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.