310 The Curse of Peladon: Episode Three

EPISODE: The Curse of Peladon: Episode Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 310
STORY NUMBER: 061
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 12 February 1972
WRITER: Brian Hayles
DIRECTOR: Lennie Mayne
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 7.8 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Peladon Tales: Curse of Peladon & Monster of Peladon
EPISODE FORMAT: 525 video RSC

"Klokleda partha mennin kletch, haroon, haroon, haroon!"

The Doctor is sentenced to trial by combat fighting Grun. Hepesh helps him escape into the tunnels on the condition that he leaves the planet. Izlyr tells Jo that he is honour bound to help the Doctor because the Doctor saved his life, but their conversation is bugged by Arcturus. The Doctor encounter Aggedor in the tunnels and hypnotically subdues him until Jo interrupts driving Aggedor away. The Doctor is taken to the combat arena and beats Grun, but refuses to kill him. As the delegates watch the contest Arcturus reveals a gun concealed in his life support system and a shot rings out....

This episode provoked some great debate in the Ayres household....

Firstly there's the matter of the Doctor's Venusian lullaby.

Klokleda partha mennin kletch,
Haroon, haroon, haroon.
Klokleda sheena tirra nach,
Haroon, haroon, haroon.

The lyrics were first heard in The Dæmons as the Doctor attempts to sooth Bok, but here they're set to music. It's quite well known that the tune Pertwee uses is "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" but my good lady wife was certain that it wasn't.

Then at the end of the episode I turned to Liz and said "I've never noticed before how obvious it is that it isn't Arcturus shooting" because watching it on DVD I thought it was painstakingly obvious that it was Ssorg standing behind the blast. Liz however was sure from what she could see that it was Arcturus who fired!

This does rather rely on you spotting the gun that Ssorg is carrying about in the run up, I missed it the first few times I saw the story!

Apart from that it's a bit of a runabout episode. Hepesh helps The Doctor escape for reasons of his own...

DOCTOR: Yes, you're a wily old bird, aren't old you, Hepesh? But you do realise, don't you, that my death would cause a major interplanetary scandal? Consider the consequences, Hepesh.
HEPESH: The door of your room will be left open. There will be no one there to stand in your way.
DOCTOR: I see. Killed while trying to escape, is that it?
HEPESH: I don't want your death. Trust me.
HEPESH: There lies your route to freedom. Take it, leave our planet and live.
DOCTOR: I'm afraid I can't. Well, not without my space shuttle.
HEPESH: A large blue box was found on the lower slope of the mountain.
DOCTOR: Yes, that's it. Where is it now?
HEPESH: It is being brought to the citadel.
DOCTOR: Well, that's splendid. And what about Princess Josephine?
HEPESH: She will be allowed to leave with you.
DOCTOR: Hepesh, why do you go to so much trouble? You could simply have me killed.
HEPESH: I do not mean to have this planet destroyed in retaliation by the spaceships of the Federation.
DOCTOR: Yet you slap the Federation in the face by sabotaging the commission. Why?
HEPESH: Because I'm afraid.
DOCTOR: Afraid? Afraid of what? The Federation is your safeguard.
HEPESH: That is not true! I know the Federation's real intent.
DOCTOR: The Federation's real intent is to help you.
HEPESH: No! They'll exploit us for our minerals, enslave us with their machines, corrupt us with their technology. The face of Peladon will be changed, the past swept away, and everything that I know and value will have gone.
DOCTOR: The progress that they offer, that we offer, isn't like that.
HEPESH: I would rather be a cave dweller and free.
DOCTOR: Free? With your people imprisoned by ritual and superstition?
HEPESH: We need Aggedor.
DOCTOR: You can hardly expect your pet ghost to take on the whole Federation single-handed, can you?
HEPESH: We do not stand alone.
DOCTOR: Oh? Who stands with you?
HEPESH: Take your chance while you still can. It will soon be dawn.

And then dispatches the guards after him anyway!

HEPESH: Gather all our men, Captain. Search the catacombs and the dungeons, and remember, the alien is dangerous. If he resists, kill him!

The Doctor manages to evade the guards and then gets thrown into the pit to fight the King's Champion Grun:

Gordon St. Clair, playing Grun, appeared for many years to not have appeared in anything else at all but it recently emerged, thanks to Toby Hadoke's observations in Running Through Corridors, that he's actually Gordon Stothard who played a Robot Yeti in The Web of Fear and a Cyberman in The Wheel in Space, and was an extra in the Invasion & Mind of Evil.

Nick Hobbs, plays the royal beast Aggedor in both Curse of Peladon and it's sequel Monster of Peladon. He'd previously been a Technician in The Ambassadors of Death, an RSF Sentry in Inferno, an Auton Daffodil Man in Terror of the Autons, an American Aide in The Mind of Evil, the Nuton Driver in The Claws of Axos and a U.N.I.T. Soldier in Day of the Daleks He returns as 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 before returning in New Doctor Who as Mr Nainby in Amy's Choice.

Curse of Peladon was the third Pertwee story I saw and the first story featuring the Ice Warriors. I'd seen The Carnival of Monsters and the Three Doctors in late 1981 as part of The Five Faces of Doctor Who repeat season. In 1982 the BBC found themselves with a sudden 50 minute hole in their Monday night BBC1 schedules. My memory of the situation was a James Garner series, either The Rockford Files or Brett Maverick, had finished early. A repeat of three older Doctor Who stories was scheduled with each story spotlighting one of the three main monsters in Doctor Who & shown as 2 fifty minute episodes. The stories shown were The Curse of Peladon on 12 & 19th July featuring The Ice Warriors, Genesis of the Daleks on 26th July & 2nd August featuring the Daleks & Earthshock on 9 to 16 August 1982 featuring the Cybermen. As we said during episode 1, 525 line colour copies of Curse of Peladon, which only existed in black & white films in the BBC archives, were returned from BBC Toronto in the previous year 1981. The first two episodes played with no problems but episode 3 turned out to be a nightmare with the tape sticking & breaking necessitating it's playback & copying in sections with the sections being assembled into a complete episode. The BBC retained the copy, which was a PAL recording converted to NTSC and then converted using 1981 techniques back to what was a poorer quality PAL copy. The BBC deemed the original tape unbroadcastable and decided to junk it but Ian Levene, who'd gone to a lot of trouble to retrieve the episodes in the first place, retained the tape. In the early 2000s the Reverse Standards Conversion was developed to produce high quality conversions back to PAL by unpicking the original conversion. The original 525 line was "baked", to reduce it's moisture content, and then played back in sections, assembled and converted resulting in the good quality copy we have today which we have today. For more details on the process used see The Restoration Team Website article. The episode itself is a bit dark, but all the episodes of this serial are, but the quality of this episode is probably better than the others now! This is helped by the film sequence of the fight in the pit being returned to the BBC by the son of stuntman Terry Walsh who was doubling for Jon Pertwee during large parts of it.