OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 289
STORY NUMBER: 057
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 13 March 1971
WRITER: Bob Baker & Dave Martin
DIRECTOR: Michael Ferguson
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 7.3 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - the Claws of Axos - Special Edition
EPISODE FORMAT: 625 video
"Axos calling Earth. Fuel systems exhausted. Request immediate assistance. Immediate assistance. Axos calling Earth, Axos calling Earth!"
UNIT has been joined by Horatio Chinn, MP, who is conducting an enquiry into the organisation, and Bill Filer, an American agent pursuing the Master. A spacecraft is sighted entering Earth's atmosphere, which Chinn orders destroyed. The Spacecraft teleports itself out of harm's way and buries itself in a beach close to the Nuton power complex. A local tramp is passing by the ship and investigates, being seized by it and drawn in. Chinn takes charge of the situation, sending Filer away. However he drives to Nuton and investigates, being captured by the ship and imprisoned with the Master. Unit arrives, and joined by Sir George Hardiman and Professor Winser from Nuton they investigate entering the ship and encountering the gold skinned Axons who wish to trade their miracle replicating Axonite for fuel. The Doctor is suspicious that they didn't use the Axonite to make more fuel. Benton & Yates find the rapidly decomposing body of the tramp near the spaceship. Jo, who has entered the ship by herself, is confronted by a tentacled alien emerging from a wall.
Oh look, it's the Master, what a surprise!
Now I've got some previous history with Claws of Axos: I never liked the book and was never grabbed by watching it on video and DVD. But watching this first episode there's a lot to like. Both aliens, the gold skinned Axons and tentacled monsters look fab, and there's some great design work inside Axos, the Axon ship, combining studio set and CSO.
No my problems with this story mainly spring from the inclusion of the most annoying character in Doctor Who - Horatio Chinn played by Peter Bathurst. Chinn's the sort of annoying and officious character that belongs more in a sitcom than in Doctor Who, I look at him and think "how did you get to such a position of power?" As a throw away character like the tramp, and I'll get onto him in a second, he might have been OK but Chinn's visible right the way through the story. I didn't realise it but I'd seen Peter Bathurst before: he was Governor Hensell in The Power of the Daleks and he's completely different here which proves he could act. In fact discovering that Bathurst was Chinn too put me right off Hensell in Power of the Daleks for a bit!
Outside of Doctor Who Bathurst had previously previously played Barnaby in the Out of the Unknown episode Andover and the Android, sadly one of the two missing episodes from the show's first season, and would appear in three episodes of Terrance Dicks & Barry Letts' Moonbase 3 as the Director General: Departure and Arrival, Achilles Heel and Castor and Pollux.
Then there's the tramp, Pigbin Josh, played by regular stunt man and leader of the HAVOC stunt team Derek Ware. Exhibit A in any "Doctor Who does bad Yokel characters" enquiry. Fortunately he's swiftly dispatched, though the initial version of his body decaying was a little longer and more graphic before a white out was used to excise the end of the effect.
The full scene can be found on the DVD along with the extended versions of many other scenes, several of which involve Ware's character.
Bernard Holley is the golden Axon Man and he was previously Peter Haydon in The Tomb of the Cybermen. He'd already been in the now missing Out of the Unknown episode 1+1=1.5 as a TV Announcer and would later appear in the second series of The Tripods as The Power Master. From my childhood I can recall him in the Children's educational series Eureka produced by former Doctor Who vision mixer Clive Doig and alongside future Doctor Who actor Sylvester McCoy. More recently you may have seen him as the Chief Constable in A Touch of Frost who has a liking for the rogue Inspector. You can hear him interviewed by Toby Hadoke in Who's Round 41.
As to the rest rest of the Axon Family, the Axon Boy, John Hicks, was a Quark in The Dominators, Patricia Gordino in the Axon Woman and Debbie Lee London the Axon Girl.
Making her second and final appearance as Corporal Bell is Fernanda Marlowe .
One of the Radar operators, Michael Walker will return as Miseus in The Time Monster.
The other David March can be seen in Survivors as Bates in Garland's War and can be heard in the Captain Zep - Space Detective episode The Lodestone of Space.
I'm pretty certain the sequence of the missiles launching shown on the monitor is the same footage used ad nauseam in the Invasion.
As with most third Doctor stories a fair amount of location work was involved. In fact there's only two Pertwee stories without any location work... Filming for this story took place in Kent near to the Dungeness Power Station. Unfortunately filming in early January proved to be subject to interference from the weather and a snow shower intervened, ruining the continuity between consecutive scenes on location, Terrance Dicks was forced to deploy for the first time a future Doctor Who staple: Episode one features the d�but of the all purpose get out "Freak Weather Conditions". Now in January you'd expect snow to be a risk. But April? Come back for The Dæmons in a month and a half to see more snow in the 1971 Doctor Who season.
The scenes of Pigbin Josh on his bike were filmed at Dengemarsh Road on 4th January 1971.
The next day the film crew were on Dungeness Beach for the scene with Josh wandering through the boats.
The day after they moved to nearby Dungeness Road for the scenes involving the entrance to the spaceship and the UNIT vehicles arriving.
Two day after this episode was broadcast Public Enemy, the 13th & final episode of Doomwatch Season Two, was shown on BBC1.
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