283 The Mind of Evil: Episode One

EPISODE: The Mind of Evil: Episode One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 283
STORY NUMBER: 056
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 30 January 1971
WRITER: Don Houghton
DIRECTOR: Timothy Combe
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 6.1 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - The Mind of Evil
EPISODE FORMAT: 16mm b&w film recording recoloured manually

"UNIT, sir, was set up to deal with new and unusual menaces to mankind. And in my view, this machine of yours is just that!"

The Doctor & Jo go to see a demonstration of the Keller machine process at Stangmoor Prison. Prisoner Barnham is connected to the machine which drains his evil impulses storing them within the machine. Unit is overseeing security at a peace conference where Captain Chin-Lee reports some documents have been stolen their delegate. After leaving Unit she is seen burning them in a local park. Later she phones Unit reporting the Chinese delegate has been murdered. A medical student watching the Keller process demonstration is found dead in the room with the machine looking like he's been killed by rats. Professor Kettering, who is responsible for the machine, is found dead in the same room soon after appearing to have drowned. The Doctor examines the machine and finds himself surrounded by fire.

Ah Mind of Evil. Don Houghton, the writer of Inferno, is back so I've got high hopes for this. My memory of it was good, but it's been a few years since I last saw it, probably not since the DVD came out. When I watched it for the Episode a Day blog, it was the first time my wife Liz had seen it. Unfortunately the experience didn't go well for her as she takes issue with the "draining of evil impulses" concept of the Keller Machine

KETTERING: Professor Emil Keller, the inventor of this process, discovered that anti-social behaviour was governed by certain negative or evil impulses. Now this machine, the Keller machine, extracts these impulses and leaves a rational, well-balanced individual.
DOCTOR: It doesn't.
JO: What?
KETTERING: May I be permitted to continue?
DOCTOR: Oh, yes. Yes, please do.
KETTERING: Thank you. The condemned man is placed here after being tranquillised, with his head under this dome. A series of probes are attached to his skull so as to connect with the neural circuits. The extraction process is controlled here. The negative impulses are stored in that reservoir box there.
DOCTOR: Where do they go after that?
KETTERING: Nowhere, sir. I repeat, they are stored in the box.
DOCTOR: Which is now full of these negative or evil impulses.
KETTERING: Not full. The indicator registers only sixty five percent at this time. The machine has been used very successfully in Switzerland. A hundred and twelve cases have been processed to date and today we shall witness the one hundred and thirteenth.

She then takes offence at Mike Yates referring to Chin-Lee as a "dolly bird".

CHIN LEE: I must warn you that this puts the success of the peace conference in grave jeopardy. We suspect the imperialist Americans of this crime.
BRIGADIER: Naturally. I assure you that every effort will be made to locate the missing papers and to punish whoever is responsible.
CHIN LEE: Any further trouble and our delegation will withdraw from this conference.
BRIGADIER: More trouble.
YATES: Mmm, pity. She's quite a dolly.

Is this the only time we see Mike take an interest in a woman? He was envisaged as a potential love interest for Jo but ignores her most of the time!

The episode is a bit odd, there's two separate threads to it, the machine in Stranmoor Prison and the Peace Conference which seem to be completely unrelated till a chance remark made by the Governor:

DOCTOR: Tell me, how long has this machine been installed?
GOVERNOR: Nearly a year. Emil Keller came over from Switzerland to supervise the installation.
DOCTOR: I see. Did he have an assistant?
GOVERNOR: Mmm hmm. A rather attractive Chinese girl.

Playing Captain Chin Lee is Pik Sen Lim making her only Doctor Who appearance. She's the wife of writer Don Houghton and helped Jon Pertwee with his Hokkian Chinese dialogue in the scenes in episodes 2 & 3. You can also see her in The Professionals as Chai Ling in Take Away and in Psychoville as the Old Japanese Lady in the Halloween Special.

The most famous member of the guest cast in this frst episode is Michael Sheard playing the Prison Doctor Dr. Summers, his second Doctor Who role after Rhos in the Ark. He look rather different without his moustache, I think this is the only time I've ever seen him clean shaven! He returns in Pyramids of Mars as Laurence Scarman, Invisible Enemy as Station Supervisor Lowe, Castrovalva as Mergrave and finally, with more than a little bit of an in-joke nod to his role as teacher Mr Bronson in Grange Hill, in Remembrance of the Daleks as the Headmaster. If you don't know who from any of these then you'll have seen him as Admiral Ozzel in The Empire Strikes Back. He plays Hitler five times including the The Tomorrow People story Hitler's Last Secret and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. He was in our favourite Adam Adamant Lives! D for Destruction as the Major, which features Second Doctor Patrick Troughton and a load of Power Station Control Panels, The Sweeney as Mr. Penketh in Hit and Run, Space: 1999 as Dr. Darwin King in the superb Dragon's Domain, The Professionals as Merton in When the Heat Cools Off, Blake's 7 as Klegg in Powerplay and Raiders of the Lost Ark as a U-Boat Captain.

Simon Lack, who was Professor Kettering in episode 1, later returns as Zadek in The Androids of Tara. He's also plays Andrew Seton in the Doomwatch episode In the Dark which airs between episodes 3 & 4 of this story.

The Prison Governor is played by Raymond Westwell. I do wonder about writer Don Houghton's television viewing while watching this episode:

GOVERNOR: Ah, Doctor Summers. Any news for us?
SUMMERS: I've got the post mortem report.
KETTERING:: Well?
SUMMERS: The deceased's name was Arthur Linwood, a medical student in his final year.
DOCTOR: Yes, yes, yes, but what did he die of?
SUMMERS: Heart failure.
KETTERING: Watching the process was too much for him.
SUMMERS: But he didn't have a weak heart, Mister Kettering.
DOCTOR: Anything in his medical history?
SUMMERS: Yes, I called his hospital. He suffered from a fear of certain animals.
DOCTOR: Oh, which ones?
SUMMERS: Well, apparently, in the laboratory he was absolutely terrified of
DOCTOR: Rats?
SUMMERS: Yes.�
DOCTOR: Tell me, these marks on his face on his face and neck, these bites and scratches, could they have been caused by rats?
SUMMERS: Certainly they could, yes.
GOVERNOR: But there are no rats in this room. There's none in the entire prison.
SUMMERS: Yet all the indications are that he was attacked by a hoard of them, and the shock killed him.
KETTERING: You must be mistaken.
DOCTOR: But Linwood is dead.
KETTERING: Because of heart failure!
DOCTOR: No, Professor Kettering, because of this machine.

Did he see the Doomwatch episode Tomorrow The Rat the previous year?

When I watched this episode for the episode A Day Blog I said:

I'm watching this episode on video as a black & white telerecording.

Mind of Evil is the only Doctor Who story recorded in colour that no colour episodes exist from in any form, though there is a brief clip from a later episode in colour. This first episode is unique amongst the b&w telerecordings of colour episodes, at least of the ones that no longer exist in colour, in that the process to record the episodes was applied correctly. The colour on a TV screen is made up of tiny red, green & blue dots combined together. Just pointing a B&W camera at a TV screen to record an episode captures these dots in the picture which can occasionally cause interference. Here the correct filter to screen out the dots was used which renders useless the Chroma Dot Colour Recovery Process, invented by BBC Engineer James Insell and used to colour Ambassadors of Death.

So for this episode only the services of YouTube colourist Babelcolour aka Stuart Humphryes were pressed into action. As the Restoration Team Website describes Key Frames were manually coloured with computer software being used to interpolate the colour on the intervening frames. Personally I think they've done a great job: this episode looks amazing now!

Two day after this episode was broadcast Flight into Yesterday, the 7th episode of Doomwatch Season Two, was shown on BBC1.

282 Terror of the Autons: Episode Four

EPISODE: Terror of the Autons: Episode Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 282
STORY NUMBER: 055
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 23 January 1971
WRITER: Robert Holmes
DIRECTOR: Barry Letts
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 8.4 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: Mannequin Mania Box Set - Spearhead from Space / Terror of the Autons
EPISODE FORMAT: 16mm b&w film recording recoloured using 525 off air video

"Too late, Doctor. The Nestenes are here!"

The Brigadier saves the Doctor from the phone cable. Unit finds the tour coach and lays on an RAF strike against it. Jo accidentally sets off the daffodil the Doctor found by using a radio to contact the Brigadier near it. The Daffodil spits a layer of plastic over her nose and mouth but the Doctor sprays solvent over it dissolving it. The Master arrives and takes them prisoner, escorting them to the coach which causes the Brigadier to cancel the air strike. The Master drives to the radio telescope to summon the Nestenes to Earth, but as he's doing so the Doctor & Jo escape. The Doctor & Brigadier confront the Master causing him to abandon his plan which breaks the Nestenes' link to the Autons which are battling Unit troops.

The Master escapes to the coach, but emerges and is shot. However the body is revealed to be a disguised Rex Farrel, used as a distraction to allow the Master to escape in the coach.

BRIGADIER: Well, we found the abandoned coach but the Master disappeared completely.
JO: He's probably left Earth by now.
DOCTOR: Oh, no.
JO: What makes you so sure?
DOCTOR: Well his Tardis can't go anywhere. Not without this.
BRIGADIER: And what the dickens is that?
DOCTOR: That's a dematerialisation circuit. It's very complicated.
JO: So the one he took from you
DOCTOR: Belonged to my Tardis, yes. Yes, I've been trying to repair it for months.
JO: And now he's stuck here on Earth.
DOCTOR: Yes, I'm afraid so.
BRIGADIER: Think he'll turn up again, Doctor?
DOCTOR: yes, bound to.
JO: You don't seem very worried about it.
DOCTOR: I'm not. As a matter of fact, Jo, I'm rather looking forward to it.

An all action finale including an RAF jet attack and pitch battle between Unit troops & Autons while the Doctor tries to get the Master to stop what he's doing..... and succeeds by pointing out a gaping flaw in the Master's plan that just hasn't occurred to him!

MASTER: Too late, Doctor. The Nestenes are here! An amateur landing, of course. Not the way I planned it.
DOCTOR: If only we could shut off the power.
MASTER: Impossible. They've taken control. No one can stop them now. Your precious little planet is finished.
DOCTOR: If we're finished, then you're finished too.
MASTER: Nonsense! I helped them to come here.�
DOCTOR: Do you really think that that thing will distinguish between you and us?

After that it's a simple matter of applying a variation on the Third Doctor's favourite piece of technobabble:

BRIGADIER: Can't you do anything, Doctor?
DOCTOR: Not unless we change the polarity.
MASTER: Whilst the transfer shift is still open?
DOCTOR: It will fling them right out into space!

Of the three new characters introduced in this story, the Master does the best as he is unveiled as an old school, moustache twirling villain... Jo doesn't get a lot to do but still gets hypnotised, captured, ask for explanations and do things by accident. However this meant she has effectively ticked every box that Terrance Dicks & Barry Letts asked her to.

Captain Yates fares worst of the three, effectively being just another "interchangeable Jimmy". He'll get more to do as time goes on, but his real glory days are 3 years in the future. If anything here he hogs screen time that Benton could have filled just as usefully.

One more ingenious method of death this week as Jo accidentally activates the daffodil, which sprays a killer film of plastic over her nose and mouth!

We've had people killed by shrinking, suffocated by chairs and murdered by killer dolls plus the Doctor's been attacked by a telephone cable so Terror of the Autons stands very high on the list of stories with odd ways to die in it!

A couple of location's to note: UNIT's pursuit of the coach takes them along Mill Lane in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire.

The UNIT Motorcyclist was filmed spotting the coach at the nearby Hodgemoor Woods, used several times in this story. Stuntman Roy Street plays the motorcyclist: He returns in The Curse of Peladon as a Guard.

We're back at Zouches Farm Relay Station, last seen in episode one, for the climatic battle and easily spottable amongst the UNIT soldiers is another stuntman Alan Chuntz He had made his Doctor Who debut in The Seeds of Death where he played Harvey and returned to play a Thug in The Ambassadors of Death and a Technician, UNIT Soldier & RSF Soldier in Inferno. He returns as a Prisoner in The Mind of Evil, Omega's Champion in The Three Doctors, a Security Guard in The Green Death, a Guard in Planet of the Spiders, a Kaled Soldier in Genesis of the Daleks, the Chauffeur in The Seeds of Doom and a Guard in State of Decay. Also playing a UNIT Soldier, but less easily spotted, is Les Conrad who was a Tavern Customer in The Massacre, a Unit Soldier in The Invasion, a Pirate in The Space Pirates, an 1862 Union Soldier and an Alien Guard in The War Games, a UNIT Soldier in Doctor Who and the Silurians, a UNIT Soldier, Control Room Assistant & Policeman in The Ambassadors of Death and an RSF soldier in Inferno. He returns as a Prisoner & Military Policeman in The Mind of Evil, a Colonist in The Colony in Space, a UNIT Soldier in Time Monster, a Technician/Guard/Citizen in Pirate Planet, a Policeman in Timeflight, a 1983 Schoolmaster in Mawdryn Undead, a Gunrunner in Caves of Androzani, Mestor's Guard in The Twin Dilemma, which also features his twin sons as the Sylvest twins, and a guard in Vengeance on Varos. He'd been a British Soldier in The Andromeda Breakthrough: Gale Warning, a man in Doomwatch: Burial at Sea and appears in the Blake's 7 episode Gold as a Space Princess Guard / Passenger.

So Terror of the Autons as a complete story? A nice little romp with some interesting little set pieces. Most of the time that would do us fine especially as nobody really puts a foot wrong during it. A problem arose the first time I watched this to blog on and came from how I watched these stories for the Episode a Day Blog: I literally saw Terror of the Autons straight after Inferno, which is in a different class entirely dramatically. Inferno is a really decent story, adult, intelligent and tense. Terror of the Autons is a little bit of light fluff by comparison. Now I feel bad for condemning it for coming having the misfortune to come directly after one of the greatest Doctor Who stories of all time, because by most other standards it's not that bad at all.

The Terror of the Autons Target book, novelised by Terrance Dicks, was the first to bear the logo used from Season 11 onwards, albeit without the famous diamond background, when it was released in 1974. A colour restored video release arrived in 1993, by which time I'd already seen it in black & white thanks to a friend recording it off UK Gold for me. A new recolourisation was released on DVD on May 9th 2011 as part of the Doctor Who: Mannequin Mania Box Set, where it appeared with a new special edition of Spearhead from Space, it's predecessor. I still think this set should have been called Auton Invasions in homage to the Target Book of the first Auton Story!

Doctor Who Season 8, containing this story, is due to be released on Blu Ray on March 8th.

Two day after this episode was broadcast the 6th Doomwatch second season episode The Iron Doctor was shown on BBC1.

281 Terror of the Autons: Episode Three

EPISODE: Terror of the Autons: Episode Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 281
STORY NUMBER: 055
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 16 January 1971
WRITER: Robert Holmes
DIRECTOR: c
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 8.1 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: Mannequin Mania Box Set - Spearhead from Space / Terror of the Autons
EPISODE FORMAT: 16mm b&w film recording recoloured using 525 off air video

"Do you know, Jo, I sometimes think that military intelligence is a contradiction in terms!"

The Doctor & Jo leap from the police car but are pursued by the Auton who is knocked over a cliff by a pursuing Unit staff car. Returning to base Unit plots their next move. The Doctor attempts to take off in the Tardis using the captured dematerialisation circuit but fails. Unit is visited by a man from the ministry bringing reports of unexplained deaths. Seeing that the first two are McDermott & Farrel Sr, both with links to the plastics factory the Doctor & Jo visit Farrel's widow who tells them of Colonel Masters who works with her son and gives them the troll doll. Out on the streets men with huge grinning false heads are handing out daffodils. The Doctor's lab is visited by a telephone engineer who installs an extra long phone lead for him. Returning to HQ the Doctor and Brigadier visit Farrel plastics finding it deserted. They find a plastic daffodil, a receipt for a coach hire and an Auton hiding in the safe waiting for them. Meanwhile Jo is attacked by the doll, activated by the heat from the Doctor's Bunsen Burner which Mike is using to make Cocoa. The Master rings the Doctor to gloat and using a device activates the telephone cable which comes to life trying to strangle the Doctor.

This episode is slightly less frenetic than the last two, but only just. It's more figuring out what the Master's scheme is: the Auton in the safe is his way of saying hello, serving as a guard/nasty surprise for whoever may have tried to open the safe and the doll has already done it's job, killing Farrel sr, Jo & Mike activating it is a bit of an accident. Yes the telephone wire is left specifically for the Doctor and as it tries to kill him the Pertwee gurning makes a return to our screens! We see the start of the Doctor's name dropping habit in this episode too:

DOCTOR: Who's in charge of you pen pushers these days? Old Tubby Rowlands isn't it?
BROWNROSE: Lord Rowlands is head of our department, yes.
DOCTOR: I was saying to him in the Club only the other day, wrong sort of chap is creeping into your lot, Tubby, I said.

Larger and more recognisable names will follow later....

There's some familiar faces in this episode, most of which are hidden away: regular stuntman Terry Walsh is an Auton Policeman while Doctor Who's most frequent extra Pat Gorman plays the Auton Leader.

Hayden Jones supplies the Auton Voice, the first time normal Autons are heard to speak. He was meant to play the Master's disguise as a telephone engineer but was offered the larger role of Lenny Vosper in the next story the The Mind of Evil. He'd been in Out of This World, the ITV science fiction anthology series, appearing in the sole surviving episode Little Lost Robot where he plays Walensky. This episode is available on DVD. He was also in Out of this World's BBC successor Out of the Unknown voicing the robots in The Prophet, which is sadly missing. Said robots are later repainted white and used in the Doctor Who story The Mind Robber.

In his place the telephone engineer is played by Norman Stanley while Dermot Tuohy plays civil servant Brownrose.

Another actor who director Barry Letts had used previously was slated to appear in this episode: Bill McGuirk, who'd been a Guard in The Enemy of the World, played a policeman who is suspicious of the coach and is killed for his curiosity. His scenes ended up being cut.

The quarry scenes at the start of the episode were filmed at Totternhoe Lime and Stone Co Ltd in Dunstable, Bedfordshire on the 21st September 1970. Filming the location scenes here did not go well. First Nicholas Courtney, who was suffering from depression, was rendered too unwell to work and then Katy Manning, on her third day filming, sprained her ankle. Nicholas John, Production Assistant, teased her that she would be recast, leaving Manning upset and earning John a few words from the show's star, protective of his new co-star. It's worth noting that Nicholas John was the brother of Caroline John, the actress who had played the Doctor's previous companion Liz Shaw!

4 days previously the scenes involving the disguised Autons giving away plastic daffodils were filmed at Chalfont St Peter in Buckinghamshire with the Daffodil men meeting the public at St Peters Court and then returning to their coach in Church Lane Car Park.

In amongst the Auton Daffodil Man we have Nick Hobbs who'd been a Technician in The Ambassadors of Death and an RSF Sentry in Inferno. He's back as an American Aide in The Mind of Evil, the Nuton Driver in The Claws of Axos, a U.N.I.T. Soldier in Day of the Daleks, Aggedor in The Curse of Peladon & The Monster of Peladon, a Guard in The Time Monster and a Wirrn Operator in The Ark in Space. In Space: 1999 he's a Security Guard in Space Warp while in Blake's 7 he plays a Hooded Figure in Cygnus Alpha.

Ian Elliot was previously a UNIT Soldier in Inferno. He's back as a UNIT Soldier in The Mind of Evil, a Colonist in Colony in Space, a Villager in The Dæmons, a Guard Warrior in The Mutants, a UNIT Soldier in The Time Warrior, a Regular Army Soldier / UNIT Soldier in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, a Villager in Planet of the Spiders, an Android Villager in The Android Invasion, a Guard in The Seeds of Doom and a Haemovore in The Curse of Fenric. In Doomwatch he is an Ambulance Driver in Tomorrow, the Rat, a Man in You Killed Toby Wren, a Man in No Room for Error, a Man in Flight Into Yesterday, a Manservant in High Mountain and a Man in Flood.

Bob Blaine returns as a Prisoner in The Mind of Evil, an Exxilon in Death to the Daleks and a Guard in The Monster of Peladon.

Les Clark was Daniel in The Smugglers and plays a Prison Officer in The Mind of Evil. He's in Blake's 7 as a Pirate in Assassin and Mecronian in Games plus a bug screen appearance in The Italian Job as a Thug.

Brian Gilmar returns as an extra in Colony in Space. He was in Quatermass and the Pit as the Second Private in The Halfmen, The Ghosts & Imps and Demons then the 2nd Sapper in The Enchanted & The Wild Hunt. He's in the Adam Adamant Lives! episode D for Destruction as Barber.

Michael Stevens was a Soldier in Temple of Secrets. He returns as a Prisoner in The Mind of Evil and a Guard in The Curse of Peladon. He was in UFO as the Chauffeur in The Man Who Came Back, Moonbase 3 as a Technician in Departure and Arrival, Behemoth, Achilles Heel & View of a Dead Planet and was a Main Mission Operative in the Space: 1999 episodes Collision Course, Voyager's Return, Alpha Child, Dragon's Domain, Mission of the Darians, Black Sun, Guardian of Piri, End of Eternity, The Full Circle, Another Time, Another Place, The Last Sunset, The Infernal Machine, Ring Around the Moon, Space Brain, The Testament of Arkadia & The Last Enemy. In Star Wars: Return of the Jedi he plays Colonel Airen Cracken, the Rebel Soldier on Millennium Falcon!

Two day after this episode was broadcast the 5th Doomwatch second season episode By the Pricking of My Thumbs� was shown on BBC1.

280 Terror of the Autons: Episode Two

EPISODE: Terror of the Autons: Episode Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 280
STORY NUMBER: 055
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 09 January 1971
WRITER: Robert Holmes
DIRECTOR: Barry Letts
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 8 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: Mannequin Mania Box Set - Spearhead from Space / Terror of the Autons
EPISODE FORMAT: 16mm b&w film recording recoloured using 525 off air video

"I haven't been to a circus for years. I think I'll go myself!"

The Doctor throws the bomb into the river where it detonates. He frees Jo from the Master's hypnotic influence. The Master demonstrates a new plastic chair to McDermott which folds up and kills him. Later the Master & Rex Farrel are visited by his Father, who isn't impressed with the Master. Farrel leaves with a sample of the Master's new toy troll doll. Unit tracks the missing Philips to Rossini's circus which the Doctor Visits, being captured by Rossini and strongman Tony. Jo knocks Tony out and frees the Doctor. They are threatened by a grenade wielding Philips. The Doctor tries to free Philips, who dies when he sets the grenade off. The Doctor enters the Master's Tardis and steals his dematerialisation circuit. Menaced by the circus performers the Doctor & Jo are rescued by the police. When they are driven to a remote quarry the Doctor asks to see their warrant cards. The Policeman turns round and is unmasked as an Auton.

This story is a distinct change of pace from the last season moving a long at a fair lick. In some ways it almost feels like a bunch of set pieces strung together and essentially it is: The Master is setting a series of traps for the Doctor: "escaped the bomb I sent you? Never mind here's my grenade wielding hypnotised scientist!"

"Got out of that too? I've sent some Auton Policeman to get you!"

On of of that the Master is also responsible for two of the series more imaginative grisly deaths as McDermott is smothered by a chair and John Farrel is murdered by an ugly troll doll!

Stephen Jack, playing Farrell Senior, had been acting on screen since the late 1930s so it's almost a shame that the only credit on his CV I can draw attention to is his appearance as Zenon in The Tomorrow People episode - A Rift in Time: Turn of the Thumb. His wife is played by Barbara Leake.

Michael Wisher plays their son, plastics factory manager Rex Farrel. He made his Doctor Who onscreen debut in Ambassadors of Death playing bearded TV reported John Wakefield, but several sources have him down as providing uncredited voices in Seeds of Death. He's famed for bringing Davros, the creator of the Daleks, to life in Genesis of the Daleks but you can also see/hear him in Carnival of Monsters as Kalik, Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleks, Death to the Daleks & Genesis of the Daleks as Dalek voices, a role he also reprised for Blue Peter & Jim'll Fix It, Revenge of the Cybermen as Magrik and Planet of Evil as Morelli PLUS THE voice of Ranjit. Producer & Director Barry Letts had previously used him on his Z-Cars story The Saint of Concrete Canyon and he later appears in Moonbase 3 as Harry Sanders in Departure and Arrival.

George McDermott is played by Harry Towb who was, rather briefly, Osgood in The Seeds of Death. He's been in loads of things but the only thing I'm sure I've seen him in The Professionals where he plays Harry Spence in Blood Sports.

Circus Owner "Luigi Rossini"/Lew Russell is played by John Baskcomb who was in the missing second season Out of the Unknown episode The World in Silence as Eric Lonsbury.

Joining us this episode is Roy Stewart, as Tony the circus Strong Man, who memorably played Toberman in The Tomb of the Cybermen. before that, he's appeared in The Crusade: The Warlords as a Saracen warrior. He was in the opening Out of the Unknown episode No Place Like Earth where he plays a Security guard and you can see that on the Out of the Unknown DVD Set. His most famous role is in the Bond film Live and Let Die where he plays Quarrel but you can also find him in Space: 1999 as the Tall alien in cave in The Metamorph and in the Rentaghost Christmas Special Rentasanta, the last episode featuring the original cast, where he plays Djinn. This Blog has some screencaps from this episode, sadly not showing Stewart, but featuring some recycled costumes from a later Doctor Who story! I have fond memories of this piece of madness and would love to see it again even though the introduction of Dobbin the Pantomime Donkey in it is seen by some as the point where the series goes wrong!

The Auton Troll Doll is a second Doctor Who roll for Tommy Reynolds who was previously a Chumbley Operator in Galaxy Four.

One new location is seen briefly this episode as The Doctor hurls the bomb out the window into the river and that's Queens Wharf in Hammersmith. The location was very near to the BBC's Riverside Studios where a number of First & Second Doctor stories were filmed which probably is a factor in it's previous use as the point the Dalek emerged from the water at the end of Dalek Invasion of Earth episode 1 Two day after this episode was broadcast the 4th Doomwatch second season episode No Room for Error was shown.

279 Terror of the Autons: Episode One

EPISODE: Terror of the Autons: Episode One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 279
STORY NUMBER: 055
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 02 January 1971
WRITER: Robert Holmes
DIRECTOR: Barry Letts
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 7.3 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: Mannequin Mania Box Set - Spearhead from Space / Terror of the Autons
EPISODE FORMAT: 16mm b&w film recording recoloured using 525 off air video

"I came to warn you. An old acquaintance has arrived on this planet: The Master!"

At the Rossini Brothers Circus a Tardis materialises disguised as a modern horse box. From it emerges the Master who hypnotises Luigi Rossini (aka Lew Russel) the Circus' owner and forces him to co-operate in robbing a museum to gain the last remaining Nestene Energy Unit. The Doctor is working on the Tardis creating a lot of smoke from the dematerialisation circuit. A young woman who he Doctor mistakes for the tea lady enters and, believe the circuit is on fire, douses it with a fire extinguisher ruining the Doctor's work. She is Jo Grant, who is his new assistant assigned by the Brigadier. She brings him a report of the robbery, which concerns him. At a nearby radio telescope, technician Goodge complains to Professor Philips about the lunch his wife has made him. The Master arrives, shooting Goodge with an advanced weapon, linking the sphere to the telescope & hypnotising Philips. The Doctor & the Brigadier are arguing about Jo: The Doctor says he needs a scientist while the Brigadier quotes Liz Shaw as saying he needs someone to pass test tubes and say how brilliant he is! Jo brings them a report of a disturbance at the telescope. They go to telescope, meeting Captain Mike Yates who's already there. As the Doctor climbs to the control cabin he sees a Time Lord, dressed in a suit, hovering in mid air. He has brought the Doctor a message: The renegade Time Lord known as the Master is on Earth. The Master has booby trapped the door with a Volatiser grenade rigged to some string: the Doctor dives in the door and catches it. When Captain Yates comes through the door he's sat on the floor dismantling it. They find a Goodge's shrunken corpse in his lunch box. The Master goes to see Rex Farrel, the head of a plastics firm. The Doctor & Captain Yates tell Jo about the Nestenes. The Brigadier starts a search of plastic factories which Jo takes part in. The Master hypnotises Farrel. Jo visits Farrel plastics where she is caught, hypnotised, interrogated and sent back to Unit HQ with instructions & no memory of anything that happened. Philips' car is found with the Unit box for the energy unit inside. Mr McDermott comes to see Farrel, concerned at what's going on at the factory and Masters arrival. He wants to summon Farrel Sr to straighten the situation out but Rex doesn't want his father involved. The Master is busy in the factory activating Autons. The Unit box is brought to their HQ. Jo tries to open it with her skeleton keys but the Doctor realises it's a bomb......

As a season opener introducing a pile of new characters it does the job perfectly, returning a memorable foe from the first Pertwee season to our screens.

Quite a lot to get through today......

TIME LORD: I came to warn you. An old acquaintance has arrived on this planet.
DOCTOR: Oh? One of our people?
TIME LORD: The Master.
DOCTOR: That jackanapes! All he ever does is cause trouble.
TIME LORD: He'll certainly try to kill you, Doctor. The tribunal thought that you ought to be made aware of your danger.
DOCTOR: How very kind of them.
TIME LORD: You are incorrigibly meddlesome, Doctor, but we've always felt that your hearts are in the right places. But be careful. The Master has learnt a great deal since you last met him.

Here's how the story has it: Producer Barry Letts and Script Editor Terrance Dicks got talking and compared the Doctor/Brigadier relationship to Sherlock Holmes & Doctor Watson. This led to the question of who was the Doctor's Moriarty ? Terrance Dicks is reported as naming the character The Master, continuing the academic theme of the Doctor's name, while Barry Letts knew who he wanted to play him: Roger Delgado.

A very well known television actor who, famed for his role as Spanish ambassador Mendoza in the ITC Sir Francis Drake series he'd acted with Barry Letts many years ago. Indeed he'd recently (1969) he'd appeared in an episode of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) with Nicholas Courtney. (and a young, thin clean shaven Brian Blessed. The episode is the 11th of the series: "The Ghost who Saved the Bank at Monte Carlo" which is well worth a watch). He appeared on the Radio Times cover, surrounded by the rest of the cast, to promote this story an incident that led people to believe Jon Pertwee was departing Doctor Who which annoyed the lead actor somewhat. When a special cover was used to promote the tenth anniversary story, The Three Doctors, Barry Letts made sure Pertwee was in the centre of the picture.

And because Robert Holmes is writing the Master's first appearance, he indulges his love of killing characters in interesting ways and gives the Master one of his little signatures: Killing people by shrinking them. Here he uses a short stick with a glowing end but it's clearly an earlier version of his Tissue Compression Eliminator.

Curiously the Master's next death by shrinking won't be seen for a good long while yet, he doesn't do it again while Pertwee is the Doctor reserving it for Robert Holmes' later Doctor Who script The Deadly Assassin.

BRIGADIER: You've been agitating for a new assistant ever since Miss Shaw went back to Cambridge.
DOCTOR: Liz was a highly qualified scientist. I want someone with the same qualifications.
BRIGADIER: Nonsense. What you need, Doctor, as Miss Shaw herself so often remarked, is someone to pass you your test tubes and to tell you how brilliant you are. Miss Grant will fulfil that function admirably.

Needing a replacement companion for Liz Shaw, Letts & Dicks created the character of Jo Grant along what they saw as more traditional lines: her job was to scream and ask the Doctor to explain things. Reportedly the short sighted Katy Manning was the last actress they auditioned for the job.

Captain Mike Yates was created to fill the gap between Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, still without a first name, and Sergeant Benton. Benton, an enlisted man wasn't even some rank grades beneath the Brigadier. The British rank system runs thus for officers:

Field Marshal
General
Lieutenant-General
Major-General
Brigadier
Colonel
Lieutenant-Colonel
Major
Captain
Lieutenant
Second Lieutenant

with the enlisted men beneath that.

Sergeant Major
Sergeant
Corporal
Private

Yates plugs the gap nicely. Two actors were in serious contention for the role: Richard Franklin and Ian Marter. Marter was unable to commit to a long term engagement but Barry Letts remembered him and cast him in the next story he directed, The Carnival of Monsters, before casting him as companion Harry Sullivan in Tom Baker's first story.

JO: What is a Nestene?
DOCTOR: Ask Captain Yates. He had the job of clearing up the mess last time.
JO: Well, what is a Nestene?
YATES: Oh, a Nestene? Er, it's a bit difficult to describe, exactly.

The dialogue between Jo & The The Doctor places Yates as having been with UNIT for some time, definitely since the immediate aftermath of Spearhead from Space.

We spot Who regular Dave Carter as the Museum Attendant: Katy Manning takes great pleasure in pointing out on DVD commentaries every time she spots him! He's already been a Male Rebel in The Power of the Daleks, an IE guard in The Invasion, The Old Silurian plus other unidentified Silurians in The Silurians and Inferno as a Primord. He'll be back for The Mind of Evil as a Prison Officer, The Mutants as a Skybase Guard, The Time Monster as a Roundhead Officer, Invasion of the Dinosaurs as Sergeant Duffy and The Android Invasion as Grierson. There's an Adam Adamant Lives! on his CV where he plays a Partygoer / Tourist in Death Has a Thousand Faces and an episode of The Tomorrow People, The Living Skins: Cold War where he's a Guard.

The one Auton seen in this episode is played by Tom O'Leary who was previously a Prison Sergeant in The War Games episode 2 plus German / Roman Soldiers / Austro-Hungarian Officer in episode 4 of the same story. He's returns as a Miner in The Monster of Peladon and Albert Einstein in Time and the Rani!

David Garth, the Time Lord, was previously Solicitor Grey in The Highlanders.

The Radio Telescope Director is played by Frank Mills who had appeared in Quatermass and the Pitas a Journalist in The Halfmen and a TV Cameraman in Hob. You can also see him in The Sweeney as Len Holmes in May and By the Sword Divided as Matthew Saltmarsh.

Two of the guest cast also have form with Barry Letts as a Doctor Who Director: Christopher Burgess, playing Professor George Philips was previously Swann in The Enemy of the World. He had appeared with Barry Letts, while the later was still acting, in This Man Craig: The Good Chemist during 1966. He'll go on to play Barnes, one of Lupton's gang, in Planet of the Spiders.

Andrew Staines, appears in just this episode as Goodge. He initially came to my attention when I read the production subtitles on Planet of Spiders. He was another favourite actor of Barry Letts: indeed 4 of his 6 acting credits on imdb.com are Doctor Who roles with Barry Letts directing: Like Christopher Burgess he was also in The Enemy of the World, playing Benik's Sergeant and he returns as the Captain in Carnival of Monsters and finally Keaver, another of Lupton's gang, in Planet of the Spiders. While listening to the Who Talk commentary for this episode I was surprised to discover that he is the son of actress Pauline Letts, Barry's sister! (who in turn I'd seen in the BBC version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) Toby Hadoke interviews him for Who's Round 160 where he reveals that his uncle usually used him as a late replacement when someone dropped out!

Somewhere in this episode, playing a U.N.I.T. soldier, is Stuntman Billy Horrigan, who had previously been a UNIT Soldier in The Invasion, the man on a bike in Spearhead from Space episode Four, one of Collinson's men in Ambassadors of Death, and a Technician and UNIT & RSF Soldiers in Inferno. You'll later see him as an Auton Policeman & in other stunt roles in this story, a UNIT Corporal & Prisoner in The Mind of Evil, a colonist in Colony in Space, a guard in The Curse of Peladon, a Sea Devils & Sailors Stuntman in The Sea Devils and a security guard in The Green Death. He was also in Blake's 7 as a Scavenger in Deliverance. In the world of films he acts or does stunt work in Jabberwocky, The Spy Who Loved Me, Superman, Superman II, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Return of the Jedi, Superman III, Krull, Never Say Never Again, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Lots of locations this story: The scenes at the circus at the start of the episode were filmed at Roberts Brothers Circus, then performing at Lea Bridge Road, Leyton

Zouches Farm Relay Station, then owned and operated by the GPO provides the location in long shot and in close up for the Radio Telescope, with the Radio Telescopes added in in post production!

The location Jo searches and is captured at is Thermo Plastics Ltd in Luton Road, Dunstable.

A quick bit of prop spotting: In the satellite dish control room is a panel from the ICT 1300. We'll be seeing this one a few more times....

Like the Silurians & Ambassadors of Death this episode survives as 16mm film from BBC Enterprises and low grade NTSC video tape. These were combined for a recolour in the early 1990s that was released on video, a second unseen recolour that was scheduled to be part of the aborted 1999 repeat season and a third recolour that was released on DVD. However a short segment, of Jo meeting the Doctor, survives as 625 line video thanks to being used by Nationwide in their article on Katy Manning's departure from Doctor Who in 1973.

In the run up to this episode's broadcast Doomwatch Season 2 started airing on BBC 1 with the first episode You Killed Toby Wren being shown on 14th December 1970 and the 2nd episode Invasion airing a week later on 21st December 1970. There was then a one week break for Christmas and then two day after this episode was broadcast the 3rd episode The Islanders was shown on BBC1.

And speaking of Doomwatch....

That program spent it's first year with a BBC prop dept spiral staircase just outside it's office window. It's gone in the second season, nicked by Doctor Who and now in the corner of the Doctor's lab!