The Peter Davison story Earthshock was well titled, as it contained two very big surprises for those of us lucky enough to see it at the time, when we went into it knowing absolutely nothing about it.
For, once upon a time, there was no internet, and the tabloids were mainly concerned with spoiling only soap operas (which they still do, but are now also determined to spoil even arts and antiques shows).
The Davison TARDIS started off an overcrowded place, with three companions. Adric was already there from the middle of Season 18, and attempts to lure Lis Sladen and Louise Jameson back had failed, so new companion Tegan Jovanka was created - an Australian air hostess. (The BBC had informed JNT that they were attempting to arrange for some episodes to be filmed Down Under).
Despite the fact that two companions were already set up, JNT then decided that he liked the character of Nyssa and elected to retain her as a regular as well.
There simply wasn't enough plot to maintain the Doctor and three companions, plus story-specific guest characters like Bigon, Todd and Richard Mace, who acted pretty much as fourth companions.
Plots for Season 19 had been forced to remove companions from the narrative. Nyssa falls ill at the conclusion of Four to Doomsday and sits out Kinda. She is confined to the TARDIS in this story. And whilst Sarah Sutton got a double role in Black Orchid, Adric was entirely side-lined, stuffing his face on the patio.
Something - or someone - had to give.
JNT had considered getting rid of Nyssa, partly because she cost extra for every individual episode she appeared in - having been created by Johnny Byrne for a specific story and thus his property, rather than a creation of the production team as was the usual case with regular characters. Peter Davison argued strongly against this move, feeling she was the companion which was most compatible with his Doctor. He cared little for Tegan as he couldn't understand why she travelled in the TARDIS when she complained all the time. Either she would have left, or the Doctor would have gotten rid of her. Her continuation as a companion made no sense, dramatically.
The character of Adric had never worked out as planned. He was supposed to be an "Artful Dodger" type, but this was never developed beyond him stealing a component in Full Circle. The actor's inexperience had also rubbed some people up the wrong way, and writers clearly didn't know what to do with him. He was frequently portrayed as gullible, siding with people who were very obviously villains.
The decision was therefore made to exit Adric, and the opportunity was there to do something different with his departure - something shocking.
The Daleks' Masterplan had seen two companion figures leave the series by being killed off - Katarina and Sara Kingdom. No companion had been killed off since. In order to contrast Davison with his predecessor, his new Doctor was to be a more vulnerable character, someone who could fail.
What better way to demonstrate this by having him fail to save the life of one of his companions?
Davison was told of the plan quite early on, but Matthew Waterhouse only discovered it when he got a glimpse of Davison's script. He was upset to leave, despite being unhappy in the role himself for some time. He was most upset at being killed off, as he claimed it would mean he could never be brought back later.
As it was, he was back in the very next episode after his death, but only as a ghostly image and because it was necessary to have him feature in the credits of Radio Times to hide the fact he had left.
The other big shock in Earthshock was, of course, the cliff-hanger for the first instalment.
The Cybermen had not appeared in the programme since Revenge of the Cybermen early in Tom Baker's tenure - a seven year gap. That in turn had followed another seven year gap, when the Cybermen had skipped the Jon Pertwee era entirely, save for a couple of cameos. There had been a plan to have them feature in Frontier in Space, but they were replaced with the Ogrons.
JNT decided to make sure that both the return of the Cybermen and the death of Adric would not be spoiled by tabloids or by fanzines.
He turned down a Radio Times cover which would have heralded the return of the Cybermen, and also had visitors banned from the studio sessions and viewing gallery, as well as shutting down the public monitors. (All over Television Centre were TV screens which showed what was going on in the various studios).
Nowadays we are constantly spoiled - sometimes by the production team itself - but I was there, back in March 1982, blissfully ignorant as to what was in store.
Part One was broadcast four days after my 18th birthday, and I can remember vividly the moment that the camera switched from a close-up of the Doctor's face to the medium long shot of the Cybermen standing around their console, and there was a mighty metallic clang on the soundtrack. They had been redesigned, but the basic shape was still there, and you could see that they were Cybermen at a glance.
I literally jumped around the room.
You had to be there...
We had only just bought a VHS recorder, and I owned a single tape to keep stuff of my own on - mainly music items from The Old Grey Whistle Test. I wasn't recording Doctor Who to keep - simply because I couldn't afford the tapes - so I was overjoyed when the BBC broadcast the Did You See...? feature on the programme that weekend. This included that cliff-hanger, along with lots of archive clips, and I recorded that and played it to death for months ever after.
March 16th saw the final episode of the story, and we were in for a surprise of a different kind. It had been reported that Waterhouse was leaving, and this would be his final episode, but that was all. It slowly dawned on me what was planned. There was a definite moment part way through when you just knew that he was going to be killed. It just felt like it was going to happen.
You had to be there...
Whilst it's exciting to learn in advance about forthcoming events in the series, it's still better to be surprised. As much as we think we know a lot about a couple of the 60th Anniversary Specials, we know next to nothing about the middle one - and what we think we know about the others may not be 100% right.
You have to be there...
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