OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 359
STORY NUMBER: 070
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 05 January 1974
WRITER: Robert Holmes
DIRECTOR: Alan Bromly
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 10.6 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - The Time Warrior
EPISODE FORMAT: 625 video
"Linx's spaceship is just about ready for takeoff, and when that happens, there'll be a tremendous explosion and all that will be left of that castle will be a pile of stones!"
Sarah knocks Linx's aim off and Ruebish, listening to the Doctor, strikes the probic vent on the back of the Sontaran's neck knocking him out. The Doctor teaches Ruebish how to break Linx's conditioning. While Sarah infiltrates the kitchens and drugs the food he distracts Irongron but is captured. Sarah rescues him and both retreat to Lord Edward's castle while the drug takes effect. Returning with Hal the Doctor then instructs Ruebish in the use of Linx's time device to return the scientists home. Irongron, enraged at the drugging of his troops blames Linx and attacks him but Linx slays him. As Linx activates the engines of his ship Hal shoots an arrow into his probic vent slaying him with the resulting explosion from the faulty ship destroying the castle. Hal watches in amazement as the Doctor & Sarah leave in the Tardis.
And that's that. Suddenly the mighty Sontaran warrior has a fatal weakness, which hasn't even been mentioned before!
LINX: Get up! Get back to work!It then gets exploited not once but twice during the episode! First Ruebish bashes him on the vent knocking him out, then Hal shoots him with an arrow!
DOCTOR: Linx, can't you see that your prisoners are physically exhausted? They've had no sleep and nothing to eat for days.
LINX: They can still work.
DOCTOR: Not for much longer.
LINX: I owe these primitives nothing. My only concern is to rejoin our glorious struggle for freedom.
DOCTOR: That's such an old tune. Don't you know there's no such thing as the super race?
LINX: Your Time Lord philosophy is egalitarian twaddle. It is a weakness.
DOCTOR: Every species has its own weakness, Linx. For instance, you can only be stunned by a blow on the probic vent, that small hole at the back of your neck.
LINX: In our case, Doctor, it is a strength, because it means we must always face our enemies Now, to return to the question of your demise. I think it would be better if you witnessed first the destruction of your female companion.
Interestingly at no point does the story say what it was for ...... Hmmm, I wonder when that's made clear? Now I know it's what the Sontarans use to feed/recharge, and you could have quite easily introduced that subject earlier with Bloodaxe inviting Lynx to eat with them, but no....
As you might have gathered from my comments neither this episode or the entire serial has exactly set my world on fire. It's competently done, it just doesn't do anything for me. Sorry.
We've seen Sheila Fay playing Meg, Irongron's serving girl, in previous episodes but the role is more prominent here. IMDB makes it clear she had a decent career but the only thing I have seen that she';s been in is the Yes Minister episode The Greasy Pole where she plays a Woman Protester.
Here Meg has two women working under her. The lady seen most frequently and clearly in the episode, on the right is Mary Rennie She returns as a villager in Planet of Spiders, a peasant/traveller in Masque of Mandragora, a guide in The Leisure Hive, a citizen in Full Circle, one of the crowd in the marketplace in Snakedance and a citizen in Planet of Fire.
The woman in the middle of the picture manages to stay in the background right up until that moment! She is Bella Emberg making a slightly more visible appearance than she did as a nurse in The Silurians! She later plays Mrs. Croot in the new series episode Love & Monsters. At this early stage of her career working as an extra she can been seen in the Doomwatch episodes You Killed Toby Wren as a woman and The Islanders as a St. Simons' Islander and also The Tomorrow People episode The Heart of Sogguth: Beat the Drum as a Cleaning Lady.
Linx's dungeon workshop is a feast of reused props: On the desk there's a control bank from UFO again.
On the back wall we can see two panels from the ICT 1300, as previously seen in Terror of the Autons, Mind of Evil, Claws of Axos, The Sea Devils, The Time Monster & The Green Death as well as my UFO control panels. The photo gallery on the DVD has the best shots of them:
The photo gallery also reveals there's a third panel in the dungeon workshop, on the wall to the right of the picture. When that wall is shown in the programme the panel is obscured by Lynx's ship!
Location filming for this story took place at Peckforton Castle in Cheshire on the 7th - 9th May 1973, the week following the broadcast of Planet of the Daleks 5. The Time Warrior, although it launched the show's eleventh season, was filmed as the last story of the tenth recording block.
The building, which was used for both Irongron's and Edward's castles, is in fact a Victorian folly built for Lord Tollemache in the style of a medieval castle!
The novel of the Time Warrior was written by Terrance Dicks but apparently Robert Holmes was originally commissioned to novelise his own scripts. He eventually managed to finish the first chapter, gave up then phoned his friend Terrance Dicks and asked him to finish it!
The Time Warrior was released as a compilation video in 1989, one of the last videos to be released in this format. It is one of only three, the others being Seeds of Death & Talons of Weng Chiang, not to have a subsequent episodic VHS release. It was released on DVD on 3rd September 2007 the last of these three stories to get a DVD release and thus the last Doctor Who story to be released episodically. It was also included in the Doctor Who : Bred for War Boxset which collects The Time Warrior with the other three Sontaran stories: The Sontaran Experiment, The Invasion Of Time & The Two Doctors. Bred for War was released on 5th May 2008 to tie in with their return in the fourth series of the new Doctor Who.
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