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.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.
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.
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.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.
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.
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 Marshalwith the enlisted men beneath that.
General
Lieutenant-General
Major-General
Brigadier
Colonel
Lieutenant-Colonel
Major
Captain
Lieutenant
Second Lieutenant
Sergeant MajorYates 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.
Sergeant
Corporal
Private
JO: What is a Nestene?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.
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.
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!
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