Episode 85: The Exploding Planet

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:

Trapped in the airlock, with the oxygen rapidly depleting, Steven collapses to the floor...

The Doctor and Vicki arrive with their Drahvin captive and Chumbley escort. The robot blasts open the airlock door and throws a smoke-bomb into the ship, freeing Steven.

Maaga leads her soldiers out but they are confronted by the Chumbley, through which a Rill addresses them. It warns them to go back inside or they will be destroyed. The Doctor and his companions hurry away to the Rill compound whilst the Chumbley stands guard.

Inside the Drahvin ship, Maaga formulates a plan of escape, following which they will seize the other craft.

The Doctor sets up a cable which will run between the Rill ship and the TARDIS. Vicki will accompany him whilst Steven recovers from his ordeal in the airlock.

One of the Drahvin soldiers sneaks out of a rear service hatch and moves round to attack their Chumbley guard - destroying it with an iron bar.

Night begins to fall - the last this planet will ever see - as the Doctor connects the power transfer cable, then he and Vicki head back to the compound.

The Doctor and his companions are invited into the Rill spaceship to meet the occupants and talk with them. After their friendly discussion they leave to return to the TARDIS, accompanied by a Chumbley for protection.

One of the Drahvins manages to breach the compound, but she is stunned by a Chumbley. 

Now fully powered, the Rill ship takes off.

With this escape route gone, Maaga decides that they must seize the TARDIS instead. They give chase.

Rushing back to the ship, Vicki hurts her ankle. They get inside whilst the Chumbley holds the Drahvins at bay. The planet begins to disintegrate as the TARDIS dematerialises.

Steven and Vicki look to the scanner to observe the destruction of the planet, but the Doctor explains that the TARDIS has already left Galaxy Four far behind.

Vicki studies a planet on the screen, and wonders aloud what might be happening there.

In a jungle on the remote world, a uniformed man named Garvey stumbles through the dense vegetation, muttering to himself over and over again that he must kill...

Next episode: Mission to the Unknown

Data:

Written by: William Emms

Recorded: Friday 30th July 1965 - Television Centre Studio TC3

First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 2nd October 1965

Ratings: 9.9 million / AI 53

Designer: Richard Hunt

Director: Derek Martinus

Additional cast: Bill Lodge, Brian Madge, Peter Holmes and David Brewster (Rills), Barry Jackson (Garvey)

Critique:

The Exploding Planet was the final episode to be recorded in Doctor Who's second year, as far as the regular cast were concerned. After this, they could embark on a six week holiday. The production team had one more instalment to make, however, which would be Verity Lambert's final story as producer.

In the weeks before rehearsal a number of changes were made to the script. To give Steven something to do, he held a longer conversation with the Rill (reinforcing the theme of never judging by appearances) whilst the Doctor and Vicki went off to connect the power cable to the TARDIS. The farewell scene between the TARDIS crew and the Rills was also lengthened.

Vicki hurting her ankle was added, to explain why she remains in the TARDIS at the beginning of The Myth Makers. To make the finale more tense, dialogue was changed to shorten all the timescales by three hours - making all the escape activity seem more urgent.

Production moved to a different studio for the final instalment of the story - TV Centre Studio 3.

In the afternoon, new publicity photographs were taken of the Drahvins - this time inside their spacecraft.

The attack on the Chumbley by one of the Drahvins was a pre-filmed sequence from the earlier Ealing work, as were some of the scenes of the Doctor and his companions fleeing back to the TARDIS at the conclusion. A damaged Chumbley prop was moved onto set whilst the attack scene was played in.

The departure of the Rill ship was achieved not by a model shot but simply by playing a flickering light on the faces of the regulars accompanied by a sound effect.

For the scenes of the planet's destruction, the film shot at Ealing was reversed. This then faded to a "white-out".

It is never actually explained why the planet is destroyed, other than the Doctor claiming that it will be reduced to a cloud of hydrogen. It may be due to it having three suns - the result of gravitational pressures perhaps. What is also unclear is how the timescale of the disaster can be predicted so accurately by the TARDIS - or inaccurately by the Rills. If the Astral Map is linked to the TARDIS, it may well be able to show sectors of space through time. The Doctor must just look and see when this solar system changes. If that's the case, the Rills have actually done remarkably well in getting within 14 dawns (much shorter than days) of the event without the benefits of such an apparatus.

We've heard how the planet has all the attributes conducive to life, yet it hasn't any. Has it never harboured any animal life, or has it been killed off / departed?

The sequence with Barry Jackson as Garvey was recorded on Friday 6th August, during the making of the following episode. This was to avoid having to erect the jungle set in studio for just one short scene, or to hire Jackson for more than one week's work. 

Best known for playing police pathologist Dr George Bullard in Midsomer Murders for 14 years, Jackson had previously portrayed the mute assassin Ascaris in The Romans, and would later play rogue Time Lord Drax in The Armageddon Factor.

John Wiles checked with the BBC legal department regarding ownership of the Drahvins. As Lambert had made a major change, altering their gender, he was advised that they ought to be regarded as jointly owned by Emms and the BBC. This suggests that a further story involving the aliens was under consideration - or some merchandising. It later transpired that detailed drawings of the Drahvin guns were supplied to Walter Tuckwell & Associates - the company responsible for the marketing of the Daleks. A Chumbley toy was also under consideration, along with Drahvin badges. The failure of the Zarbi and Mechonoids to take off with the public put paid to the plans for Galaxy 4's commercial exploitation.

Stephanie Bidmead kept her pistol from the series, which she gave to her son to play with.

William Emms often had an unhappy time getting his work on screen, complaining that it was frequently re-written without his consent or participation. Other scripts which had been rejected were never sent back to him. 

He actually singled out Doctor Who as one positive experience of script writing as he felt Donald Tosh had respected his work (though he disliked changes to dialogue made by Hartnell and O'Brien). He contributed to most of the long-running British TV series of the 1960's before becoming writer in residence at Nottingham Playhouse. After a stay in Australia he returned to the UK but returned to teaching, and concentrating on writing novels, rather than write for TV again. He died in May 1993.

Trivia:

• The ratings remain strong at just under 10 million, with the appreciation figure falling by only a single point.
• The Rill performers were not credited on screen, so we don't know which one featured in Airlock. All four costumes were seen in this episode.
• The Drahvins have never returned to the series, though they were said to form part of the Pandorica Alliance, in dialogue from The Pandorica Opens.
• When actors playing Shadow Proclamation staff were seen on location during the making of The Stolen Earth, all women with blonde wigs, some fans speculated that they were playing Drahvins.
• The videotapes of all four episodes were wiped between 1967 - 69, but film copies were retained. As a clip from Four Hundred Dawns was used in the Whose Doctor Who documentary, we know that this episode at least was still complete as late as 1977.
• The story was released in animated form in November 2021, in both colour and B&W versions, along with Airlock and other existing material. The Drahvins were given blue uniforms for some reason, and the likeness of William Hartnell was appallingly bad. Peter Purves, Maureen O'Brien and Lyn Ashley (Drahvin Three) contributed to one of the Commentaries.

• A couple of props from this story were reused in later ones. The Drahvin guns reappeared a decade later in Genesis of the Daleks, where they were wielded by Thal soldiers...

• And sections of a Chumbley casing were repurposed for the dome of the Emperor Dalek in The Evil of the Daleks in 1967.

• William Emms never wrote for the series again, though he did submit a story which almost went into production for a slot in Season 4. Titled "The Imps", this would have been one of the first stories for Patrick Troughton's new Doctor. It was centred around a spaceport which had come under attack from imp-like creatures and hostile plant-life. Emms fell ill, and the programme entered a state of flux as far as companions were concerned, and then a change of producer / script editor. Its original slot was taken by The Underwater Menace. In 1986 Emms reused elements of the story for a Sixth Doctor "Make Your Own Adventure" book titled Mission to Venus.

• An image from Galaxy 4 was used to illustrate the programme in the BBC Handbook for 1966.