Episode 135: The Power of the Daleks (1)

Synopsis:

Ben and Polly have just witnessed the ailing Doctor collapse to the floor of the TARDIS. His features have blurred and changed - and suddenly there is a smaller, dark-haired man lying where the Doctor had fallen...

Not only have his features altered, his clothing has as well - a shabbier version of what he had been wearing. He wakes suddenly, with a loud noise pounding in his head. This slowly fades as he recovers. Ben assumes that this is some interloper, and demands to know what happened to the Doctor. Polly, on the other hand, seems to grasp that this is the Doctor - somehow transformed. 

Matters are not helped by the fact that the Doctor remains confused by his experience and refers to himself in the third person. His signet ring drops from his finger. When Ben challenges him, he gives the analogy of a butterfly trying to fit back into its chrysalis after spreading its wings. 

He tells them that he has been "renewed", and this process was helped in some way by the TARDIS . He could not have survived without it.

The Doctor hunts for a diary in a large wooden chest which sits in a corner of the console room. This is a 500 Year edition. He also finds a musical recorder and finds that he enjoys playing it. He spots various objects from his travels, still referring to himself as though someone else. One item in particular sends a shiver down his spine - a piece of metal which he identifies with "extermination".

The TARDIS has arrived at its next destination and, whilst Polly accepts him, Ben remains sceptical. He insists that the Doctor would have checked the readings before going outside - only to find that he has done this without them even noticing.

They emerge from the TARDIS onto a misty alien landscape. The mist proves to be mercury vapour, as there are pools of the element surrounding them. The Doctor wanders off to test out his new physique, and encounters a uniformed man. Before he can speak, a shot rings out and the man falls dead. The Doctor removes his badge of identity, which states that he is an Examiner from Earth. He scuffles with the assassin but the man escapes - though he manages to secure one of his tunic buttons. 

Polly succumbs to the fumes and collapses, and Ben calls for help. Soon all three have been overpowered - but a group of men in white overalls arrive. They have come from a nearby Earth colony, alerted to the arrival of the Examiner's spaceship. They take the Doctor to be he, after spotting that he has his ID. 

They take them to the colony's central complex. On waking later in a guest suite, they learn that this is the planet Vulcan, which has a difficult relationship with Earth due to its remoteness. Governor Hensell and Security Chief Bragen are unsettled by their presence, as no Examiner was due to visit for several months. Deputy Governor Quinn, however, does not appear to be too put out by their arrival.

It becomes clear to the time-travellers that there is some tension between Bragen and Quinn.

The Doctor learns that the lead scientist, Lesterson, is working on a special project. Not knowing why the Examiner was summoned, the Doctor realises that this might be the reason and so he insists on seeing the laboratory. 

Lesterson's special project, in which he is assisted by a young woman named Janley, proves to be a space capsule - found buried in the mercury swamps, possibly for hundreds of years. The Doctor spots a metal key to the capsule - identical to the piece of metal he found in the TARDIS chest... 

The main door is opened, to reveal only a sealed inner compartment.

Knowing the significance of the capsule, the Doctor tries to have Lesterson's work put on hold, but Hensell refuses without good reason.

That night, Ben and Polly see the Doctor sneak out of their quarters and decide to follow him. He enters the capsule and opens the inner compartment using his piece of metal.

Within are a pair of sinisterly familiar metallic forms, inert and covered in cobwebs. 

The Doctor invites his companions to come closer and meet the Daleks. Polly screams as a hideous tentacled creature scuttles across the floor at her feet...

Data:

Written by David Whitaker

Recorded: Saturday 22nd October 1966 - Riverside Studio 1

First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 5th November 1966

Ratings: 7.9 million / AI 43

Designer: Derek Dodd

Director: Christopher Barry

Guest cast: Bernard Archard (Bragen), Robert James (Lesterson), Pamela Ann Davy (Janley), Nicholas Hawtrey (Quinn), Peter Bathurst (Hensell), Martin King (Examiner)

Critique:

When recording finished on the evening of Saturday 8th October 1966, everyone headed off to a farewell party for William Hartnell. For Michael Craze and Anneke Wills it also meant the start of an extra week's holiday - because David Whitaker's scripts for what had been known as "The Destiny of Doctor Who" needed a considerable amount of reworking.

Patrick Troughton had been offered the role of the Doctor whilst on location in Ireland for Hammer's The Viking Queen (a movie which doesn't actually feature Vikings, and legend has it that one of the Roman soldier actors can be seen wearing a wristwatch).

He initially declined, believing that a programme three years old was already past its best. In a 1983 interview with DWM he claimed that the BBC kept calling him back, offering more money each time, until he accepted. 

He reasoned that even if he only made the first story, it would be a job for six weeks.

An intensely private man, he had a complicated personal life with two families to support - so money was important to him. Doctor Who would help pay for his children's education.

Regarding himself as a character actor rather than a leading man, he would refuse to participate in any form of publicity work. Only a Blue Peter design-a-monster competition would tempt him to break his own rule about this in the three years he would play the role, and then he did it in character and in costume. 

Doctor Who was a job of work only, and he kept work and home life strictly separate.

He was also extremely worried about becoming too much associated with one particular role (as the first ever TV Robin Hood, this had been in the days before such typecasting had become commonplace) and so initial plans would have seen him heavily costumed or made-up.

Interviews with himself and Gerry Davis always mention the notion of a "windjammer" sea captain - a Victorian sailor. Another Victorian gent, styled on Prime Minister William Gladstone, was also mentioned. Troughton also considered something unacceptable these days but perfectly normal in 1966 - black-face. Specifically, he was thinking of Conrad Veidt when he portrayed the villainous magician Jaffar in the 1940 film The Thief of Bagdad.

His reasoning for this was that he could simply take the make-up off at the end of the day and no-one would recognise him.

Sydney Newman was heavily involved in the discussions with Innes Lloyd and Davis about the casting and the character of the new Doctor. It had been his decision that the programme should continue with a replacement for Hartnell.

When presented with Troughton in the "windjammer" costume, Newman was scathing. From the outset he had seen the new Doctor as a more comic incarnation, after the stern and patriarchal Hartnell version. One particular image he had in mind was Charlie Chaplin - "the Little Tramp".

On seeing the costume options being considered, he demanded to know where his "Cosmic Hobo" idea had gone. This phrase is used as shorthand for the Second Doctor to this day.

Troughton should dress in a degraded version of the Hartnell outfit - checked trousers, but bigger checks. Black frock-coat, but baggy and ill-fitting. Some of the Edwardian trappings would be dispensed with altogether. Other things would be added - a colourful handkerchief for the coat pocket and a bow-tie, affixed with a safety pin. The hairstyle was to have been a curly wig, whilst he would also wear a tall "Paris Beau" hat - often mistakenly referred to as a stovepipe hat.

Troughton actually asked for the costume to be toned down, and the recorder was entirely his idea.

If the discussions over appearance were prolonged, then the actual characterisation was even more complex. In meetings, Troughton was bombarded with ideas from different sources. Upset by Newman's strong dislike to the "windjammer" look, Troughton met with Lloyd in the BBC bar and basically worked out the characterisation between them. Davis would then help refine this with the actor. 

It would tally closely with Newman's desire for a tramp-like figure, but added to the mix would be a rebellious streak. He would go to any lengths to defeat the enemy, but then disappear in the TARDIS to avoid the collateral damage. This Doctor would demolish the whole house just to fix a leaky tap.

He would also play his cards very close to his chest, giving little away - even to his companions - as to what his plans were. Enemies would be tricked into thinking him a harmless fool.

Davis was also inspired by the 1939 Western Destry Rides Again, in which James Stewart's character never gave straight answers to questions - preferring to talk in terms of metaphor and parable.

Joining the costume would be some new props - a recorder and a 500 Year Diary. The Doctor would play the instrument to help him think - even when it annoyed Ben and Polly. The Diary was intended to illustrate to the audience that this was no mere old man, as they had thought of the Hartnell incarnation. He was far, far older than that - someone who measured their life in centuries rather than years.

David Whitaker had been commissioned to write the next Dalek story in July 1966, which it was decided would also act as the new Doctor's debut. Terry Nation was too busy concentrating on more lucrative projects, such as the glossy colour adventure serials of ITC. As he had collaborated with Whitaker in the past on various Dalek projects, he was happy to let him take over. 

He wrote the basic Daleks / Rebels / Vulcan Colony adventure which we know from the synopsis of The Power of the Daleks, but he contributed next to nothing to the development of the new Doctor.

Whitaker had only written loosely for a generic Doctor, and Newman was unhappy with the lack of characterisation in the scripts - asking for significant changes to be made.

However, by this stage Whitaker had moved to Australia to work, and was unavailable to contribute further.

Davis instead approached Dennis Spooner, who had been collaborating with Nation on The Baron. He had helped set up a new series called "McGill", but by the time it went into production - as Man In A Suitcase - he had stepped back and was concentrating on developing his own series, The Champions.

Spooner therefore had capacity to join Davis to rework Whitaker's story, taking into account Troughton's casting and the ideas for the character that they had worked out.

According to the former Doctor Who story editor, Whitaker had written too much material and he had to cut large parts of it, mentioning specifically a lengthy food machine scene which added nothing to the plot. 

Whitaker's draft makes more of the costume change - the cloak acts as a shell concealing what the new Doctor is wearing underneath - which proves to be an outfit the likes of which he has never been seen to wear before. The cloak disintegrates as the new costume is revealed.

His only explanation for what had happened to him is to compare it with the TARDIS dimensions. If his companions can accept that without question, then why not this?

The TARDIS scene ends on a slightly sinister note as the new Doctor announces that he needs to make some changes, and Ben and Polly don't know if he's referring to the nick-nacks in the console room - or to themselves.

Every other month, the letters pages of Doctor Who Magazine would see heated debate over the nature of the first changeover of Doctors. The one thing it wasn't was a Regeneration. This term was not used until the handover from Jon Pertwee to Tom Baker. In the closing moments of Planet of the Spiders, Cho-Je says he will give the process "a little push and the cells will regenerate".

Davis prepared a document outlining the nature of the new Doctor, which went into only sketchy detail about the process of change. He was inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) for the transformation.

The new Doctor would have the sardonic humour of Sherlock Holmes, and the calculating mind of a chess player. He would also have a degree of rage within him, and a suspicion of new people and places die to some horrific past experience. (There was mention of him having fled a terrible galactic war - the event which had originally led him to flee his homeworld).

The transformation was a natural process which took place every 500 years or so, and Davis specifically likened it to having a bad LSD trip.

The fact that Troughton was a younger actor, and wore a dishevelled variation on Hartnell's costume, many assumed that this had been a rejuvenation - a younger version of the same character. Indeed, this was how Innes Lloyd always saw it.

Our only on-screen evidence is the Doctor's claim that he has been "renewed" - but only after the word has been offered to him. He also states that the TARDIS was key to the process.

It was the "rejuvenation / regeneration" debate which played out in DWM for years.

Craze and Wills were very much left in the dark about the planned changes, having to rely on the press for information. They knew Hartnell was leaving, but had then seen only rumours as to who was to replace him. This included Brian Blessed (then a household name thanks to Z-Cars) and musical entertainer Tommy Steele. Wills claimed that they only knew who the new Doctor was going to be when Troughton arrived for the final episode of The Tenth Planet.

The young regulars were very pleased to hear that he was to be their new lead actor.

The director chosen to helm the new Doctor's debut had prior experience of handling Daleks - Christopher Barry. He had directed their very first story, in conjunction with Richard Martin. Barry had sought to distance himself from the series, and had been intentionally avoiding it since The Savages.

However, the chance to work with Troughton, on such an important story, tempted him back.

Barry had worked with Troughton before on two earlier drama serials, and the pair had become good friends.

To save money, the director opted to reuse music from earlier stories he had worked on - especially Tristram Cary's cues from the first Dalek adventure.

Robert James, cast as Lesterson, had worked on Smugglers Bay with both Troughton and Christopher Barry. Bernard Archard was well-known to viewers for his role as Colonel Pinto in Spy-Catcher.

Peter Hawkins took over providing Dalek voices on his own, David Graham having moved on to other projects.

Four Daleks would appear in the story - two originals from 1963, with a third adapted from a prop used in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. The final Dalek was a "stunt" model first seen in The Chase, which had been made from moulds created for Aaru's Dr Who and the Daleks.

All were repainted silver with a darker shade of blue for the skirt spheres than that used previously. For the first time since The Daleks, there would be no Black Supreme leader model. Another small change was the removal of perspex rings from the guns.

Only two of the props, empty, were required for this first episode.

Rehearsals began on Tuesday 18th October at St Helen's Church Hall, St Helen's Gardens, Ladbroke Grove. Wills celebrated her 25th birthday on the Thursday.

Troughton and his young co-stars hit it off and spent a lot of time socialising in the Fulham area where Wills lived with husband Michael Gough. Craze had stayed with them for 6 weeks until getting his own place.

After recording each week, the trio would visit a wine bar called Finch's in the area.

During his first full studio day, a BBC photographer took many images of Troughton posing on the TARDIS set with his new props. Wills arranged for T-shirts to be printed with the slogan "Come back Bill Hartnell - All is forgiven", which she and Craze wore for the scene where they first emerge from the TARDIS. A great practical joker himself, Troughton did not like being on the receiving end however, and was a little upset. A whiskey together in the dressing room soon resolved the matter.

The opening credits rolled over a shot of the prone Doctor, treated electronically to show the last vestiges of the transformation as seen the week before.

Only a small TARDIS set was used, which included two photo blow-up walls. A photograph taken of Hartnell during the making of the previous episode was superimposed on a shot of a hand mirror, mixing between it and Troughton's face.

The mercury swamp comprised silver-painted rocks with dry ice and gas jets to simulate geysers. Derek Dodd was new to the programme, and he used many large painted backdrops for the landscape of Vulcan. These could be lit differently to indicate time of day or night.

His space capsule, made principally from corrugated PVC, and utilising metal plate-covers for decoration, had a nose-cone which could be opened to allow alternative camera angles on the interior.

This was used for the second of the two planned recording breaks, to set up the final sequence of the Dalek discovery. The first had been just before the initial laboratory scene, to allow Wills and Craze to change into their blue colonial uniforms.

An overrun left the episode some 25' 43" in duration. Unfortunately Cary's music credit was omitted.

This wouldn't be corrected until Part Three, as the first two episodes had their credits recorded in one session.

As well as reference to earlier Dalek stories - the metal key presumably having been collected on his first visit to their city on Skaro, the Doctor also finds a dagger which belonged to Saladin - despite the Doctor never having met him in The Crusade, and he mentions a visit to China, referring to Marco Polo.

Oddly, the Doctor simply shrugs off the fact that his ring no longer fits. In The Web Planet he had made a big deal about it, being resistant to lending it to the Menoptra after earlier using it to help open the TARDIS doors. It helped undo the Monk's sabotage on the planet Tigus as well - again having properties associated with the ship's doors.

None of these stories were worked on by Gerry Davis, so he may have been quite unaware of its significance - but Spooner was involved in both stories in which it featured.

Trivia:

• The ratings see an increase in audience numbers, but that appreciation figure is very disappointing for a Dalek story - and the introduction of a new actor in the lead role.
• Opposition from ITV was mainly Professional Wrestling, though in the Midlands Batman was placed against Doctor Who.
• BBC documentation - and an on-screen trailer - gave the date for this story as 2020 AD. This seems to have been randomly plucked out of the air as it is never specified by Whitaker, Spooner or Davis.
• It had been long theorised that gravitational irregularities in planetary orbits pointed to the existence of an undiscovered planet between Mercury and the Sun. This had been named Vulcan, due to that god's association with fire. The location of the Doctor Who Vulcan is never mentioned, and it may be that Whitaker was thinking of the theoretical one when he named this colony world - thus placing it within the Solar System.
• Vulcan is best known these days as the home planet of the Enterprise's Chief Science Officer, Mr Spock. Star Trek did not debut until September 1966 in the USA, and would not reach the UK until 1969, when it was used to help plug the gap between Doctor Who's sixth and seventh seasons.
• Bernard Archard would later appear as Marcus Scarman in Pyramids of Mars.
• Robert James also returned to the series, as the High Priest of the Cult of Demnos in The Masque of Mandragora.
• And Peter Bathurst would go on to play the obnoxious civil servant Chinn in The Claws of Axos.
• Nicholas Hawtrey, on the other hand, had featured in the The Curse of the Daleks stage play the year before.
• Whitaker had written The Curse of the Daleks, and used elements of it in The Power of the Daleks - namely the finding of dormant Daleks and a human traitor bringing them back to life in order to exploit them.
• Junior Points of View repeated the Doctor's transformation scene on 4th November, to whet the appetite for the next evening's episode.
• Only a few brief 8mm home movie clips exist for this episode, of the Doctor and companions in the TARDIS and a quick glimpse of the Doctor in the colony.
• Radio Times placed Doctor Who on the cover for the week of broadcast, but elected to concentrate on the return of the Daleks over the introduction of a new Doctor. Even Ben and Polly are highlighted with a photo, with no image of Troughton and only a brief mention of the actor:

• Some newspapers, like the Daily Mail on 5th November, did highlight Troughton's arrival, albeit only another very brief mention in this case:

O is for... Octavian

Father Octavian was an officer with the Clerics - a military-religious army of the 51st Century. His rank was Bishop, Second Class.

He led the mission to investigate the spaceship Byzantium, which had contained an escaped Weeping Angel. It had caused the ship to crash on the planet Alfava Metraxis. With the Clerics was River Song, released temporarily from prison to assist due to her knowledge of the creatures. She in turn had brought in the Doctor and Amy Pond. 

The Byzantium had landed in a labyrinth known as the Maze of the Dead, where the now extinct native population had once buried their dead. A human colony lay nearby, and Octavian was tasked with assessing and eliminating any risk which the Angel might pose to the settlers.

The Maze proved to be full of statues - and these turned out to be a whole army of Angels. The ship had been crashed here deliberately, so that its leaking radiation would reanimate the dormant Angels.

As part of River's timeline, he knew more about her than the Doctor did at this point, including the reasons she was incarcerated. At one point he pretended that he and River were engaged, so that he could accompany River and Doctor to the spaceship's flight deck.

Unfortunately, he was caught by a Weeping Angel and killed - though his death did buy the Doctor some time to deal with the creatures.

Played by: Iain Glen. Appearances: The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone (2010).

• Best known for the role of Jorah Mormont in Game of Thrones, he has also appeared in a trio of the Resident Evil movies.
• The first TV role for the Edinburgh-born actor was as a suspect in an episode of Scots police drama Taggart.
• More recently he played Bruce Wayne in the Titans series.

O is for... O'Brien, Graham

Companion to the Thirteenth Doctor. Graham first encountered her when she fell through the roof of a train he was travelling on. He and his wife Grace were on their way home to Sheffield, whilst she had just regenerated and fallen out of the crashing TARDIS. Graham had met Grace when he was undergoing treatment for cancer, she being his nurse.

The train came under attack by an entity known as a Gathering Coil - sent by an alien named T'zim Sha to locate one of the passengers. His race, the Stenza, hunted people across the cosmos, and one young local man named Karl had been selected as prey.

Graham and Grace took the Doctor into their home as she recovered from her regeneration, and so were drawn further into the alien encounter. Grace's grandson, Ryan, had earlier discovered the pod which T'zim Sha had used to travel to Earth, which in turn had involved WPC Yasmin - Yaz - Khan in events.

Graham struggled to get Ryan to accept him as his grandfather.

A retired bus driver, originally from East London, he used his network of old colleagues to help trace unusual activity in Sheffield to track down the alien.

Karl worked as a crane operator and the Doctor and her new found friends traced him to his place of work - just as T'zim Sha arrived. Unfortunately, in helping to destroy the Gathering Coil Grace was killed.

When the Doctor created a device that would help her travel to the location of the missing TARDIS, she underestimated its power and it took Graham with it - along with Ryan and Yaz. They materialised in deep space, but were picked up by two passing spaceships which were on an interplanetary race.

After having to traverse a hostile planet which had been used as a weapons testing lab by the Stenza, the TARDIS was retrieved.

Arriving in the town of Montgomery, Alabama, in late November 1955, Graham became involved in the US Civil Rights movement. The TARDIS crew had to prevent a racist criminal from the future from meddling in history, to ensure that Rosa Parks made her iconic bus protest. However, by monitoring her movements so closely it was Graham who inadvertently provided the stimulus to make her sit in a whites-only segregated area - he having taken the only other available seat.

On a medical spaceship, Graham and Ryan found themselves having to help an alien humanoid give birth, prompting them to name their child in their honour. This proved to be "Avocado" as this was the only thing they recalled as coming from Earth.

Graham found himself allocated the job as janitor at the Kerblam! retail  centre, and then became the Witchfinder General to King James I - a role which allowed him to wear a tall puritan-style hat.

An encounter with a blind girl in the forests of Norway led to an emotional reunion with Grace. This proved to be an illusion created by the Solitract - an entity confined to a pocket universe due to its destructive incompatibility with our universe.  Lonely, it created these illusions to lure people into staying with it.

Knowing what he had gone through, Ryan finally accepted him as his granddad at this point.

Graham then had the opportunity to get revenge on the being responsible for his wife's death, as the TARDIS landed on the planet Ranskoor Av Kolos. T'zim Sha had been transported here after his defeat at their hands in Sheffield. The Doctor urged him not to kill the alien as she rejected violence and did not want him to become just as bad as the Stenza. When the time came, Graham recalled what she said and refrained from killing T'zim Sha - imprisoning him instead.

Graham then had to deal with the return of Ryan's absentee father, whose arrival coincided with the rebirth of a lethal Reconnaissance Dalek. Graham was happy to give Aaron Sinclair a piece of his mind regarding his abandoning of Ryan and failure to attend Grace's funeral, but went on to help his grandson and his father reconcile.

Back on Earth, after spending time catching up with his friends, Graham found himself recruited to MI6. The Master had returned and was allied with a ruthless IT mogul and an extra-dimensional alien race to convert the human race into living computer storage. The mogul - Daniel Barton - was able to manipulate the news and social media to present them all as wanted criminals and they had to go on the run. Graham was rather fond of the gadgets they were issued by the head of MI6 - including laser-firing shoes.

Graham went on to win a free holiday at Tranquillity Spa. What appeared to be a luxurious location turned out to be a leisure complex build on the ravaged Earth of an alternative future.

During a visit to the city of Gloucester, Graham was teleported to an alien spaceship and encountered Captain Jack Harkness, who initially mistook him for the Doctor. Jack later nicknamed him the "Silver Fox".

Graham later began to suffer vivid dreams, in which he saw a young woman trapped in a cell which was suspended between two colliding planets. It transpired that all of the Doctor's companions and their friends were experiencing bizarre nightmares. Graham was linked to the TARDIS telepathic circuits to identify the exact location of the woman, as the Doctor had realised that his dream was actually a psychic projection and an appeal for help. This proved to be a trap, however, as the captive was a malign immortal being.

Graham experienced genuine ghosts at the Villa Diodati in Switzerland, where he got to meet Lord Byron and Mary and Percy Shelley. This led the TARDIS crew into the Cyber-war of the far future.

At one point Graham had to hide inside an empty Cyber-Warrior shell.

As the oldest human member of the TARDIS crew, Graham saw his role as a parent figure to the younger pair. As well as forging a closer bond with his grandson, he also took Yaz under his wing when he saw that she needed someone to talk to - the Doctor being too busy, or just too socially awkward to engage (as Graham found when he tried to talk to her about his fears about his cancer returning).

Following a second encounter with the Daleks and with Captain Jack, Graham's time in the TARDIS came to an end when Ryan elected to remain back in Sheffield, having missed his friends. Graham could have travelled on, but decided to stay with Ryan, not wishing to jeopardise their stronger relationship. The Doctor gave them each some psychic paper with which they could continue to investigate events on Earth in her absence.

Some time later, he encountered a previous companion of the Doctor - Ace - when investigating a newly active volcano. It was being triggered by a Dalek unit. He and Ace joined forces to defeat them.

The meeting with Ace, and then with Dan Lewis, prompted Graham to set up a support group for ex-companions, where they could meet to discuss their adventures with those who had similar experiences.

Played by: Bradley Walsh. Appearances: The Woman Who Fell To Earth (2019) to Revolution of the Daleks (2021), The Power of the Doctor (2022).

• Graham is the oldest human companion of the Doctor in the history of the series, to date. The only comparable companion characters was on audio - Evelyn Smythe.
• No matter what the planet, or the level of peril, Graham usually carried a cheese sandwich with him - just in case he missed lunch.
• Walsh is never off British TV. He is best known for his long-running role as host of the quiz show The Chase, and even devised his own quiz format, Cash Trapped. This proved to be overly complicated and almost impossible to win any money, so didn't last long. 
• Of late he has been seen in a reality TV series with his son, engaging in adventurous new activities and experiences - Bradley Walsh & Son: Breaking Dad.
• Acting roles have included a lengthy stint on Coronation Street, the remake of The Darling Buds of May, and crime drama Law & Order: UK.
• In 1979 he became a professional football player, with Ace's favourite team Brentford.
• Walsh appeared in The Sarah Jane Adventures story Day of the Clown, playing a shape-shifting being which fed on people's fears, appearing as different creepy circus characters.

O is for... Oak, Mr

Mr Oak was one of a pair of technicians who were the first to be infected by a malignant seaweed lifeform. His colleague was a man named Quill. Whilst the latter was a tall, cadaverous man, Mr Oak was his physical opposite.

They worked at the Euro Sea Gas compound on England's south coast and one of their tasks was the maintenance of the impeller shaft, through which the gas was pumped into the compound from the drilling rigs out at sea. The weed creatures used the pipelines to travel to the complex, and Oak and Quill became infected as they worked in the shaft. They were then tasked with carrying out various acts that would aid the creatures in their plan to spread their influence to the rest of the planet. This included sabotage and the recruitment of other infected individuals, and the covering up of the weed's activities. The creatures did not want their presence known until well-established on the surface.

Like others infected, Oak's body underwent a physical transformation. Seaweed-like growths began to cover his body and he could generate a toxic gas. The infected could also breath under water, though Oak did not need to use this ability as he and Quill confined their subterfuge only to the compound.

Once the weed creature had been driven back to its natural habitat beneath the sea, those infected were returned to normal.

Played by: John Gill. Appearances: Fury From The Deep (1968).

• Gill, who died in 2007, was a well-known face on British TV for many years. His career lasted some 65 years.
• He made two films with Roman Polanski - Pirates and Tess.

N is for... Nyssa

Nyssa of Traken was the teenage daughter of Consul Tremas, one of the ruling council of the Union of worlds. He had been designated Keeper-Elect, intended to take the place of the aged Keeper who currently supervised the Union using the energies of a bio-electric device known as the Source.

Her mother had died when she was quite, and Tremas had just married a fellow Consul named Kassia. Nyssa inherited one of her duties - the tending of a Melkur in the grove outside the Consul's chambers. These were beings who became calcified on arriving within the influence of the Source if they harboured evil intent. This particular Melkur has survived for many years, whereas most crumble to dust within a short space of time. It proved to be the Master's disguised TARDIS, as he aimed to usurp the powers of the Keepership. He brought Kassia under his mental influence, easily done as she had always been jealously possessive of it.

Despite her genteel upbringing, when Tremas allied himself with the Doctor and Kassia caused him to fall under suspicion, Nyssa was quite prepared to break her father and the time-travellers out of jail, and to stun one of the guards and threaten another with a weapon.

She and Adric then helped devise a plan to sabotage the Source after the Master had taken control over it, sacrificing his servant Kassia to do so.

Once the Master had been defeated the Doctor and Adric left Traken, but Tremas vanished soon after.

Nyssa was then visited by an enigmatic figure in white who helped her contact the TARDIS to inform the Doctor of what had happened. He realised that this was the work of the Master, and sure enough Tremas' body had been taken over by the evil Time Lord.

The white figure then transported Nyssa to the planet of Logopolis to rendezvous with the Doctor and Adric, and she learned the terrible truth of what had befallen her father when she was forced to confront him.

At first, however, she couldn't bring herself to accept that this was not Tremas and the Master was able to use her to threaten Tegan and Adric using a bracelet which controlled movement.

Soon after, she suffered further loss when an entropy field destroyed the entire Traken Union.

Now orphaned and homeless, she therefore joined the others in their travels in the TARDIS, first having to help the newly regenerated Doctor escape a series of traps laid by the Master. Despite knowing Adric slightly longer, and collaborating with him back home, it was with Tegan that she struck up the strongest friendship, whilst the Doctor quickly came to rely on her scientific abilities.

Her role aboard the TARDIS was often that of a mediator and peace-maker.

Captured by the alien Urbankans, she underwent the initial phases of a process to have her mind downloaded into an android body. The Doctor rescued her, but she collapsed soon after because of her ordeal and had to remain resting in the TARDIS during its visit to the planet Deva Loka, linked to a delta wave augmenter.

In 17th Century England, she was given the crucial task of disabling a Terileptil android - which she did by building a device which shook it to pieces.

In the 1920's, again in England, she encountered her lookalike, Ann Talbot. The TARDIS crew were mistakenly invited to a country house where Ann resided. She had a fiancé who was supposed to have died on an Amazonian expedition, but he was really being hidden in the house by his family. He had been driven insane and at one point abducted Nyssa in mistake for Ann.

Nyssa's final time spent with Adric was once more as mediator - when the boy fell out with the Doctor and wanted to return to E-Space. Whilst she was engaged in the TARDIS, he became trapped onboard a space freighter which crashed into the Earth following its seizure by Cybermen. Yet another tragedy she had to face.

In the planet's prehistory, she found herself contacted psychically by a race of aliens who had crash-landed here after fleeing their homeworld. Split into two psyches - good and evil - she was influenced by the better half to help them, coming across the Master once again.

Tegan temporarily left the TARDIS, and Nyssa travelled alone with the Doctor for a short time.

When he was forced to return to Gallifrey and came under sentence of death to prevent Omega from stealing his body in order to transfer from the universe of anti-matter into this one, Nyssa once again betrayed her genteel upbringing by threatening the President of the High Council of Time Lords at gunpoint to try to save him.

After an encounter with the Mara on the planet Manussa, in which Nyssa helped the Doctor single-handedly (due to Tegan's possession by the evil entity), she had a meeting with the Doctor's old friend the Brigadier. The TARDIS picked up a new passenger - schoolboy Turlough - and whilst Tegan did not trust the boy she advocated giving him the benefit of the doubt. He was actually under the sway of the Black Guardian, so Tegan had been right not to trust him - though in the long term he did prove to be a friend to the Doctor. Infected by a mutation, Nyssa and Tegan at one point began to age as the TARDIS moved forward in time - and regressed to childhood when it reversed.

Nyssa eventually left the TARDIS when it arrived at the huge space station known as Terminus. Nyssa contracted Lazar's Disease, but was cured with a dose of radiation. She realised that the process was not being applied effectively, and elected to stay behind and use her scientific knowledge to help refine the treatment.

Played by: Sarah Sutton. Appearances: The Keeper of Traken (1981) to Terminus (1983).

• Nyssa was created by Johhny Byrne specifically for his Traken story, and it was only later that JNT decided to retain her as a companion. As she wasn't created by the production tea, Byrne was paid a fee for every story she appeared in.
• As a later addition, the character is not always best served by stories - either sitting them out all together (Kinda) or being stuck in the TARDIS (The Visitation, Earthshock). She does get a whole story to herself, including a double role for Sutton, in Black Orchid.
• Spin-off material has the Doctor and Nyssa travel for a number of years between Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity, but there is no evidence of this on screen. Quite the opposite, as she retains the same costume (she'll begin changing gear soon after) and they discuss events of the previous two stories as though both have only recently happened.
• If you regard The Collection trailers as canon then Nyssa does have a reunion with Tegan in 2023 - only for it to turn out to be a deception by the Mara.
• Sutton had been a child star, with lead roles in Alice Through The Looking Glass and Brian Hayles' The Moon Stallion.
• Tom Baker used to call her "Miss Basingstoke" when he discovered that she came from there.

Episodes - Afterlife: Mondasian Cybermen

For a great many years it looked as though the Cyberman design seen in The Tenth Planet would be their one and only on-screen appearance.

On their return, just a few months later, the Cybermen would be totally redesigned to look more robotic, mainly due to the problems experienced by the actors wearing the original cruder costumes.

They might have been absent from TV, but the Mondasian Cybermen did live on - initially in a quite unexpected place.

The whole point of comic strips is that you can create anything you want, so long as you have imagination and the skill to draw it. It seems good reference material also helps...

Patrick Troughton was already the Doctor, and the new version of the Cybermen seen on screen, when they made their first appearance in the Doctor Who comic strip in TV Comic. The visual material given to artist John Canning for "The Coming of the Cybermen" proved to derive entirely from their first story.

This first adventure saw the Doctor, with grandchildren John and Gillian, discover an abandoned spaceship on the planet Minot. This proved to belong to the Cybermen, a group of whom then turn up to retrieve it. The Doctor is trapped on board as it takes off, and he has to find a way to escape back to the planet.

At one point he specifically describes the Cybermen as his greatest enemies - this being the period in which the Daleks were still tied up in their own strip elsewhere.

Other adventures followed, in which the Cybermen attempted an attack on Earth using a burrowing mole-machine ("Cyber-Mole"). In other strips, the ever growing list of allergies which the Cybermen were susceptible to was foreshadowed by them being destroyed by flower pollen (a story called "Flower Power").

"Eskimo Joe" saw them in another snowy setting - and includes the surreal image of Cybermen on skis. "The Cyber Empire" had them enslaving humans and building a Cyber-Hovercraft, which the Doctor promptly stole. A Cyber-Controller is mentioned.

Throughout their series of adventures, the comic took the decision not to update the Cybermen at any point, even when the strip began to feature newer enemies such as the Quarks, and companion Jamie.

The Mondasian Cybermen had been popular with at least one of the classic Doctors. Peter Davison recalled:

"The Cybermen were always my favourite adversaries, dating back to when I watched them with William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton. I remembered they'd changed entirely since those days. They used to have a sort of sock over their heads, and a headlamp on their foreheads, and they talked in a very strange voice".

They would later become identified with another Doctor...

A few months before Davison took over the DWM comic strip, his predecessor encountered an abandoned Mondasian Cyberman in "Junkyard Demon". It was found in a scrapyard presided over by Flotsam and Jetsam. Reactivated it even tried to take over the TARDIS. In the end it ran out of power.

Big Finish revisited the Mondasians in the highly acclaimed "Spare Parts", which told an origins story for the Cybermen as the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa arrived on Mondas. This acted as an inspiration for elements of The Rise of the Cybermen / Age of Steel. 

The company also presented a Mondasian Cyberman in "The Silver Turk", featuring the Eighth Doctor and set in 19th Century Vienna. Like The Haunting of Villa Diodati, this sought to link Cybermen to the Frankenstein story via Mary Shelley's inclusion.

Artist Adrian Salmon also lent his talents to a strip which featured a Cyberman / Silurian / Sea Devil crossover, in Mondas' ancient times.

The first sighting of an original Cyberman in modern times came with the 50th Anniversary drama An Adventure in Space and Time. This dealt mainly with the earliest days of the show, but then had to move on to Hartnell's departure from the series, with recreations from The Tenth Planet. 

At one point we see an actor in Cyberman costume, smoking by the TARDIS prop. He is identified as "Reg" - so Reg Whitehead.

Mondasian Cybermen were finally back for real in The World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls, as a sort of farewell gift to their other big Doctor fan - Peter Capaldi. The Doctor and company encountered a new race of these Cybermen which evolved on a colony ship which originated on Mondas. It was made clear in this story that Cybermen can evolve anywhere that you find humanoids living in extreme circumstances, so the Mondasian design might well have been the ancestor of all later versions - other that the alternative universe Cybus ones.

This story then segued into Twice Upon A Time...

Capaldi's swansong incorporated the final moments of The Tenth Planet into an adventure in which the First and most recent Doctors compared notes on regeneration.

The episode opened with some recreations from 1966, and one of these included the Cybermen. Unfortunately this scene was deleted (no pun intended) but can be seen on the DVD / Blu-ray extras.

It should be noted that the new incarnation of the Mondasian Cybermen only pays homage to the originals. They are not exact copies by any means. The one in the 50th Anniversary drama was far more faithful to the original Sandra Reid versions than the Capaldi ones.

Episode 134: The Tenth Planet (4)

Synopsis:

Polly desperately asks Ben if he succeeded in sabotaging the Z-Bomb, but he is still groggy and cannot remember. The countdown reaches zero and the rockets flare...

Seconds later, however, the engines shut down.

Cutler is furious and demands to know from Barclay how long it will take to repair the fault, but he calmly states that there is not enough time - confirmed by the Doctor, who returns to the tracking room. He explains cryptically to his young companions that he is subject to some external influence, and that his old body is wearing a bit thin...

The General's mind snaps, and he threatens to kill them. So fixated is he that he fails to heed warnings from a radar technician that another spaceship has landed close by.

A trio of Cybermen break in and kill Cutler before he can shoot Barclay and the time-travellers. 

The new leader is Krang, who informs the tracking room crew that they are aware that a missile has been aimed at Mondas. He demands that it be disarmed.

The Doctor attempts to reason with him, stating that he knows Mondas is doomed due to its excessive energy absorption, then offering to help the Cybermen. As the creatures confer, the Doctor explains that he is merely trying to buy time. The tenth planet is rapidly destroying itself.

The Cybermen have now landed in force and taken over the planet's key installations - including Wigner's Geneva ISC headquarters. Their overall controller - Gern - is there.

Krang commands that a number of scientists go to the silo room to disarm the Z-Bomb. Polly will be taken to their spaceship as a hostage to force their compliance. 

Ben agrees to go with Barclay and Dyson to the silo room, with the Doctor urging him to delay their work as long as possible.

The young seaman wonders why the Cybermen do not carry out the task themselves, and they realise that there is something in the area which is a threat to them. They realise that this is radiation, and their theory proves correct as the Cybermen on guard are forced to retreat when tempted inside after Dyson feigns illness. 

They will lock themselves in the room and hold out there until Mondas destroys itself. Krang gives them an ultimatum to leave the silo, and the Doctor will now also be sent to the spaceship as a further hostage. The Doctor warns Ben over the intercom that the Cybermen are now plotting to use the Z-Bomb to destroy the Earth, in order to save their own planet.

The group in the silo elect to go on the offensive as they know the Cybermen will attempt to break in shortly. Sure enough Krang sends Cybermen to the room armed with a paralysing gas.

In the Cybership, the Doctor and Polly notice a strange vibration affecting the craft, which he believes to be a sign that the Cybermen draw all their power from the planet. Polly is concerned by his failing health.

Ben seeks a weapon, and Barclay confirms that the base's reactor has removeable radioactive fuel rods which can be portable for short periods of time.

Krang and the rest of the Cybermen are destroyed. Unsure how many of the creatures are waiting nearby, Ben decides to use one of their communications devices to lure them here.

With the fuel rods removed, the lights and heating fail and in the darkness a third group of Cybermen enter the base. Before they can do anything, however, everyone's attention is drawn to a monitor screen showing Mondas. They see the planet begin to break up.

The Cybermen across the planet collapse and die - having been totally reliant on drawing their energy from their homeworld, just as the Doctor had suspected.

As Barclay and Dyson concentrate on getting the power supply reinstated and ensuring the safe return of the Zeus 5 capsule, Ben slips away to find Polly and the Doctor. He releases them and the increasingly frail Doctor wanders out into the snow to get back to the TARDIS. His concerned companions follow, and initially find the ship's doors locked against them.

The Doctor begins operating controls on the console, before the ship starts to function by itself. He collapses to the floor as Ben and Polly finally manage to enter - just in time to see his features begin to blur and change.

Seconds later, a smaller, dark-haired man lies on the spot where the Doctor had been...

Next time: The Power of the Daleks

Data:

Written by Kit Pedler & Gerry Davis

Recorded: Saturday 8th October 1966 - Riverside Studio 1

First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 29th October 1966

Ratings: 7.5 million / AI 47

Designer: Peter Kindred

Director: Derek Martinus

Additional cast: Harry Brooks (Krang), Reg Whitehead (Jarl), Gregg Palmer (Gern), Bruce Wells (Cyberman), Peter Hawkins (Cyberman voices)

Critique:

As we mentioned last week, the final half of The Tenth Planet was written by Gerry Davis alone due to Kit Pedler's ill health over the summer of 1966, though the finished Episodes 3 and 4 credited both men.

Davis kept more detailed notes of his work, so we can enjoy a much closer look at the development of the final instalment.

The paralysing gas was first used by the Cybermen at the beginning of the episode - using it to break into the base in the first place. An extra scene set in Geneva saw Wigner demand that the Doctor make contact with the ruling body on Mondas to negotiate a peaceful resolution. It was claimed that radio contact would be most effective from the South Pole. 

The Cybermen spoke now of taking only certain individuals to Mondas, and they would need to be converted during the space flight to survive there.

There was some dialogue about Cutler's last hours - with the Doctor advising that Terry Cutler should never know about his father's behaviour, and indeed should not be told he is dead at all until after he has safely landed. The Doctor also spoke of some short-term disruptions to Earth's weather as a result of Mondas' destruction.

It has been noted by fans that the Cyberman decision to use the Z-Bomb to destroy Earth seems to come out of nowhere, and it is assumed that this is a sign of Davis' late take-over of the scripts due to Kit Pedler's illness. Whilst Pedler strove to maintain some sort of ambiguity about the Cybermen's motivations, Davis presents them as much more straightforward villains.

Something which remains unclear is the exact nature of Mondas. Has its return to the Solar System been a natural phenomenon - some sort of vast elliptical orbit - or has it been deliberately guided back into the Solar System? 

Krail simply states that the planet has now returned. There is nothing in the dialogue to state that the planet was artificially powered here - though this is what Attack of the Cybermen will later claim.

The other issue is the energy drain. Is this a deliberate technological process initiated by the Cybermen, or some natural process of the planet? When asked how they are going to stop the energy drain Krail states: "We cannot. It is beyond our powers".

It can't simply be a machine that can be switched on and off - otherwise the Cybermen would have stopped Mondas from absorbing too much energy.

Mondas actually burned up on Tuesday 30th August - when a model of the planet was attacked with a blow-torch at Ealing Film Studios.

Establishing shots of the Cybership in relation to the base, seen in earlier episodes, were reused for this instalment.

The other filming for this episode took place on Wednesday 31st, for the scene of Ben and Polly returning to the TARDIS.

Patrick Troughton had been contracted for the changeover sequence on Friday 16th September. It had been decided to record this first on Hartnell's final studio day, due to its technical complexity. The older actor was very upset, and his successor went out of his way to help support him. 

The key member of the production team for this was vision mixer Shirley Coward, who came up with the flaring effect that bleached out the scene as the two camera outputs were mixed. This came about by chance as one of the mixing desks at Riverside had a fault and was not actually supposed to be used.

Unlike later changeovers - where the outgoing Doctor was recorded on the floor, and then replaced by the successor stepping in and lying in exactly the same spot - Hartnell and Troughton were recorded simultaneously, lying on different sections of the TARDIS set's floor, each with a different camera pointing at them from an identical angle.

This required a considerable amount of time to line up, and it was rehearsed from 6 - 6:30pm,  then recorded over the next half hour. It would then be played into studio at the conclusion of the studio session, which was due to run between 8:30 - 10pm.

Hartnell also had a still image taken of his face - to be used in a superimposed shot on a mirror in the next episode.

The same three actors from Episode 2 - Whitehead, Brooks and Palmer - returned to play different Cybermen. They were joined by a fourth Cyberman, played by Bruce Wells, who had been used on the Ealing filming.

Given names in the scripts, only Krang is actually referred to by name in dialogue. Krang is also given some sort of rank or title - "Regos".

Peter Hawkins joined Roy Skelton to provide additional Cyberman voices. The latter voiced Krang, whilst Hawkins voiced Gern.

Bill King, of the Trading Post effects company, handled the deaths of Cutler and others, with the smoke effect seen in Episode 2. King also arranged the disintegrating Cyberman chest units. All seven Cyberman costumes were provided by Shawcraft, to be arranged empty on the floor to show the destroyed creatures.

Recording breaks through the evening were used mainly to move Cybermen from set to set, and for the use of gas effects. Wells was the Cyberman seen in the spaceship scenes with Polly and the Doctor.

For his final scenes as the Doctor, Hartnell stood on the darkened TARDIS set which had lights pulsing behind the semi-transparent roundels. Close-ups showed the controls operating by themselves, and the materialisation sound was heard throughout, following an assortment of electronic noise.

At no point is the process ever named as a "regeneration". That term was used for the first time only when Jon Pertwee handed over to Tom Baker, and was then applied retroactively to earlier changes. 

We'll discuss the first changeover more fully next time.

The Doctor's final lines as scripted were: "No, no, I can't go through with it - I can't. I can't. I will not give in".

As broadcast, his final words are: "Ah yes, thank you. It's good. Keep warm", as Ben hands him his cloak.

The final 15 minutes of studio time did not require Hartnell, so he could go off and get ready for the farewell party that had been organised to take place at the home of Innes Lloyd. He was very emotional, and when Lloyd gave him a lift home around 1am he stressed to him how he could now enjoy a well-deserved rest.

William Hartnell claimed in interviews at the time that the decision to leave Doctor Who had been a mutual one - though he contradicted this in a letter to fan Ian McLachlan in 1968. He also told journalists that he had a number of exciting new projects lined up, including job offers from Australia.

See below for what he actually did next. 

His career quickly ground to a halt as his health deteriorated, with only a couple of small screen roles open to him. 

By the time Barry Letts contacted him to feature in The Three Doctors, for the programme's 10th Anniversary, he could no longer work at all. His role in the story was quickly reduced and he appeared only in pre-filmed scenes at Ealing, reading his lines from boards.

Intensely proud of his time as the Doctor - the definitive article you might say - towards the end he could not recall ever having been in the show. 

He died, aged 67, on 23rd April 1975.

Trivia:

• The ratings remain healthy as far as audience numbers go, but the final instalment sees a further drop in the appreciation figure - though only by a single point. 
• Innes Lloyd and Gerry Davis were very happy with the story, and decided that it should be used as a template for future stories.
• The last great dialogue fluff of the Hartnell era features in this episode - but it isn't courtesy of the star. Michael Craze trips over the phrase "grotty planet Mondas" - muddling up all the vowels to talk about the "plonet Mandos".
• The final Cyberman leader to enter Snowcap is named Shav in the scripts.
• The story has been recreated twice in recent years - featuring David Bradley as William Hartnell / the First Doctor on both occasions. The regeneration sequence was included in the 50th Anniversary drama An Adventure in Space and Time, with Reece Shearsmith playing Patrick Troughton:

The closing moments of the episode were then slotted into the final Peter Capaldi story - Twice Upon A Time. The Doctor basically has a whole adventure with his future self between leaving the Cybership and reaching the TARDIS. 

This also featured recreated scenes from earlier in the story - one of which included the new Mondasian Cyberman costumes from World Enough And Time / The Doctor Falls. However, only one of these scenes, from Episode 2, made it into the finished programme.

• It was always intended that The Tenth Planet was to be retained by the BBC as a complete set of 16mm film recordings. The video tapes were scrubbed in October 1969. In November 1973 the fourth episode was borrowed by Blue Peter in order that a clip of the regeneration could be used in a 10th Anniversary feature. What happened to the episode thereafter remains a mystery, though there are plenty of rumours. Widely regarded as the show's "Holy Grail" missing episode, it was actually beaten by the final instalment of The Daleks' Master Plan in a recent DWM poll.
• The missing episode can be enjoyed in a number of ways, as telesnaps were taken and the soundtrack exists. These were used for the VHS release of the story - despite Michael Craze having filmed links for an earlier abandoned release (see blog post The Art of The Tenth Planet). For the DVD, the episode was animated to a high quality - unlike most of the subsequent animated missing stories:

• William Hartnell's next significant work on leaving Doctor Who was actually in touring pantomime. Interviewed by local TV, as can be seen as a DVD extra, this was not a happy experience for the actor. The show also drew poor reviews (see below). Hartnell had little more than a cameo role, as the cobbler, in Puss In Boots. He first appeared in his TV costume, but then was seen in panto outfit, including a Harpo Marx-style wig. One of the issues with the production was that the venues were not theatres but a cinema chain, which only had shallow stages and were not geared up for this kind of show. Performances were said to feel under-rehearsed and there were sound and other technical issues. That headline says it all...