319 The Mutants Episode Two

EPISODE: The Mutants: Episode Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 319
STORY NUMBER: 063
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 15 April 1972
WRITER: Bob Baker & Dave Martin
DIRECTOR: Christopher Barry
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 7.8 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - The Mutants
EPISODE FORMAT: 525 video RSC

"I can do as I please, Doctor. And since the unfortunate assassination of the Administrator, Solos is under martial law. My law!"

Jo & Ky have teleported down to Solos but she quickly has trouble breathing the atmosphere. The Marshall tells the Doctor that Solos is now under martial law: his law and coerces the Doctor into trying to open the box if he searches for Jo. He is taken to the Skybase lab where Jaeger is carrying out experiments on Solos' atmosphere trying to reverse recent changes. Ky takes Jo to the caves where the atmosphere is clearer and easier for her to breathe. The Marshall kills Varan's son, the administrator's assassin, earning Varan's wrath who flees into Skybase. Ky believes that the Overlord's pollution is causing the mutations. The Doctor joins Stubbs who are hunting for Varan in the belief he is a mutant. Varan tells The Doctor & Stubbs that Varan killed his son, while Cotton is instructed to tell the Doctor that Jo is in hospital on Solos. Jaeger proposes to use rockets to alter Solos' atmosphere but the Doctor is angered at the plan knowing will wipe out the Solonians. Cotton tells the Doctor the truth and together they plan the Doctor's escape to Solos with Varan, but as the Doctor puts his plan into action, deactivating power to all of Skybase bar the transporter. Arriving at the transporter Varan attacks him....

Bit of a bitty killing time episode this, nothing seems to advance terribly much. The Marshal earns the enmity of the one Solonian perceived to be his ally, Varan, by killing his son who he'd used to kill the administrator. Covers the tracks nicely but was it worth it to earn more local hostility?

There's a few titbit in here which hints at why Earth wants to abandon Solos: it's not worth staying any longer!

DOCTOR: You know, I can't think why you people ever came here.
JAEGER: Thaesium, Doctor. This planet is one of the richest fuel sources in the galaxy, or it used to be.
DOCTOR: Are the deposits now exhausted?
JAEGER: More or less.

As we've seen the Marshall isn't keen to let his personal bit of power go so he's got a mad scheme to colonise the planet. Just one problem, the atmosphere isn't suitable for humans:

DOCTOR: Bad news?
MARSHAL: Not for you, Doctor. For your friend. They have escaped on to the surface of Solos.
DOCTOR: Ah.
MARSHAL: Still, without a mask. But never fear, Doctor, we shall find her. Or her body.
DOCTOR: Would you kindly explain that remark, sir?
MARSHAL: During the hours of daylight no human can survive on Solos without an oxymask. The soil contains a nitrogen isotope unknown on Earth. The ultra-violet rays of the sun cause a kind of poisonous mist.
DOCTOR: How poisonous?
MARSHAL: I give your friend an hour, possibly less, depending on how fast they're travelling.

But the Marshall's scientist Jagger plans to fix that by changing the atmosphere:

DOCTOR: So, now you plan to colonise the planet in earnest, if you can change the atmosphere?
JAEGER: That's my problem, not yours.
DOCTOR: Well, there are other people concerned, you know?
JAEGER: Such as?
DOCTOR: Well, the Solonians, for example. After all, it is their planet.
JAEGER: Was, Doctor.

You'll recall from the Sea Devils that I'm on the look out for computer equipment from UFO. I've found found something in this episode looked both familiar and slightly out of place here and it turned out to be recycled from that show: the computer bank with it's reel to reel tape in the Skybase lab is Ayshea Brough's console from the SHADO headquarters:

We'll see another in the Green Death and one again in Monster of Peladon!

Then there's the orange and blue units on the wall in the guard's office on Solos: they are different spacesuit parts from 2001: A Space Odyssey! The orange ones are the backpacks from the suits Frank and Dave wear on the Discovery while the blue one is a chest unit from the suits worn by Doctor Floyd and company on the moon when they discover the monolith. The Say Hello Spaceman blog has looked extensively at the 2001 spacesuits and tells the story that although all props from the film were ordered destroyed some spacesuit elements survived and have popped up in various BBC productions.

Another out of place prop is the Marshall's communicator which is evidently a bicycle pump!

Paul Whitsun-Jones, The Marshal, we've seen before as The Squire in the Smugglers. Earlier in his career he appeared in all six episodes of The Quatermass Experiment as James Fullalove, of which only the first two survive and they can be seen on The Quatermass Collection DVD.

The Skybase scientist Jaegar, played by George Pravda, was Alexander Denes in The Enemy of the World, and returns as Castelan Spandrell in The Deadly Assassin. He had been in The Prisoner appearing as a Doctor in the episode A Change of Mind. Elsewhere he's Kutze in the James Bond film Thunderball, Prof. Miklos Egri in Doomwatch: Spectre at the Feast, Gen. Alexis Trenkin in Moonbase 3: Castor and Pollux, Gershom in I, Claudius: Some Justice, Hirschfield in The Professionals: First Night, Polyakov in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and General Borov in Firefox.

Only one of the two guards has appeared in Doctor Who before: Christopher Coll, Stubbs, was in The Seeds of Death as Phipps. He can also be seen in The Sweeney episode Supersnout as The Shop Owner.

His companion Cotton, played by Rick James has another genre appearance in the penultimate Blake's 7 episode Warlord as Chalsa.

The Exit Guard is Joe Santo who was a Resistance Man in the War Games and a UNIT Soldier in Ambassadors of Death. He returns as a Skoannan Guard in The Horns of the Nimon, a Tharil in Warriors Gate and an Alphan Servant in Trial of a Timelord: Mindwarp. He was in Blake's 7 as a Scavenger in Deliverance, Doomwatch as a man in The Islanders, In the Dark, High Mountain & and Enquiry and Moonbase 3 as José in View of a Dead Planet.

In amongst the Skybase Guards we have Keith Ashley who was a Citizen & Male Elder in The Savages, Atlantean Guard & Miner in The Underwater Menace, Firing Squad Member in The War Games, Auton in Spearhead from Space, Technician in Doctor Who and the Silurians, Technician in Inferno and a Villager in The Dæmons. He returns as a Villager in Planet of the Spiders, a Dalek Operator in Genesis of the Daleks, a Zygon in Terror of the Zygons, an Android & Man at Defence Station in The Android Invasion, a Krynoid & Sir Colin's Aide in The Seeds of Doom and a Peasant & Brother in The Masque of Mandragora Ron Tingley had been a BBC3 TV Crewmember in The Dæmons and a Naval Base Sailor / Rating in The Sea Devils. He was in Doomwatch as Man in Hear No Evil & Flood. David Waterman was a Worker / Soldier in The War Machines, an English Soldier in The Highlanders and an Atlantean Priest/Medical Orderly/Miner in The Underwater Menace. He'll be back as an Earth Guard on Ogron Planet in Frontier in Space and a Miner in the Green Death. In Doomwatch he plays a Police Constable in Fire and Brimstone and a Man in Flood. He's also a Technician in the Moonbase 3 episodes Departure and Arrival, Behemoth, Achilles Heel, Outsiders & View of a Dead Planet.