291 The Claws of Axos: Episode Three

EPISODE: The Claws of Axos: Episode Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 291
STORY NUMBER: 057
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 27 March 1971
WRITER: Bob Baker & Dave Martin
DIRECTOR: Michael Ferguson
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 6.4 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - the Claws of Axos - Special Edition
EPISODE FORMAT: 525 video RSC

"Axonite is simply bait for human greed. Because of this greed, Axonite will soon spread across the entire planet and then the nutrition cycle will begin. Slowly we will consume every particle of energy, every last cell of living matter. Earth will be sucked dry!"

The Axons take the Doctor & Jo back to Axos. The Brigadier and his men are released on the Ministry's orders. The Master has leaked news of Axonite's existence and use to the UN who want worldwide distribution immediately. Axos interrogates the Doctor for the secret of Time Travel. The Master, having infiltrated the Nuton complex disguised a high ranking army officer, attempts to repair the Doctor's Tardis, intending to escape Earth. Trying to harness the reactor's power he is captured by the Brigadier. The Axons seize control of the reactor, but the Master comes up with a way of turning the Axonite's power against Axos destroying it. Unfortunately that will also kill the captive Doctor & Jo....

The Doctor & Jo spend this episode captured & interrogated by Axos so the supporting cast get some screen time with the Master & the Brigadier getting to spend some screen time together.

There's a notably first in this episode: We finally see the inside of the Tardis for the first time since Jon Pertwee became the Third Doctor! For something that was a constant during the early years of the program it's been thirty seven episodes since we last saw it!

It's in a bit of a mess too: we know the Doctor had been tinkering with it, trying to get it working, and we saw the console removed in Ambassadors of Death and Inferno.

It's returned to it's proper place here but looks a mess with cables strewn everywhere!

Unfortunately The Master has leaked the existence of Axonite to the World and now Chinn's in some trouble with his superior:

MINISTER: Chinn?
CHINN: Sir?
MINISTER: Perhaps you can tell me why the sole result of the special powers I granted you, has been this catastrophic security leak?
CHINN: Catastrophic security leak? Which catastrophic security leak, sir?
MINISTER: The United Nations are demanding the immediate free world-wide distribution of Axonite. The whole thing has blown up in our faces, Chinn.
CHINN: Yes, sir. In our faces, sir.
MINISTER: Distribution is to take place immediately.
CHINN: Yes, sir. Just as soon as I can
MINISTER: Yes, sir. Not as soon as, immediately. Arrange air transport.
CHINN: You can depend upon me, sir.
MINISTER: Hmm? What? Yes, well, just in case we can't. Your resignation, Chinn. All ready for signature. Goodbye, Chinn.

The videolink between Chinn and his Minister at the start of the episode confirms what we've known all along that Chinn is an idiot and shows that his superior knows it too. The thinly veiled threat of Chinn's unsigned resignation waiting for him if he gets it wrong says everything.... but unwittingly his incompetence and narrow mindedness has, as the Doctor points out, crucially delayed Axos' plans.

DOCTOR: You know, Jo, I think our friend Chinn, has done the right thing for once. For the wrong reasons, of course.
JO: What do you mean?
DOCTOR: Well, fortunately, he intends to confine the entire supply of Axonite to Britain.

Chinn's Minister is played by Kenneth Benda. He played Sir James in A Vintage Year for Scoundrels and A Slight Case of Reincarnation, the opening episodes of both series of Adam Adamant Lives!. He appeared in The Prisoner as the Supervisor in Free for All and is in the missing third season Doomwatch episode Without the Bomb as Clive Hughes.

The location used for the Nuton Power Complex is Dungeness Power Station in Kent, close to the locations used in episodes 1 & 2. Filming took place there on 8th January 1971.

Dungeness Power Station has briefly appeared in Doctor Who before where an exterior shot serves as the Kanowa research centre.

Claws of Axos is the Doctor who writing debut for Bob Baker & Dave Martin, known as the Bristol Boys. They came to script editor Terrance Dick's notice when a script they'd written landed on his desk by accident instead of it's intended recipient. They were commissioned to produce a script at the start of May 1969 and over the next few years it evolved under various titles as "The Gift", "The Friendly Invasion" & "The Vampire from Space", the last of which it was still being called when it was filmed. Indeed there were even title slides for the story under that name produced. Baker & Martin, along with Robert Holmes, would form the backbone of the Doctor Who writing team for the rest of the seventies before their partnership broke up in 1978. Bob Baker would later script the Wallace & Gromit series. Dave Martin died in 2007.

This story exists as 625 line PAL video for episodes 1 & 4 and 525 line video for episode 2 & 3 which was subjected to the Reverse Standards Conversion Process to bring it back close to the original look of the episode on it's UK broadcast for the original DVD. However The Claws of Axos Special Edition DVD takes the colour off RSC'd version and marries it to the black & white film copy to produce a better picture, as described in The Claws of Axos article on the Restoration Team Website. Claws of Axos is the first story to use this technique which was later applied to the Inferno Special Edition DVD.