots had to be carefully lined up, and Barrett had to make a number of costume changes between playing Bennett and Koquillion.

Christopher Barry, who had last worked on the first Dalek story, was appointed director, and Ray Cusick designed both stories. For this first section, he made sure to provide Shawcraft Models with a detailed drawing of how he wanted the crashed spaceship to look - providing an image of it broken as well as one of it intact. As set dressing , he reused a number of control panels seen previously in The Sensorites, as well as the corrugated wall material. Most of the set dressing was provided by a company called Trading Post, run by Bill King, which also furnished the film industry.

One further change behind the scenes was the role of Associate Producer. Mervyn Pinfield had held this post since the beginning, mainly to help with technical aspects of the series and to potentially help the inexperienced Verity Lambert settle into her role. However, she had hit the ground running and he wasn't really needed in that capacity. He would continue to be credited on screen for a while longer, but Pinfield basically stepped down from the role with this episode.

Trivia:
  • The model spaceship filming took place on Friday 16th November, 1964, at Ealing Film Studios.
  • Barry's first choice to play Bennett was Bernard Archard. He would later employ him as Bragen in The Power of the Daleks, and he would also appear as Marcus Scarman in Pyramids of Mars.
  • Ray Barrett was a regular voice artist on Gerry Anderson serials. The voice he uses for Koquillion was one he already used on Stingray.
  • Lying in bed for parts of the episode, Barrett fell asleep at one point and the crew turned out the lights then pretended he had slept in studio all night.
  • In the draft script, Koquillion's weapon was actually capable of hypnotising people. He used it on Barbara and Ian to compel them to lure the Doctor out of the TARDIS, but he was suspicious of the way they spoke.
  • The TARDIS materialisation was achieved this time by simply mixing between two still photographs of the set - one without the ship and one with, with the lamp cut out and a bulb flashing behind.
  • As the rescue ship captain is only ever heard, not seen, Tom Sheridan was able to also portray the Sandbeast in this episode.
  • Future director David Maloney acts as Production Assistant on this block of episodes.
  • Radio Times, as was now customary, featured the opening episode of the new story with a photo-feature - this one introducing O'Brien as Vicki.

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