OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 334
STORY NUMBER: 066 TRANSMITTED: Saturday 27 January 1973
WRITER: Robert Holmes
DIRECTOR: Barry Letts
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 9.5 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who Revisitations 2: Seeds of Death, Carnival of Monsters & Resurrection of the Daleks
EPISODE FORMAT: 625 video
"I just want you to admit the truth, that's all. Well, instead of swanning around some distant galaxy, we've slipped back about forty years in time and we're on a little cargo boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean!"
On the planet Inter Minor, Kalik & Orum witness the arrival of the cargo shuttle which discharges the humanoid Lurmans Vorg & Shirna from it's cargo bay along with their scope. One of the functionary workers rebels and is stunned by Kalik. The Tardis materialises in the hold of the SS Bernice in the Indian ocean: The Doctor was aiming for Metebelis III, the famous blue planet in the Acteon Group. Vorg starts his show pitch when the Scope start to show a defect. Exploring the ship they encounter the sleeping Major Daly, while his daughter Clare and her beau Lt John Andrews take a stroll round the deck. Jo finds a paper proving the date as a plesiosaurus surfaces scaring Clare. They are spotted by Daly and held prisoner by Andrews as stowaways and locked in Daly's cabin. En Route The Doctor & Jo find an odd silver hexagonal plate in the floor which Andrews can't see. The Doctor explains to Jo that the Bernice was lost at see on June 4th 1926 which is the day marked on the calender. Jo notices that the clock has gone back an hour while they've been imprisoned. Jo unlocks the door with her skeleton keys and they escape. The third member of commission, Pletrac, arrives and between them they decide to deport Vorg & Shirna. Vorg attempts to deceive them with a document they think is signed by their president Zarb but is actually signed by the Wallarian Wrestler the great Zarb. Returning to the Tardis for a device to open the deck plate, The Doctor & Jo witness the humans on the boat repeating the same things they did before. The Doctor believes they have been programmed to repeat a pattern and that the ship is part of some collection. On cue the plesiosaur arrives creating a diversion which allows the Doctor & Jo to get back to the Tardis in the hull. The Doctor goes inside to fetch his magnetic core extractor but is called out by Jo as a giant hand reaches in and removes the Tardis.
From this episode it almost seems likes there's two disconnected stories going on here:
First we have Vorg, Shirna & the three officials on Inter Minor:
Then there's The Doctor & Jo who find themselves on a boat from the 1920s
And at no point in this first episode do the stories directly cross!
The Doctor's strand has several mysterious elements built in: we know something is going to happen/has already happened to the Bernice on this day.
DOCTOR: Oh, look. Daly's been keeping track of the date. I suppose the name of this ship means nothing to you, Jo?
JO: No. Should it?
DOCTOR: Well, in its time, the SS Bernice was as famous a sea mystery as the Marie Celeste.
JO: Why? What happened?
DOCTOR: Nobody really knows. A freak tidal wave was the popular explanation, although the Indian Ocean was as flat as a millpond on that night.
JO: You mean she sank?
DOCTOR: No, she vanished, Jo. Two days out from Bombay on June the 4th, 1926, the SS Bernice just disappeared off the face of the Earth.
JO: Disappeared on June the, June the 4th? But according to that calendar, that's today.
DOCTOR: Yes, intriguing, isn't it?
We've also got an out of place plesiosaur, some odd repeating behaviour, the mysterious hexagonal deck plate and, finally, the odd giant hand to contend with!
Following Troughton smacking the Tardis console in the previous story to get it working we now have some more "delicate technical adjustments" from Vorg, who also gets to engage in a discussion about his entertainment with Plectrac:
PLETRAC: From your data discs, it appear that you travel from planet to planet performing some kind of ritual with this machine? For what purpose?This is just the start of this story's comments on television!
SHIRNA: We are entertainers.
PLETRAC: Entertainers? Explain the term.
SHIRNA: We put on a show. You understand?
PLETRAC: No.
VORG: Our purpose is to amuse, simply to amuse. Nothing serious, nothing political.
KALIK: Amusement is prohibited. It's purposeless.The class system on Inter Minor is obvious, with the population divided into two groups, which seem to be different species:
PLETRAC: Zarb is considering lifting that restriction. The latest thinking is that the latest outbreak of violence among the functionaries is caused through lack of amusement.
KALIK: Oh, more anti-productive legislation.
ORUM: Where will it end?
KALIK: One can see where it will end, Orum. Ultimately, the functionaries will take over.
ORUM: Take over?
PLETRAC: Another functionary has dared to ascend to the higher level.The last line is a corruption of the old phrase "give them a bath and they'll store coal in it!"
KALIK: One witnessed the event.
ORUM: One cannot understand why they do it.
KALIK: But then one is not a functionary.
PLETRAC: It is a growing problem. As members of the official species, we must all share President Zarb's concern.
ORUM: They've no sense of responsibility. Give them a hygiene chamber and they store fossil fuel in it.
Carnival of Monsters was the first Pertwee tale I saw, and also was my introduction to Jo Grant as a companion. It was shown on BBC2 on the 16th to 19th November 1981 as part of the Five Faces of Doctor Who repeat season, but oddly shown the week before it's preceding televised story The Three Doctors. Carnival was made before that tale though, and had an earlier production code so maybe that influenced the decision as well as the desire to show the first episode of Three Doctors on the show's eighteenth birthday. You wonder if an earlier four part Pertwee such as Spearhead from Space, which establishes the Doctor's exile on Earth, or Day of the Daleks, which feature the Doctor's mortal enemies who don't feature during the Five Faces season, might been a better story choice for Doctor Who fans following the repeat run. We'll pick the story of Five Faces with it's fifth and final story on 31st May next year.
We know all three of the actors in the Tribunal on Inter-Minor:
Peter Halliday plays Pletrac, the head of the tribunal, having already appeared in The Invasion as Packer and provided voices in both Doctor Who and the Silurians and The Ambassadors of Death. He'll be back in the City of Death as Captain Tancredi's guard and Remembrance of the Daleks as the Vicar. He appeared in two of the earliest television series A for Andromeda and The Andromeda Breakthrough as Doctor John Fleming. He was in Out of the Unknown appearing in the sole completely surviving third season episode The Last Lonely Man, directed by Douglas Camfield where he played Patrick Wilson: you can see that on the Out of the Unknown DVD Set. He appears in UFO as Dr. Segal in A Question of Priorities, the missing third season Doomwatch episode Say Knife, Fat Man as Rafael Dominguez, The Sweeney episode I Want the Man as Chief Insp. Gordon and the last first season episode of The Tripods as the Interrogator.
Kalik is played by Michael Wisher. We first heard him providing voices in The Seeds of Death, directed by Michael Ferguson who then used in The Ambassadors of Death as John Wakefield. It would have been there that Barry Letts first saw him and he uses him in Terror of the Autons as Rex Farrel and again here. For the next two stories, Frontier in Space & Planet of the Daleks, we'll hear his voice as a Dalek a role he continues in Death to the Daleks and, uncredited, in Genesis of the Daleks where ascends to Doctor Who superstardom as Davros, the Daleks creator. He's then back in the very next story as Magrik in Revenge of the Cybermen then two stories later in the Planet of Evil as Morelli and the voice of Ranjit. Producer & Director Barry Letts had previously used him on his Z-Cars story The Saint of Concrete Canyon and he later appears in Moonbase 3 as Harry Sanders in Departure and Arrival.
Lastly Terence Lodge plays Orum. He was Medok in The Macra Terror and returns as Moss, another member of Lupton's gang in the Letts directed Planet of the Spiders. He was in several episodes of THE An Age of Kings series of William Shakespeare history plays and Barry Letts later uses him again as Mr. Spenlow in the Classic Serial version of David Copperfield
Playing the Functionary that ascends to the balcony and is shot by Kalik is stuntman Stuart Fell. He had previously been a UNIT soldier & Auton in Terror of the Autons, UNIT staff member & a photographer in The Mind of Evil, a UNIT Soldier & Axon in The Claws of Axos, Alpha Centauri in The Curse of Peladon and a Guard, Sailor & Sea Devil in The Sea Devils. He returns as Alpha Centauri in The Monster of Peladon, the Tramp in Planet of the Spiders part two who the Doctor drives the hovercraft over, a Guard in Planet of the Spiders, a Wirrn Larvae in The Ark in Space part two & Wirrn Operator in The Ark in Space, Double for Styre in The Sontaran Experiment part one, The Kraal in The Android Invasion part three, the Monster in The Brain of Morbius, Forking peasant / Guard / Acolyte in The Masque of Mandragora, a Policeman, Coolie & the Giant Rat in Talons of Weng Chiang, a Guard in The Sun Makers, a Sontaran in The Invasion of Time, a Shrivenzale in the Ribos Operation, Roga in State of Decay, a Castrovalvan Warrior in Castrovalva, a masked villager in The Visitation and a Cyberman in The Five Doctors plus he did stunts in Terror of the Autons, was fight arranger in The Talons of Weng-Chiang, more stunts in The Ribos Operation & Full Circle and served as fight arranger again in State of Decay. In Blake's 7 he was Dortmunn in Mission to Destiny, a Subterron in Project Avalon, a Goth Warrior in The Keeper, a Sarran in Aftermath, a Labourer in The Harvest of Kyros, a Guard in City at the Edge of the World, a Federation Trooper in Rumours of Death, a Guard in Moloch, a Gunman in Death-Watch, a Link in Terminal & Rescue and a Hommik Warrior in Power plus he was the stunt coordinator for Project Avalon, The Keeper, Aftermath, Volcano, The Harvest of Kyros, City at the Edge of the World, Rumours of Death, Moloch, Death-Watch, Terminal, Rescue & Power. He plays a man in the Doomwatch episode Spectre at the Feast. He's in The Empire Strikes Back as a Snowtrooper and does stunts in Return of the Jedi. He also does stunt work on the Roger Moore James Bond films For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy & A View to a Kill. And so much more.
Of the remaining Functionaries, two are known to us: Murphy Grumbar was first a Dalek, credited as Peter Murphy, in The Daleks & The Dalek Invasion of Earth, then as Murphy Grumber he's Dalek in The Space Museum, Mechanoid in The Chase, a Dalek in The Evil of the Daleks, a Dalek in Day of the Daleks, Arcturus in The Curse of Peladon and a Gell Guard in The Three Doctors, which was filmed after this story. He returns as a Dalek in Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleks and finally in Death to the Daleks where he's miscredited as Murphy Grunbar.
Bill Lodge was a Rill in Galaxy Four, a Passserby in Spearhead from Space, a UNIT Soldier in Doctor Who and the Silurians and a Villager in The Dæmons. He returns in The Time Warrior as one of Irongron’s Man. IMDB has him down for two Doomwatch appearances as a Lab Assistant in the first episode The Plastic Eaters and a man in Spectre at the Feast.
This episode was repeated as part of the Five Faces of Doctor Who on Monday 16TH November 1981 at 17:40. Immediately following that on BBC2 at 18:05 the third episode of series 2 of The Adventure Game aired. The guests for this episode were David Singmaster, Sue Cook & Philip Sheppard. Then on BBC One at 19:20 was the eighth episode of Blake's 7's fourth season Games.
No comments:
Post a Comment