Sensing movement, Vicki looks up to see a hideous creature staring at her from within the Rill spacecraft...
The Doctor is still at the entrance to the compound, examining the pyramidal machinery, which appears to be converting ammoniac gas. Vicki sees a Chumbley approach and runs to the entrance - only for a gate to close, trapping her inside. She is escorted by Chumblies back to where she saw the creature. Unable to breach the gate, the Doctor decides to sabotage the machinery and starts to dismantle it.
Steven remains in the Drahvin spaceship, where he pretends to be sleeping. Nearby, Maaga is bemoaning the fact that she has to put up with her inferior soldiers, making her task of space exploration more difficult. She had wanted only pure-bred Drahvins troops to accompany her, but her superiors had refused.
Vicki finds one of the Chumblies repeating what she says, assimilating her language. The creature behind the screen - a Rill - is then able to communicate with her. They have no vocal chords, but can project their thoughts through their service robots. The Rill explains that they were subject to an unprovoked attack by the Drahvin ship after a stand-off in space above this planet.
Since the crash, which killed two thirds of their crew of twelve, they have attempted to help the Drahvins, but their efforts have been spurned. The Rill tells Vicki of how they witnessed Maaga shooting dead one of her injured soldiers - an incident which she had been blaming on the Rills to frighten her troops.
On discovering that the Rills need an ammonia atmosphere to survive, Vicki realises that the Doctor will kill them instead of just forcing them to free her, so she runs to the entrance to stop him.
The soldier guarding Steven starts to fall asleep, so he seizes her weapon and knocks her out. He rushes into the airlock, only to find a Chumbley waiting outside. Thinking them still a danger, he believes himself trapped.
At the compound, the Rill informs the Doctor that they are drilling for a power source for their ship. They rely on sunray-power but haven't enough, so were looking for an alternative. The Doctor tells him of his findings regarding the time left to this planet, and the Rill claims that they won't have time to obtain the power they need.
He offers a power transfer from the TARDIS.
When Steven refuses to come back inside the spaceship, Maaga begins to remove the oxygen from the airlock.
The Chumbley outside reports these events back to the Rill who warns the Doctor. He and Vicki hurry back to the Drahvin ship to free Steven, only to run into one of the soldiers. Vicki manages to grab her gun and they force her to escort them back to her ship.
In the airlock, the pressure is such that the door will no longer open.
Steven collapses to the floor...
Next episode: The Exploding Planet
Written by: William Emms
Recorded: Friday 23rd July 1965 - Television Centre Studio TC4
First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 25th September 1965
Ratings: 11.3 million / AI 54
Designer: Richard Hunt
Director: Derek Martinus
Additional cast: Robert Cartland (Rill Voice), Pepe Poupee (Chumbley)
On Sunday 11th December, 2011, attendees of a "Missing Believed Wiped" event at the British Film Institute in London were delighted to hear that two of the series' lost episodes had been returned to the archives - one of which was Airlock. The print originated in Australia, where it had been in the possession of a television engineer named Terry Burnett. He hadn't realised that it was a missing instalment.
The episode had been found back in July. It was missing some closing scenes, including the end titles.
When told that one of her old episodes had been rediscovered, the title meant nothing to Maureen O'Brien - until told that it featured the Chumblies. She had fond memories of them.
The episode was released on DVD in March 2013 as an extra on The Aztecs Special Edition. It accompanied the six minutes from Four Hundred Dawns which had been saved by the DWAS, with the remainder of the story represented by a reconstruction from fan group Loose Cannon.
Every missing episode is covered by an off-air soundtrack recording, and many have a visual record thanks to photographer John Cura and his telesnap service. BBC and Radio Times photographers also visited the studios and locations to take images, sometimes in colour. Added to this, designers Ray Cusick and Barry Newbery kept a photographic record of their work, often in colour.
Where the telesnaps don't exist - because the director declined to commission them - visual imagery from some episodes is entirely absent, as the official photographers often only attended on a single recording day. This means that only certain actors, costumes and sets are represented in the archives.
With only the audio to go by, fans are left to imagine what certain scenes looked like on screen.
The rediscovery of Airlock meant that we finally got to see scenes which had no visual record - and fans were particularly surprised to see the sequence describing the "execution" of the injured Drahvin soldier by Maaga. Those who had seen it on its original broadcast had neglected to report that the sequence came in the form of a flashback, filmed as a POV shot from the Rills' perspective.
Both techniques were rare in the series up to that point.
Four Rill costumes were built by freelance prop contractors John and Jack Lovell. Black in colour, they were based on walruses, with large tusks. Only one Rill was used for this episode, seen through a frosted glass panel. The costumes were shrouded in dry-ice, simulating the ammonia gas on which they thrived, and helping to hide any deficiencies in the costumes.
Anthony Paul had been hired to provide the creature's voice. At a late stage he was replaced by Robert Cartland, who had already been booked by Mervyn Pinfield to play delegate Malpha in the stand-alone Dalek episode which formed part of this production.
Another Chumbley operator joined the cast for this episode, operating the machine which Steven thinks is blocking him from leaving the spaceship. This was Kathleen Gearan, who went under the stage name Pepe Poupee. She was married to fellow Chumbley operator Angelo Muscat (of The Prisoner fame). Pepe, also known as Pepi, was the only female Oompa Loompa in the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and featured alongside Tom Baker in the horror movie The Mutations.
One of Maureen O'Brien's clearest memories of this story was of Poupee and Muscat arguing all the time. Ironically, one of her film roles was in a 1983 movie directed by actor Robert Duvall, titled Angelo My Love.
A late script change saw the expository dialogue between Vicki and the Rill reduced considerably, and the sequence of the Doctor and she encountering the lone Drahvin soldier was added to cover the gap.
A bit of dialogue that really ought to have been rethought, but wasn't, is that relating to the Rills' lack of power. They claim to need "sun-ray" power but are having to drill for an alternative - presumably some fossil fuel. However, we have been told that this planet has three suns, with nights only a couple of hours long - so how can the Rills not have enough "sun-ray" power?
- The ratings take a big leap upwards, to over 11 million, with only a single point drop in the appreciation figure. The series won't see viewing figures like this again until the Tom Baker era.
- William Emms had suggested in his script the use of a speeded up / slowed down tape to represent the Rill assimilating human speech.
- Lyn Ashley, who was already playing Drahvin Three, portrayed the injured soldier who is killed by Maaga. She was filmed lying face-down to hide her identity.
- William Hartnell was issued with a revised contract on the day this episode was recorded, to take into account the forthcoming 12-part Dalek story. Purves and O'Brien were then issued contracts with options for a further 20 weeks each - though the latter's was not to be taken up...
- A few days after recording, Hartnell gave an interview to the Daily Mirror, in which he stated that he had gifted his wife Heather a half-inch high solid gold TARDIS, topped with a sapphire.
- William Shearer, one of the Chumbley operators, recorded a short interview for Junior Points of View about the experience. Whilst some young fans thought the robots looked like jellies that hadn't set properly, others thought that they could give the Daleks a run for their money and hoped they would make a return.
- As mentioned last week, it was believed for many years that no photographs existed of the Rills. When readers wrote into DWM asking to see what they looked like, the magazine claimed no photos had been taken. A couple of images then turned up in the late '80's. Despite a Rill featuring in an exhibition, both images appear to have been taken in the studio with the prop on the landscape set:
No comments:
Post a Comment