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.