The time travellers have been locked up, accused of being spies and saboteurs - agents of Refusis II. Zentos, Deputy Commander of the Ark, wonders if all their efforts to save the human race might not have been in vain...
With the Commander incapacitated with the new fever, Zentos claims that he can summarily execute them by ejecting them into space, but it is decided that a trial must be held. he will preside as judge.
A Guardian named Baccu will prosecute whilst Manyak, a friend of Mellium, will act as their defence. Steven insists on speaking up for his friends, despite falling victim to the fever himself.
His impassioned pleas fall on deaf ears as the frightened Guardians are stirred up by the far from impartial Zentos.
The case goes against the time-travellers and Zentos decrees that the Monoids will be allowed to dispose of them, having been the first victims of the illness.
The Commander has been observing proceedings and now intervenes - overruling his deputy.
The Doctor has claimed that, given the right facilities, he could find a cure for the fever. The Commander points out that by killing the one person who might be able to help them, they will be dooming themselves.
The Doctor is to be given access to a laboratory and allowed to gather whatever he needs. Any cure he devises must be tested on Steven first.
The Doctor is joined by medic Rhos, who has been caring for the Commander, and he instructs that tissue samples be taken from many of the animals in the biodome - recalling that a cure for the common cold had been derived from animal membranes.
He finds the Monoids to be of invaluable help, and notes that the Guardians really do not appreciate their fellow travellers.
The cure is developed and Steven recovers. Zentos has come to realise how unreasonable he had become and asks for the Doctor's forgiveness - but he is content to see that the Deputy Commander has learned a lesson about being more open-minded.
The great spaceship begins its departure from Earth's orbit as the planet starts to burn.
As the Ark embarks on its 700 year voyage, the TARDIS departs...
The ship materialises a few minutes later and the Doctor is shocked to find themselves in familiar surroundings. They are exactly where they left from, in the biodome of the Ark.
They set off to see Mellium and Manyak, but find the command deck deserted. The vessel's systems appear to be automated now.
They realise that they have travelled forward seven centuries to the end of the Ark's journey, as the great statue has now been completed.
However, the humanoid sculpture now has the head of a Monoid...
Next episode: The Return
Written by: Paul Erickson & Lesley Scott
Recorded: Friday 25th February 1966 - Riverside Studio 1
First broadcast: 5:15pm, Saturday 12th March 1966
Ratings: 6.9 million / AI 56
Designer: Barry Newbery
Director: Michael Imison
Additional cast: Michael Sheard (Rhos), Ian Frost (Baccu)
As mentioned last week, Michael Imison claimed to have developed the Monoids beyond their rather nondescript appearance in Erickson's original storyline, where they were simply described as "reptilian servants".
With their single eye, it was the director who named them "Monoids" in the first place, and he hoped that they might be marketable like the Daleks.
Eight costumes had been made, only four of which featured the moveable eye. This was simply half of a ping-pong ball, painted, with a peg attached at the back. The artiste playing the alien could manipulate the peg with their tongue to make the eye move around.
To get away from the human form, the lower half of the body saw the legs bound together so that only their feet could move - giving them a rather (unintended) humorous waddling motion.
The costumes were one-piece with a padded chest, which could be stepped into and then zipped up at the back. It was impossible to hide the join on the skull, which is why they were given wigs. These Beatle-like mop-tops were blond, ginger and brunette and made from yak-hair.
Three of the costumes would be used by principal Monoid actors, who would go to play speaking aliens in the second half of the story, with the others going to extras.
Joining the cast for this episode only was Scottish actor Michael Sheard, playing the medic Rhos. This was the first of six appearances in the programme, seeing him work with five of the seven original Doctors.
His next story would be The Mind of Evil, playing another doctor, followed by two very different appearances during Tom Baker's tenure in the TARDIS - as the tragic Lawrence Scarman in Pyramids of Mars, and as the possessed Lowe in The Invisible Enemy. He was yet another medical man in Peter Davison's first story, Castrovalva, before a final role as the unnamed Headmaster of Coal Hill School in Remembrance of the Daleks. The school setting would have been familiar to Sheard, having been a series regular on Grange Hill, playing the hated Mr Bronson.
Sheard was seen by millions in The Empire Strikes Back, as Imperial Admiral Ozzel who falls foul of Lord Vader just before the Battle of Hoth; and another blockbuster role was as Adolf Hitler in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
The Nazi Fuhrer was a part Sheard returned to again and again, playing him five times in total (including a Tomorrow People story). He also played Himmler on three occasions.
At the time of this episode being recorded, he had a regular role on the BBC sitcom The Likely Lads.
All of the jungle sequences for The Plague had been pre-filmed at Ealing - including the Monoid collapsing by the TARDIS, the Monoids collecting animal tissue samples, and the departure and subsequent return of the TARDIS at the conclusion.
This meant that the studio only had to feature Newbery's huge command deck set (above), along with two smaller rooms - the Commander's chamber and the prison cell. Both were fitted with small monitors so that the various cast members could be seen to observe the trial.
The Commander's room was designed in a Japanese style.
One aspect of the main set which irritated William Hartnell was the electric buggy. This was merely a piece of BBC studio equipment used by the scenic crew, redressed. Hartnell did not like travelling on it, and his unease is evident on screen.
There were five recording breaks planned for the evening. Two were for Peter Purves to move back and forth for his trial appearance, a third for Hartnell to move from cell to Commander's room, and a fourth to allow for the model shot of the burning Earth to be inserted.
This had been filmed on Friday 4th February, and comprised a globe full of dry-ice which could escape via a number of small holes. This was then filmed whilst a wind machine was directed at it, to make it appear as though smoke was streaking into space.
The final recording break allowed for the redressing of the command deck set, to show the passage of time.
There's a problem underlying this episode, and that's the suspicions concerning the planet Refusis II. Zentos is convinced that the TARDIS crew are agents for the "intelligences" which inhabit that world, and he has little trouble whipping up the other Guardians into accepting this accusation.
If they think its inhabitants so hostile, why are they going there in the first place? Why pick an inhabited planet at all?
How can they know anything about the planet or its people if it is a 700 year voyage away? Describing the Refusians as "intelligences" even hints that they already seem to know that they are invisible, insubstantial beings - as we'll see to be the case in due course.
Other stories tell us that there are a lot of Earth-like planets a lot closer to Earth than Refusis. We've already seen Earth people visiting the Sense-Sphere, for instance. The previous two Dalek stories have also shown how easily people can travel across the galaxy to inhabitable worlds in relatively short spaces of time.
When considering this episode, it should be borne in mind that the audience had no idea how long any Doctor Who story was going to run. The production team might have decided on a standard four episode length for non-Dalek stories - they getting six weeks instead - but previously the story durations had ranged from two to seven weeks, with the last Dalek story being a double length twelve-parter.
With the deadly fever cured, viewers will have assumed that this was only a short two-parter as they saw the Doctor and companions get into the TARDIS and leave, with only a few minutes left of the programme.
Initially, because of this similarity of set dressing, it would have looked as if the TARDIS had simply gone wrong. The (slow) reveal of the statue's head hints at a mystery to be resolved in the next instalment - a classic cliff-hanger ending.
It would have been a huge surprise to see the ship then rematerialise exactly where it had been (a bit of a gaffe as the jungle could not possibly look identical, down to the individual plants, over the course of seven centuries).
We've mentioned it before but, for a series about time travel, the concept was rarely ever exploited significantly for a story.
Mention had been made of the potential consequences of time travel in The Aztecs and The Reign of Terror, and The Time Meddler had revolved around an attempt to alter history, but this was the first time we would get to see the Doctor actually confront the consequences of one of his travels...
- The ratings bounce back this week, rising by 1.4 million viewers. The appreciation figure rises as well, though only by a single point.
- Once again, the incidental music mostly derived from The Daleks, though a library percussion piece - Drumdramatics No.11 - was used for the Monoid funeral sequence.
- John Wiles took Jackie Lane aside to complain that Dodo had not looked sad enough during this sequence. She responded that it was difficult to conjure up emotions when dealing with "a heap of wrinkled rubber".
- Ian Frost returned to the series some seven years later, playing a Draconian messenger in Frontier in Space.
- A few days after broadcast, on Wednesday 16th March, the BBC youth series Whole Scene Going featured an interview with director Gordon Flemyng on the set of Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD.
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