Synopsis:
Trapped in a cave with the Daleks closing in, the TARDIS crew see a panel in the rock wall open, with a large spherical robot beyond. It instructs them to enter...
They discover that this is a lift, and assume they are being taken up to the city which towers over the jungle. Attempts to communicate with the robot prove fruitless.
Only the robots are seen. There are no signs of human life, until they are taken to a large chamber and locked in. Here they discover a large wooden climbing frame, which Ian likens to something from the monkey house at the zoo. A robot observes them from behind a screen.
A young man clambers down the frame from a level above - overjoyed to see them.
He is Steven Taylor, a space pilot from Earth who crashed on this planet some two years ago. He has been held here as a captive of the robots - which he identifies as Mechonoids - ever since.
He reveals that they were sent here decades ago to prepare the planet for colonisation, but interplanetary wars intervened. The Mechonoids have simply continued to follow their programming, which included capturing specimens of local wildlife - which now includes them. They communicate in a machine language, and without the right code they cannot interact with them.
The wooden structure was built by Steven to allow him access to the roof for exercise and fresh air. Everyone ascends to see if there is a means of escape, but Steven explains that they are too high up to ever reach the ground safely from here.
The Daleks have searched the cave and have employed their seismic locator to find the hidden panel in the wall. They open this and ascend to the city.
In their cell, the Doctor and his companions see the Daleks arrive and challenge the Mechonoids to hand over their captives.
A length of cable was seen on the roof, and they must use this to climb down to the ground, despite the danger. The Doctor sets up his anti-Dalek weapon - an explosive charge which will detonate on contact.
One of the Daleks triggers it, starting a fire. The Dalek execution squad then battles the Mechonoids, further wrecking the city.
Vicki is scared of heights, and has to be lowered to the ground. Seeing the fire take hold, Steven rushes back down to the cell to retrieve his mascot - a stuffed panda toy he calls "Hi-Fi".
The Doctor and his companions reach the ground and hurry into the jungle as the city explodes - destroying the Daleks along with the Mechonoids.
After examining the Dalek time machine, Ian and Barbara realise that they could use it to get home. The Doctor refuses to help them at first, worried that they would be killed trying to operate it. Vicki convinces him to allow them to take that risk.
Nearby, Steven is wandering lost through the jungle, having managed to escape the burning city in time.
In the TARDIS, the Doctor and Vicki observe Ian and Barbara, back home in London, on the Time-Space Visualiser. The Dalek time machine has been set to self-destruct. They have arrived in 1965 - two years after they had left, a gap which they will somehow have to explain...
Knowing they have arrived safely, the Doctor and Vicki leave Mechanus.
Next episode: The Watcher
Written by: Terry Nation
Recorded: Friday, 4th June, 1965 - Riverside Studio 1
First broadcast: 5:40pm, Saturday 26th June, 1965
Ratings: 9.5 million / AI 57
Designers: Raymond P Cusick & John Wood
Director: Richard Martin
Additional cast: Peter Purves (Steven Taylor), Derek Ware (Bus Conductor)
Two of the most significant sections of this episode were amongst the first to be filmed for the story - the arrival home for Ian and Barbara, and the epic battle between the Daleks and the Mechonoids.
The latter took place over two days - 14th and 15th April, 1965 - at Ealing. The press were there on the first day to see the Daleks and the new monster. Verity Lambert was photographed lighting a cigarette from a Mechonoid flame-thrower.
Three Daleks and an equal number of Mechonoids were present. One of each had a visual effects-made damaged upper section which could be swapped for the intact one to show their destruction.
Richard Martin employed actors he had previously used for Daleks and Zarbi to operate the Mechonoid props.
On the same day, the model of the Mechonoid city was filmed. It had been designed by Cusick and built by Shawcraft Models. For its destruction, it was decided simply to overlay smoke and flames from stock footage (a volcanic eruption) and keep the model intact, as at this time it was thought that the robots might be called upon for a return engagement.
In Nation's original scripts, the Mechonoids had been created a thousand years ago by a race of humanoids, but had turned against their creators and destroyed them, setting up their own robot society. Their role as more recent agents of colonisation was added much later. Presumably it would have been difficult for anyone to have known their history if no-one could communicate with them.
Fandom likes to think that the wars mentioned by Steven involved the Daleks, but a scene which was filmed then deleted had him having to ask Barbara about the Daleks, as he had never heard of them before.
In the end, the model of the city was never used again, as the Mechonoids were destined never to return to the series.
The reason was that they were too big and bulky, barely manageable in the relative spaciousness of Ealing's sound stages, but impossible to use effectively in a cramped TV studio - though they succeeded in having two on site for this episode. William Hartnell was vocal in his dislike for them, as he had to be more careful with his floor marks due to their lack of mobility.
Their history didn't exactly lend itself to further narratives either. The Dalek comic strip version of the robots elected to use a scenario closer to Nations' original idea of a robotic race which had developed its own society.
A rumour persists, however, that Ray Cusick knew exactly what he was doing in designing them so large - revenge against Nation. Whilst the writer had made a fortune from the Daleks, Cusick had earned only a £100 bonus - and that grudgingly - from the BBC, due to him being one of their employees when he designed them. Following a TV appearance together (Late Night Line-Up), Nation had given Cusick cause to believe that he would see more of a financial benefit, which never came.
The rumour is, therefore, that Cusick sabotaged Nation's plans to make even more money from something which he had designed by ensuring they would never become a regular fixture on the show.
The departure of Ian and Barbara was mostly handled by director Douglas Camfield, who was preparing to make The Time Meddler. He filmed the scenes of the two teachers arriving back in London at a garage opposite an Underground Station (a shot of White City) at Ealing on Monday 10th May.
William Russell and Jacqueline Hill had taken to the streets of London on the previous Thursday to pose for photographs at a number of well-known locations, showing the teachers celebrating being back home. These included Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, the Embankment, Parliament Square, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, and Regents Street, where they are seen to catch the bus.
With recording over on their final episode, both actors took a month-long holiday. On their return to England, they entered rehearsals for a play together - Terence Rattigan's Separate Tables. It would open in Leeds on the 20th of July.
A planned cameo at the end of The Massacre, when the teachers were to come across the TARDIS as it dematerialises from Wimbledon Common, was cancelled. Hill returned to the series in 1981, but in a different role - that of High Priestess Lexa in Meglos. Russell turned down a chance to reprise Ian Chesterton for the 20th anniversary season, being too busy on stage to feature in Mawdryn Undead.
The Day of the Doctor identified Ian as Chair of the Board of Governors of Coal Hill School.
Russell finally returned to the show as Ian, after a record breaking gap of 57 years, in The Power of the Doctor.
After portraying tourist Morton Dill in Flight Through Eternity, Peter Purves is back just three weeks later as astronaut Steven Taylor, who is to become the new male companion now that Russell has bowed out. Purves had grown a beard in the interim, aware of how close his two performances were going to be.
The new companion was originally going to be named Roger Bruck, and this is what appears in Nation's original scripts. He was to be 35 years of age, and hail from 500 years in the future.
Unsure of how exactly the character was to be introduced to the TARDIS, and how Ian and Barbara were to leave it, Nation left the ending open once the Daleks had been defeated - simply leaving a note for Dennis Spooner to come up with this. Had the teachers not been leaving in this episode, Steven would have been given the Dalek time machine to get home.
Bruck was first renamed Michael Taylor - the name when the part was offered to Purves - then amended to Steven after the actor and story editor had met to flesh out the character.
The day after broadcast, a critic on The Observer newspaper claimed they had no wish to go to the cinema and see Peter Cushing and the Daleks, as he was perfectly happy with William Hartnell as the Doctor. At a BBC review meeting, Sydney Newman thought this episode one of the best to date, and most critics expressed their admiration for the Dalek-Mechonoid battle. People were sad to see the departure of Ian and Barbara, and some expressed their confusion as to what had happened to the supposed new companion at the end of the episode.
The "Decision" of the title relates to the departure of Ian and Barbara in narrative terms, but two key members of the production team had also decided to make this their last work for the series in their respective roles of director and story editor.
The Chase was to be Richard Martin's last directing job on Doctor Who. Despite their fiery relationship, Lambert saw in him someone who was willing to experiment and push the envelope - stretching to the limit what the programme could achieve, dramatically and practically. He had been handed the big, complicated stories to do. His vision and ambition tended to outmatch what was possible in the confines of the TV studio, with limited time and budget, but he could never be faulted for trying.
The Planet of Decision is also the final episode to feature as story editor Dennis Spooner. He would continue to contribute to the series as a freelance writer, but his friend Terry Nation had courted him to come and work with him on the glossy adventure series The Baron, filmed at Elstree. Nation had found himself writing the bulk of the episodes and urgently needed help.
Spooner's replacement, Donald Tosh, had been shadowing him for some time, and he would depart leaving Tosh with the next story nicely set up, with little work needed - The Time Meddler - so that he could ease himself into the role full-time. David Whitaker had done the same thing when handing over to Spooner with The Rescue.
Much is talked about story arcs these days - an import from US television of a format which gained popularity in the 1980's and '90's. The Chase actually brings to an end Doctor Who's first great story arc - that being the attempts by Ian and Barbara to get back home.
This is hugely significant, though the audience would not have been aware of it at the time. The efforts of the Doctor to get the teachers back to London had been threaded through most of the stories of the first two seasons to date, if only as a brief mention at the start of the opening episode of a story.
That mission had now been achieved - though it would be a Dalek time machine rather than the TARDIS which managed it. From this point on, the Doctor simply becomes a wanderer in Time and Space, origins unknown, which is how we will come to know him for the next four years - until the next big change of format in 1969.
A hint as to his origins would come sooner than that, however - in the very next story...
- The ratings slowly rise back to 9.5 million - still a half million less than the opening instalment. The AI figure does manage to match that of The Executioners. Summer weather will have had an impact on the viewing figures.
- Episode duration could vary considerably at this time. This is the longest instalment of this story - at 26' 29". This is almost three minutes longer than the shortest episode, The Death of Time.
- William Hartnell delivers one of his most famous fluffs, when he tells the teachers that they could be turned into "a couple of cinders, floating about in Spain - space".
- It has never been explained - narratively or in production terms - why the Doctor had the Dalek time machine (which is supposed to be fully functional) take the teachers to London in 1965, rather than 1963. A happy ending should surely have seen them getting home without having to explain a two year disappearance, presumably now homeless and unemployed.
- One of the Daleks is given a new attachment - a 'perceptor' arm. This appears to be a small dish-shaped unit in place of the usual plunger.
- Look carefully at the opening elevator scene and you'll see a rectangular slot in the wall behind the TARDIS crew. This was to allow a camera to take shots from an alternative lower angle.
- Another deleted scene - filmed but then cut for time - saw Vicki touch a Mechonoid and receive a mild electric shock from it.
- Below, the press call for the Mechonoids at Ealing on Wednesday 14th April, with Verity using one of the robots as a cigarette lighter:
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