Synopsis:
The TARDIS has arrived in what the Doctor claims to be a future time of great peace and prosperity. The scanner has shown only a bleak rocky landscape, and the travellers have failed to spot a man, armed with a club and dressed in furs, observing their arrival.
The Doctor sets off alone, carrying his RV machine - Reacting Vibrator - which scans the area. He fails to spot two men, dressed like the figure on the scanner, watching him from the bushes.
Steven and Dodo wait nervously in the ship, having been asked to stay there until his return. Impatient, she talks him into going outside to look for the Doctor.
Dodo spots another fur-clad figure and tells Steven - leading them to believe that the Doctor was wrong. Instead of the far future, they must have travelled back to the Stone Age.
The Doctor finally sees the watching men - Chal and Tor. They have been debating whether or not to kill him or run away from him. As he tries to talk to them, they flee - having spotted two uniformed men approaching along the path.
The Doctor is surprised when the new arrivals - Edal and Exorse - appear to have been expecting him.
They explain that their leaders - the Elders - have a name for him: the "Traveller from Beyond Time". They have been observing his explorations for many years and predicted his arrival on their world, though were unaware that he travelled with companions.
Edal escorts the Doctor to their city, whilst Exorse goes to find Steven and Dodo.
They have come under attack by more of the primitive people, but are saved by Exorse's arrival.
They are taken to a walled city, situated on an island.
Within, the Doctor is introduced to Jano, leader of the Elders. He is treated as an honoured guest, and provided with special robes when made an honorary member of the council.
Jano thinks that he will be impressed with their society. It is agreed that whilst he discusses things with the Elders, Steven and Dodo will be given a conducted tour of the city by a couple of young people - Avon and Flower.
Edal and Exorse, meanwhile, are out in the wasteland, hunting for the primitive-looking people who dwell there.
Chal and Tor watch in horror as one of their friends, a young woman named Nanina, is transfixed by one of their hypnotising light-guns and captured.
After querying how this society has come to be so advanced, and so perfect, the Doctor discovers that it is built on the exploitation of others. They drain the life-force of those who dwell outside their city and transfer it to themselves.
Frustrated by their tour, Dodo thinks that she will learn nothing about the city from Avon and Flower and so decides to slip off and explore for herself.
Nanina has been taken to a laboratory, presided over by a scientist named Senta. A male captive - Wylda - has just had his life-force drained and is being released.
Dodo ventures into the area, where she sees a wild-looking individual lurching down the corridor towards her...
Data:
Written by Ian Stuart Black
Recorded: Friday 13th May 1966 - Riverside Studio 1
First broadcast: 5:35pm, Saturday 28th May 1966
Ratings: 4.8 million / AI 48
Designer: Stuart Walker
Director: Christopher Barry
Guest cast: Frederick Jaeger (Jano), Ewan Solon (Chal), Patrick Godfrey (Tor), Clare Jenkins (Nanina), Peter Thomas (Edal), Geoffrey Frederick (Exorse), Norman Henry (Senta), Robert Sidaway (Avon), Kay Patrick (Flower), Edward Caddick (Wylda).
Critique:
The Savages began life as a script named "The White Savages", which has obvious racist connotations - implying as it does that "savages" are usually black and here's a story that is subverting that idea...
Indeed, it is noticeable from the telesnaps and the limited number of publicity photographs that the group known as the Elders have been given make-up to darken their skin.
It is fortunate, therefore, that story editor Gerry Davis elected to amend the title.
This problematic aspect of the story hasn't gone away, but it is less in your face.
Like the previous two stories, this one has also suffered from a reputation gained in the 1970's, encouraged by fandom and the earliest publications about Doctor Who. Simply put, this story was "the one with no monsters" - deemed an automatic failing - and as such did not deserve a high reputation. That's how it is presented in Peter Haining's 1983 volume Doctor Who: A Celebration. (The story synopses section wasn't written by him, however, but by a well-placed fan who advised Doctor Who Weekly / Monthly).
Being absent from the archives, with only a couple of very short 8mm clips available and a mere handful of publicity images, The Savages is, arguably, one of the most obscure Doctor Who stories.
Ian Stuart Black was working on a crime drama which was being produced by future Who director Alan Bromly when he noticed the Doctor Who production office next door. His family enjoyed the show, so he popped in and offered his services to John Wiles and Donald Tosh. As well as earning kudos with his children, he believed that the format of the show would allow him to come up with something imaginative and original.
After some discussion, it was decided to concentrate on a story which dwelt on the darker side of human nature. It would not necessarily have any monsters, or even any out-and-out villains. This approach appealed to Wiles and Tosh, who were looking for more cerebral storylines.
The main thrust of the story was the exploitation of a primitive society by a more technologically advanced one, which can be seen as an attack on both colonialism and class inequality.
By the time Black came to submit his scripts, it had been all change in the production office. John Wiles had recommended Black's story to his replacements.
It was after the recording of The Plague - the second episode of The Ark - that Innes Lloyd had informed Peter Purves that he was going to be replacing him as male companion. The producer was unhappy with both companions whom he had inherited, thinking them lacking depth and audience identification appeal. Whilst Gerry Davis got on well with the actor, Lloyd did not - thinking him lacking in range as a performer.
It was decided that Purves and Lane would be written out over the course of two consecutive stories, to be replaced by a couple of youthful contemporary characters.
In the end, it would fall to Black to write both of the current companions out of the series.
Purves wasn't too unhappy to go. He missed Verity Lambert and Dennis Spooner - feeling Wiles and Tosh had neglected both him and his character.
Not having worked on the show since The Rescue / The Romans, Christopher Barry wasn't terribly keen to return, thinking the three year old series to be past its prime, but he was an old friend of Lloyd's.
He thought Black's scripts uninteresting.
He was looking forward to working with William Hartnell again, having struck up a good working relationship with him on previous stories. Having been away for a while, he immediately noted the deterioration in Hartnell's ability to memorise lines.
The star was acting older than his age at this point in order to get his own way, accusing others of unprofessionalism when frustrated by his own failings.
The designer allocated this story was Stuart Walker - his only Doctor Who assignment. From the little we can see from still images, this is a great shame.
Composer Raymond Jones had been used by Barry on The Romans, and utilised a string quartet for what is a highly distinctive score.
The main guest artist was New Zealander Ewen Solon, who would be playing Chal, leader of the Savages. He was very well known to UK audiences, having played the title character's sidekick Lucas in the BBC's Maigret adaptations. He had also made a number of movies, including The Hound of the Baskervilles and Curse of the Werewolf for Hammer.
Clare Jenkins and Kay Patrick had worked with Barry before.
Rex Tucker had visited Callow Hill sandpit in Surrey to film the short scene of the Savage, played by extra John Raven, seen on the TARDIS scanner at the conclusion of the previous episode.
Barry followed this up with his location filming at Shire Lane Quarry, Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire, on Friday 29th April. He then visited the same sandpit as Tucker for more filming on Sunday 1st May, including the area of the TARDIS landing site.
Filming also took place at Ealing on 28th April for cave interiors, and city corridor scenes later in the story.
The light gun props - "liquid light guns" in the script - were built by Shawcraft Models. Dry ice was added to them, to accentuate the powerful torchlight. This meant that those using them had to angle them slightly away from their intended targets.
Jackie Lane enjoyed the location filming, as she had had little of it to do so far (only her introduction on Wimbledon Common).
Solon elected to drive home whilst still in full make-up, and thought nothing of asking for directions from a passing cyclist.
In studio, the episode began with a reprise of the closing scene from the last episode, though this was then cut before broadcast. This could not have been for timing reasons, as this is the shortest of the four episodes.
The new opening credits ran: story title, then writer, then episode number, now that individual episode titles had been dropped.
The biggest set was Senta's laboratory which included a number of working props. Victims of the transference process lay on a trolley under a perspex cover, into which dry ice was pumped. A revolving radar-like dish was suspended over their chest. A tank filled with a dark bubbling liquid to represent the life-force being stored prior to transference.
A scale model of the lab was also employed, for the scene where Jano shows it to the Doctor on a monitor screen.
Some extras doubled up playing citizens in early scenes, and lab assistants later on.
There were two brief glimpses of Dodo as seen from Wylda's point of view as he staggered down the corridor. These were defocussed to show his exhausted mental state.
It's an odd episode for the companions, with Dodo belittling Steven. Like the Doctor, he questions how this society can be so perfect, but doesn't seem interested in challenging what Avon and Flower have to say about it.
This is the second time that she has described people as being "savages" - the first time being the Monoid funeral in The Ark.
There are obvious questions to be asked about how the Elders know of the Doctor - to the extent that a couple of city guards can recognise him when they bump into him in the middle of the wasteland.
They know him as the "Traveller From Beyond Time", and have been observing his movements. How they can keep an eye on someone who moves randomly from planet to planet, and from one time to another, is never explained.
If they have been observing him so closely, even knowing he shuns weapons, how can they possibly not know that he travels with companions?
And if they do know so much about him, surely they would have seen that he was highly unlikely to condone their behaviour towards the Savages.
Whilst Black's children were fans, it looks like he himself wasn't all that familiar with the series. He wouldn't have had much help from Davis, as he had only just arrived.
- The ratings see a considerable upswing from the previous Western adventure - especially the appreciation figure which is 18 points higher than The O.K. Corral.
- Publicity will have helped - such as the Daily Mirror publishing a piece on 23rd May about Ewen Solon's aged make-up for the role of Chal.
- The series was now switched back to its earlier timeslot of 5:35pm.
- At one point The Gunfighters was going to be dropped, and Black's story moved up to replace it.
- The name of this race (or their planet) is never mentioned in the scripts or on screen. The Elders are simply the ruling council led by Jano.
- Frederick Jaeger was a friend of the writers Bob Baker and Dave Martin. They named the discredited scientist in The Mutants (also directed by Chris Barry) with him in mind.
- He returned to the series in 1975's Planet of Evil as Professor Sorenson, when he was reunited with his The Savages co-star Ewen Solon (playing Vishinsky).
- Jaeger reappeared later in the Tom Baker era, playing Professor Marius - creator of K-9 - in The Invisible Enemy.
- Patrick Godfrey returned to the series in 1971 to play UNIT's Major Cosgrove, in The Mind of Evil.
- Clare Jenkins will be back as Tanya Lernov in The Wheel in Space, whom she reprised in the tenth instalment of The War Games.
- Robert Sidaway would become the first of the Brigadier's "Jimmys" (co-opted army captains) when he played Captain Turner in The Invasion.
- Kay Patrick had previously played Poppaea for Christopher Barry in The Romans.
- Radio Times introduced the new story on the Thursday prior to broadcast of this episode, featuring a photograph of Solon and Godfrey:
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