308 The Curse of Peladon Episode One

EPISODE: The Curse of Peladon: Episode One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 308
STORY NUMBER: 061
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 29 January 1972
WRITER: Brian Hayles
DIRECTOR: Lennie Mayne
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 10.3 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Peladon Tales: Curse of Peladon & Monster of Peladon
EPISODE FORMAT: 525 video RSC

"If the committee of assessment judges favourably, then Peladon will join the Galactic Federation!"

On the planet Peladon Chancellor Torbis is murdered as the delegates from the Federation arrive to access the planet for membership. The Doctor & Jo are taking the Tardis for a test flight: it materialises half way up a mountain and falls off the ledge just as Jo & the Doctor leave. They find their way into a tunnel which leads into a secret passage into the Peladon Citadel where the Doctor is mistaken for the chairman delegate from Earth by the other members of the commission: Alpha Centauri, Arcturus and Izlyr, the Ice Warrior delegate from Mars and his bodyguard Ssorg. The Doctor & Jo, who is pretending to be a princess, are presented to King Peladon and his high priest Hepesh. Leaving the throne room the delegates have a statue pushed off a ledge towards them.

Yeah, not bad at all. A nice variety of aliens all with well defined personalities and a planet struggling between sticking to it's traditions and improving itself on the galactic stage.....

Curse of Peladon is a story which is about something: Britain Joining the European Economic Community. Writer Brian Hayles, of the Celestial Toymaker, The Smugglers, The Ice Warriors and Seeds of Death, returns for his first story since 1969.

The argument he's trying to show looks similar in some ways to the Science vs Magic one shown in The Dæmons, religion is the force here trying to hold back progress and the argument is embodied by the High Priest Hepesh and the Chancellor Torbis in the opening scene:

TORBIS: The delegate from Alpha Centauri has arrived, your Majesty. He will present his credentials to you shortly.
PELADON: Thank you, Torbis.
TORBIS: We wait now only for the chairman delegate from Earth. Then the discussions can begin.
HEPESH: You will persist then in this folly? Nothing I can say will deter you?
TORBIS: Hepesh, you have already had your say in the Grand Council. The question has been discussed and decided.
HEPESH: Decided by you, Torbis, and the fools who support you! You mislead the King, you abandon the ancient ways of our people.
TORBIS: Nothing but ignorance and superstition.
HEPESH: You will bring the curse of Aggedor upon us!
TORBIS: It'll take much more than your childish mumbo-jumbo to frighten me.
PELADON: Enough! I will not have my Chancellor and my High Priest squabbling on the steps of the throne.
HEPESH: You Majesty is right to rebuke us, nevertheless I must persist
TORBIS: Must I remind you, Priest
PELADON: My friends! My good friends. You are more to me than my Chancellors, my regents, much more. It grieves my heart to hear such hate between two brothers.

I'd always interpreted this last line as "brother Pels", as in fellow noblemen of Peladon. But are Torbis and Hepesh actual brothers who've taken different paths in life? They look very similar but it could well be all older male Pels do. In some ways Torbis' early death is useful for the viewers as it avoids any confusion between the two!

TORBIS: May I speak, your Majesty?
PELADON: Very well.
TORBIS: It was not I who chose to quarrel. Ever since the death of his exalted Majesty, your father, I have been as a parent to you. If you should forget now all that I have ever taught you, if you should let the superstitious fear of this foolish man
HEPESH: The folly has not been mine but yours.
TORBIS: Your Majesty, my whole life would be a failure. As a sacred trust, I undertook to
HEPESH: Sacred trust?
PELADON: Hepesh, please! Torbis, I shall not betray you.
HEPESH: But sire!
PELADON: No, Hepesh! The decision has been taken. If the committee of assessment judges favourably, then Peladon will join the Galactic Federation. And I shall expect your loyal help and support at this difficult time.
HEPESH: Your Majesty.
PELADON: Torbis, please inform the others that Alpha Centauri has arrived.

Oh yes Alpha Centauri..... there's no escaping it we have to talk about Alpha Centauri's costume. The story has it that when the production team saw the costume they weren't 100% happy with it due to, and there's no other way of saying this, it looking like a green penis with six arms. So they added a cloak..... and now when you see the costume from behind it looks even worse. It's not helped by the obvious veins in the head or by the bobbing up & down motion as it moves either!

Torbis' mysterious death doesn't put the argument to rest as The King is determined to proceed with the plan

PELADON: I remember when you and Torbis first brought me to this throne room.
HEPESH: At first you refused to sit upon the throne. You said that rightfully it could only be your father's place.
PELADON: But Torbis lifted me up and set me here. And then you said
HEPESH: And then I said, though the royal blood that flows in your veins is mingled with that of strangers, yet you shall be Peladon of Peladon. Greater than your father, greater than any past or future king. And then the Earth woman
PELADON: And then my mother, Hepesh. She smiled and placed my left hand in yours and my right hand in Torbis's.
HEPESH: And together we made a boy into a king.
PELADON: And now Torbis is dead.
HEPESH: His task was almost done, as mine will be when once I have anointed you king.
PELADON: Why did he die, Hepesh?
HEPESH: He saw your future as a servant of the Galactic Federation. I see you as an independent ruler of a great and glorious kingdom.
PELADON: You really believe he was destroyed by Aggedor, don't you?
HEPESH: Yes, it was a warning.
PELADON: But the Federation delegates are here at my invitation. It should have been me that was struck down.
HEPESH: No. No, it was Torbis blind advice that would have destroyed your kingdom. You would have become a slave, not a king.
PELADON: But Hepesh, you were always telling me a king must choose and choose courageously.
HEPESH: Aggedor has shown the way.
PELADON: Backwards into superstition? It was you who taught me to fight, to ride, and to think. Help me to realise my dream. I know what is best for my people.
HEPESH: I do not trust these aliens.
PELADON: Well then, trust me.
HEPESH: I tell you, I know their minds. I will not let them lead you into a trap.
PELADON: But their motives are open and honest.
HEPESH: But to them, Peladon, we are merely savages. Savages to be tamed. They despise and distrust us.
PELADON: Then I will talk to them, convince them. Summon the delegates. Now, Hepesh!

Hepesh's "I do not trust these aliens" is a very telling line.....

Unfortunately the Doctor doesn't trust all the aliens either, walking into the situation and mediately being confronted by something he knows only too well:

JO: What was that?
DOCTOR: That, Jo, was an Ice Warrior. A native of the planet Mars.
JO: You've seen them before?
DOCTOR: Yes, indeed I have, and believe me, they're not very pleasant company.

The Ice Warriors showed up in both of Brian Hayles previous tales, The Ice Warriors and The Seeds of Death, both Second Doctor Patrick Troughton stories. This is the first time they've met Third Doctor Jon Pertwee and their first appearance in colour when we can see that they're green.

Oddly despite Torbis being killed, nobody is asking how he died and who killed him if it wasn't a supernatural warning as Hepesh insists:

PELADON: Thank you. By now, you all know of the tragic incident involving my Chancellor, Torbis. He was more than an advisor. He was, like Hepesh, a trusted friend.
IZLYR: And yet he was killed. Why?
HEPESH: It was a supernatural warning.
PELADON: My High Priest connects this death with one of our ancient legends.
ARCTURUS: Your Priest speaks of a warning. Perhaps it is more than that.
PELADON: Superstition, nothing more.
IZLYR: This incident could well mean a threat to us, and to the Federation.
PELADON: But it was Torbis who died. The legend only concerns my people.
ALPHA: Your legend seems violent and unpleasant, and rather too convenient.
HEPESH: The legend of the curse of Peladon has been handed down through countless centuries.
IZLYR: I think, perhaps, we should hear this legend.
HEPESH: It concerns the royal beast of Peladon, now extinct. It is written, Mighty is Aggedor, fiercest of all the beasts of Peladon. Young men would hunt it to prove their courage. His fur trims our royal garment. His head is our royal emblem. It is also written there will come a day when the spirit of Aggedor will rise again to warn and defend his royal master, King Peladon. For at that day, a stranger will appear in the land, bringing peril to Peladon. And great tribulation to his kingdom.

It's at this inopportune moment that the Doctor walks in and a case of mistaken identity ensues.

IZLYR: Chairman delegate from Earth, greetings. Delegate Izlyr from Mars. Sub-delegate Ssorg.
ALPHA: Delegate Alpha Centauri. The Galactic Committee is terribly in need of your experience and judgement.
ARCTURUS: I am delegate Arcturus. You are late.
DOCTOR: Late? Er, yes, my apologies to the Committee but, er, our space shuttle crash-landed down the mountain. I wonder if something could be done about rescuing it.
HEPESH: That will be arranged. I am Hepesh, High Priest of Peladon.
DOCTOR: How do you do?
HEPESH: Protocol demands that you should present formally your credentials to King Peladon. Hand them to me.
DOCTOR: I'm afraid that will not be possible. We have lost everything in the crash.

While the Doctor goes along with the opportunity, Jo improvises to safeguard her position and in the process attracts an admirer:

PELADON: We can deal with protocol later, Hepesh. Present the chairman delegate from Earth, and his companion.
HEPESH: I presume this female is of royal blood?
DOCTOR: Well, naturally. Why, why do you bother to ask?
HEPESH: We are standing in the royal throne room of Peladon. Only men of rank and females of royal blood may set foot here. The penalty for trespass is death.
JO: Doctor, I do not deal through intermediaries. Kindly present us to our royal host.
DOCTOR: Yes, of course. Will you excuse me. Your Majesty, as delegate from Earth, I greet you. May I present Her Royal Highness, the Princess Josephine, of Tardis.
PELADON: Greetings, Princess. I'm sorry to hear that your journey ended so uncomfortably.
JO: The whole affair was most deplorable. The pilot was exceedingly inefficient.
PELADON: Well, I'm glad it was nothing more. You bring a welcome beauty to a serious occasion.
JO: Thank you, your Majesty.
IZLYR: Royal Highness. What are your powers on the committee of assessment?
DOCTOR: The Princess is here in the capacity of a royal observer only.
IZLYR: Ah, as on my planet, you still retain the aristocratic process.
DOCTOR: Yes, in a democratic sort of way.
ARCTURUS: Chairman delegate from Earth, we are not here to indulge in social diplomacy.
DOCTOR: No, no, of course not, I
ARCTURUS: We are here to consider admitting this somewhat primitive planet into the Galactic Federation.
DOCTOR: Yes, thank you for reminding me. I
ALPHA: Unfortunately, the success of our mission in threatened, violently.
DOCTOR: Threatened? Perhaps you'd be kind enough to explain that to me from the beginning?

And off the Doctor goes ..... a least until someone tries to tip a statue on him!

Playing King Peladon is David Troughton, the son of Second Doctor Patrick Troughton, who we've seen previously as a Guard in Enemy of the World & Private Moor in the War Games. He'll return years later as Professor Winfold Hobbes in Midnight. Among his many acting achievements is Bob Buzzard in A Very Peculiar Practice alongside Fifth Doctor Peter Davison & Horns of the Nimon guest actor Graham Crowden. At around this time David Troughton was sharing a flat with another young actor named Colin Baker who we will see more of later....

Geoffrey Toone, here playing Hepesh, was Temmosus in the film version of Dr. Who and the Daleks. He can be seen in Yes Minister as R A Crichton in The Greasy Pole and appears in three episodes of Jeeves and Wooster, Wooster with a Wife (or, Jeeves the Matchmaker), Aunt Dahlia, Cornelia and Madeline (or, Comrade Bingo) and Honoria Glossop Turns Up (or, Bridegroom Wanted!), as Lord Bittlesham.

Henry Gilbert, briefly playing Torbis, is one of the few actors involved in this serial not to have another Doctor Who credit on their CV !

After an entire story, Day of the Daleks, on 625 line video we're back to watching reverse standard converted 525 line video for this story and the start of the next. The 525 line colour copies of this story which, only existed in black & white films in the BBC archives, were returned from BBC Toronto in 1981.