Episode 82: Four Hundred Dawns

SEASON 3

• Producer: Verity Lambert (Galaxy 4, Mission to the Unknown), John Wiles (The Myth Makers - The Massacre), Innes Lloyd (The Ark - The War Machines).
• Story Editor: Donald Tosh (Galaxy 4 - The Massacre), Gerry Davis (The Ark - The War Machines)
• Regular Cast: William Hartnell (The Doctor), Maureen O'Brien (Vicki: Galaxy Four, The Myth Makers), Peter Purves (Steven Taylor: Galaxy 4 - The Savages), Adrienne Hill (Katarina: The Myth Makers, The Daleks' Master Plan), Jean Marsh (Sara Kingdom: The Daleks' Master Plan), Jackie Lane (Dodo Chaplet: The Massacre - The War Machines), Anneke Wills (Polly: The War Machines), Michael Craze (Ben Jackson: The War Machines).

NB: This episode no longer exists in the archives, nor is there a full set of telesnaps. Representative images are therefore used to illustrate it.

Synopsis:

The TARDIS materialises on a seemingly dead planet. No sound can be heard, and there is no sign of any animal life. There is some form of activity on this planet, however, as they see a squat domed robot approach the ship. It bumps against the side and they hear it move around the walls. After a complete circuit it wanders away. Because of its wobbling, rolling movement, Vicki nicknames it a "Chumbley".

Once it has gone, the Doctor, Vicki and Steven venture out to explore. Vicki is reminded of the planet Xeros, and Steven is disappointed not to find any water for a swim. There are three suns in the sky.

They encounter another Chumbley, which extends a flame-throwing weapon and burns a bush by way of a threat. It means for them to follow it. They discover that the robot is blind.

As they move across the barren surface of the planet their escort is ambushed by a trio of uniformed female soldiers, who throw a metal mesh over the Chumbley. This appears to disable it. The soldiers quickly usher them away. The trapped Chumbley magnetises the mesh, preventing the soldiers from retrieving it. A second Chumbley pulls it away and then the robots begin to pursue them.

The soldiers guide them to a nearby spaceship. The Chumblies pause outside, unwilling or unable to enter.

Inside the ship the TARDIS crew meet Maaga, leader of this Drahvin expedition. She explains that her soldiers, who all resemble each other in build and complexion, are really clones. They are of low intellect, bred for fighting. She, however, is a real Drahvin. Her people, who hail from the planet Drahva in Galaxy 4, are an all female race. A few males are used for breeding purposes, the rest killed as they consume scarce resources. Maaga's mission to this region of space is to find new worlds for the Drahvins to colonise. They encountered an unknown alien vessel in space above this planet. After a lengthy stand-off, they attacked each other - causing both ships to crash-land.

The Chumblies belong to the other spaceship's crew - a race called the Rills who are hideously ugly and bloodthirsty creatures. One of the robots approaches and starts sending a signal, but Maaga refuses to listen to it - claiming it is broadcasting lies from the Rills about helping them. The Doctor tries to point out that this may be the truth, but Maaga refuses to countenance this.

Both crews know that this planet is dying, its destruction imminent. The Rills have claimed that this event will take place in 14 dawns time. The Doctor tells Maaga that he has instruments in the TARDIS which can confirm this. He and Steven are permitted to go back to the ship, but Vicki will remain with the Drahvins to ensure their return.

Chumblies are once again probing the TARDIS, seeking a way in.

The Doctor and Steven wait until they move off then enter the ship. After studying his instruments, including the Astral Map, the Doctor announces that this planet has less time remaining than they thought. It has only two more dawns before it is destroyed...

Next episode: Trap of Steel

Data:

Written by: William Emms

Recorded: Friday 9th July, 1965 - Television Centre Studio TC4

First broadcast: 5:40pm, Saturday 11th September 1965

Ratings: 9 million / AI 56

Designer: Richard Hunt

Director: Derek Martinus / Mervyn Pinfield (Ealing filming only)

Additional cast: Stephanie Bidmead (Maaga), Marina Martin (Drahvin One), Susanna Carroll (Drahvin Two), Lyn Ashley (Drahvin Three), Jimmy Kaye, William Shearer, Angela Muscat (Chumblies)

Critique:

This is the first episode of the story which we know as Galaxy 4 and it opens the series' third season.

The story was recorded immediately after The Time Meddler, at the end of the second season recording period, but was held back so that the production team had a story in hand. A fifth instalment was added to the production - a single episode adventure to be recorded after the regulars had begun their summer holiday break, so they could not feature. This owed its existence to the production office being owed an episode following the editing of Planet of Giants down to three parts. More on this later.

Writer John William Emms was born in Newport, South Wales, in 1930. After a stint in the Navy he became a teacher of English and Drama. For a time he was based at Trent Park Training College - later the location for Brendon School in Mawdryn Undead.

After providing scripts for a number of popular TV shows, he was working on the Sci-Fi series R3. Having an interest in this genre, he submitted an unsolicited script to the Doctor Who office whilst Dennis Spooner was story editor. He is the first declared fan of the series to have a story accepted for production.

His basic premise was a conflict between two races - one of which was beautiful and the other ugly. The twist would be that the ugly people were the good ones, and the lovely ones evil - a "don't judge by appearances" scenario. Hardly original, but it hadn't been used in the series so far, though we had seen apparently monstrous creatures turn out to be friendly (Sensorites, Menoptra).

The Drahvins - originally called 'Dravians' - were going to be male humanoids, but Verity Lambert suggested a further twist would be to make them beautiful women. This led to the aliens being jointly owned by Emms and the BBC.

Tosh took over as script editor and he was responsible for helping reshape the story for just two companions, as it was to be made after Ian and Barbara had left the series, to be replaced by a single male character. 

In the end, Steven was given a lot of what would would have gone to Barbara, causing Steven to behave in a manner inconsistent with the way he had been played up to now - much to Peter Purves' annoyance.

Purves was already upset at the departure of Spooner who had created his character and wrote well for him.

The director chosen for Galaxy 4 was Mervyn Pinfield, who had been the series' associate producer for its first year. Pinfield, known for more technically challenging productions, set the story up and was involved in the initial Ealing filming work when he was taken ill. He had a serious heart condition, which was to kill him one year later (20th October 1966). 

The Ealing studio work was his final contribution to a series which he had helped shape.

Lambert brought in a new young director named Derek Martinus to replace him. He would go on to direct a number of highly regarded stories over the next five years, but he got off to an inauspicious start. Interviewed by the producer after viewing some old episodes, he claimed that the series ought to "aim higher" - implying that he didn't think it very good up 'til now. He and Pinfield overlapped briefly at Ealing.

We have a new designer on this serial - Richard Hunt. The script called for a ground surface similar to cracked asphalt, and Hunt adds unusual trees which resemble skeleton parts.

The Drahvin ship was a linked set - exterior and part of the interior. Martinus made use of its windows to get some interesting shots of characters looking out from within. The ship was only ever seen as a studio set, so no model of it was required.

There has been much debate about the story title. The Drahvins claim to come from a planet which lies in Galaxy 4, and dialogue suggests that this is somewhere else. However, Emms' script for Four Hundred Dawns quite clearly states that the doomed planet is in Galaxy 4, so it is the setting for the story, not just where the villains hail from.

Not for the first time, Vicki gives a creature she finds cute a funny name (after "Zombo" the Zarbi in The Web Planet). The Chumblies are known only by this name she gives them - the Rills themselves don't have any title for their servo-robots.

The writer uses odd words to describe their movement and sound - things like "chuntering", "chittering", "jinking", "chungling" and "chuttering".

Emms got the robots' name from conflating the words "chum" and "friendly".

Strictly speaking, the plural of Chumbley ought to be 'Chumbleys' (as in monkeys, donkeys etc).

To play the robots, which comprised overlapping domes, actors of small stature were chosen, members of a specialist agency called Lester's Midgets. Angelo Muscat is best known for playing the diminutive butler to No.2 in The Prisoner.

He was operating the only Chumbley in studio for this episode, as most of the robot scenes had been filmed at Ealing.

At the film studios, Martinus was planning some long tracking shots, making full use of the studio space to indicate the bleak landscape. However, he found the crew setting up for a lot of close-ups on William Hartnell. He quickly learned how to get on the right side of the star who usually gave inexperienced cast and crew a hard time. He patiently listened to Hartnell's suggestions for camera placements and shots. Martinus would go on to become one of Hartnell's favoured directors.

A press call was held at Ealing on 24th June and lots of photos were taken of the Drahvins with the Chumblies. Unfortunately, the press then gave away the reveal that the Drahvins were villains months before the episodes were broadcast.

In rehearsals, Purves expressed his unhappiness with the scripts, for the reasons mentioned above, but both Hartnell and O'Brien also complained. New producer John Wiles noted O'Brien's comments and assumed she was keen to leave. At one point he threatened to sack Hartnell if he didn't follow the script, scuppering any chance of a reconciliation between the two men. The star came to rely more and more on Purves, and the two would dine together on a regular basis - Purves inviting Hartnell to his home or the star inviting Purves to his favourite Italian restaurant.

This episode no longer exists in its entirety in the archives - but thanks to Jan Vincent-Rudzki we have around six minutes of footage to enjoy - a lengthy sequence of the Doctor and companions meeting Maaga in the Drahvin spaceship, learning something of their culture and of the circumstances which brought them to this doomed planet. We also see a Chumbley, which comes under attack by the Drahvins when it approaches their spaceship. A small piece of this footage had been selected for incorporation in the 1977 documentary The Lively Arts: Whose Doctor Who. The DWAS, of which Vincent-Rudzki was president at the time, were acting as consultants to the project, and he asked to keep the full clip after they had finished with it - assuming that the complete original episode was still in the archives.

A very brief 8mm off-screen clip also exists of the Doctor and companions in the TARDIS from the beginning of the episode.

Trivia:

• Season 3 gets off to a flying start with 9 million viewers tuning in, and an appreciation figure of well over 50.
• The story is also known as "Galaxy Four", but I am using the version of the title used on the DVD release, which is also what original BBC paperwork called it.
• The overall working title was "The Chumblies".
• The filming at Ealing of scenes on the planet surface took place between Tuesday 22nd - Friday 24th June.
• Query: if this planet has three suns, how do the Drahvins calculate a "dawn" - their measurement of time?
• Maaga was originally going to be named Gar when still a male character.
• The Doctor describes the TARDIS as having a "force barrier", which had earlier protected it from Dalek firepower in The Chase, and prevented the Zarbi from entering.
• An odd occurrence is the time travellers hearing the Chumbley move around the console room as it explores the Police Box exterior. Obviously it would only take a few seconds to go round the outside, but within the Doctor and his companions hear it moving for a lot longer.
• The Chumbley props were coral pink in colour. They, and the Drahvin guns, were built by Shawcraft Modellers of Uxbridge.
• The Drahvin uniforms were green - with Maaga's a darker shade. They had blue sequins placed on their eyebrows and were given blonde beehive hairdos.
• The sound of the Drahvin ship doors is a reuse of that for Dalek doors (also heard in The Sensorites). The music is also recycled - elements of Les Structures Sonores' score from The Web Planet. 
• A Chumbley appeared alongside the Black Dalek Supreme at the Farnborough Air Show on 4th September, which William Hartnell also attended. A helicopter delivered a lightweight TARDIS copy.
• Radio Times previewed the opening  episode of the story on Thursday 2nd September, with a full feature the following week, using a near identical photograph of the Drahvins but adding a small image of the Doctor and companions examining a Chumbley.