OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 293
STORY NUMBER: 058
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 10 April 1971
WRITER: Malcolm Hulke
DIRECTOR: Michael Briant
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 7.6 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Colony In Space
EPISODE FORMAT: 525 video RSC
"Unless things improve radically, you're in grave danger of starving to death!"
The Time Lords discover that their report on the Doomsday Weapon is missing and so send the Tardis to Uxarieus, a struggling human Colony that has been established under the leadership of Ashe. Their crops are failing and the live in fear of the planet being mined. The Leeson colonists are attacked and killed by a monster. Norton, a survivor from another colony wanders in. He tells Ashe and his colleagues that his colony was destroyed by the monster that killed the Leeson. While searching for evidence in the Leeson dome the Doctor is attacked by a robot.
Very much setup for the rest of the story this episode: Get the Doctor off Earth and establish the struggling colonists. The Doctor stranded on Earth was the idea of the previous production team: Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts decided to get him off Earth as quickly as possible. They use "on a mission for the Time Lords" as a way to do it, and in the process treat us to a brief view of the Time Lords analysing files the Master stole on the planet and deciding to use the Doctor to deal with it.
TIME LORD: Are you are sure the Master knows?
TIME LORD 2: The report on the Doomsday weapon is missing from our files. Only he could have taken it.
TIME LORD: Then we can use the Doctor to deal with this problem.
TIME LORD 3: The Doctor resents his exile bitterly. Do you think he'll co-operate with us?
TIME LORD 2: I doubt it. We immobilised his Tardis, took away his freedom to move in space and time.
TIME LORD: Then we must restore his freedom for as long as it serves our purpose.
Given that as a start it's a bit of a surprise we don't see the Master in the rest of the episode, especially as the Brigadier believes he's found him:
BRIGADIER: One of my agents thinks he's picked up a trace of the Master.The Doctor's line about The Spanish Ambassador being mistaken for the Master is a nod to Roger Delgado's previous role as Mendoza, the Spanish Ambassador in Sir Francis Drake!. That's it for the Brigadier for this episode and indeed till the very end of the story. A constant presence since Spearhead From Space 35 episodes ago, the middle four episodes of Colony in Space are the first time that Nicholas Courtney misses an episode since Jon Pertwee became the Doctor!
DOCTOR: Your agents are always picking up traces of the Master.
BRIGADIER: This agent happens to be particularly reliable, Doctor. I'll let you what he says. If you're interested.
JO: Ah. Now you've offended him.
DOCTOR: Well, look what happened last time. The man they arrested turned out to be the Spanish ambassador!
She may have been the Doctor's assistant for fourteen episode but this is the first time that Jo Grant sees the inside of the Tardis, with a fairly typical reaction.
JO: I don't believe it! It's bigger inside than out!Jo's predecessor, the Doctor's previous assistant Liz Shaw didn't get to see inside the Tardis at all! It wasn't until the third episode of Claws of Axos that we saw inside the Tardis during the Third Doctor time.
DOCTOR: Yes. That's because the Tardis is dimensionally transcendental.
JO: What does that mean?
DOCTOR: It means that it's bigger inside than out. Now then..... That's impossible!
JO: The doors have closed.
DOCTOR: What?
JO: Doctor, let me out of here.
DOCTOR: Well, I can't, Jo. I think we're taking off!
JO: Well, stop it.
DOCTOR: I'm trying to. Something's operating it by remote control. The Time Lords!
JO: All right, Doctor. The joke's over. Open the doors and let me out.
DOCTOR: I can't, Jo. We've taken off.
JO: All right, then. Where are we?
DOCTOR: At the moment we're nowhere.
JO: Oh, don't be silly. We can't be nowhere.
DOCTOR: We're outside the space time continuum.
JO: What?
DOCTOR: Look.
JO: What's happening? Where are we going?
DOCTOR: I've no idea. We'll just have to wait until we emerge.
DOCTOR: The planet Uxarieus. So that's our destination.
JO: Very impressive, but can we go back to Earth now please?
DOCTOR: I don't know, Jo. I just don't know.
JO: Is that supposed to be where we are?
DOCTOR: That is where we are.
JO: All right then. If we've landed on another planet, why don't you open the doors?
DOCTOR: Because the atmosphere out there might be poisonous, that's why. I'll just check.
JO: Well, is it?
DOCTOR: Is it what?
JO: Is the atmosphere poisonous?
DOCTOR: No. No, it's quite healthy. Similar to Earth before the invention of the motor car.
JO: Look, Doctor, are you going to open the doors or not?
DOCTOR: I can but try.
JO: Thank you. Doctor!
DOCTOR: That's an alien world out there, Jo. Think of it.
JO: I don't want to think of it. I want to go back to Earth.
DOCTOR: Look, do you realize how long I've been confined to one planet?
JO: All that talk of yours about travelling in time and space, it was true.
DOCTOR: Well, of course it was true! Before I was stranded on Earth, I spent all my time exploring new worlds and seeking the wonders of the universe.
JO: But you don't know what's out there.
DOCTOR: Then let's find out. Don't you want to set foot in another world?
JO: Well, yes, I do but I
DOCTOR: Good. Come on. We'll just take a quick look around, and then I'll try and get you back to Earth. All right?
I called attention to the Tardis doors and walls when we saw it in Claws of Axos. Here the doors open into the ship, showing Roundels on the outer side, as they did there but we're back to seeing straight out the doors into the outside.
The photographic flat of a Tardis wall, which was outside the doors in Claws of Axos, is back inside the strip and is actually the right way round, with the roundels in columns as opposed to the rows which have been seen the last few times this piece has been used.
Of course once they're out of the Tardis, they're in trouble nearly straight away as they're mistaken by the colonists as mineralogists working for a mining company:
LEESON: They were examining rock samples. They're mineralogists. It was bound to happen.Mining companies aren't the colonists only worries though:
DOCTOR: Look, we are not mineralogists. And even if we were, why all the hostility? It's a respectable profession.
LEESON: Because we don't want our planet gutted. This is our world. You've no right to be here.
DOCTOR: Look, we've as much right to be here as anybody else.
ASHE: This planet has been classified as suitable for colonisation. Once your big mining combines move in, you'll reduce it to a galactic slagheap.
DOCTOR: Haven't you got laws to deal with this kind of thing?
LEESON: Yes, there are laws. We can complain to Earth's government just like all the others. By the time you'll get a final decision, the planet's useless.
DOCTOR: I see. Yes well, I can sympathize with you, gentlemen, but I can assure you that I'm not working for anybody.
DOCTOR: These are your crop records, I take it?The Doctor believes that external forces are to blame for their crop failure:
ASHE: That's right, but I really don't see what it has to do with you.
DOCTOR: It's a very poor showing, isn't it? Are you operating above subsistence level?
LEESON: We're surviving. Come on!
ASHE: No, no, just a minute. I'd like to hear what he has to say.
DOCTOR: Unless I'm very much mistaken, you've got far more to worry about than mineralogists.
DOCTOR: Let's see if I've got this right. You brought your colonists to this planet just over a year ago.Lots of the cast have form in Doctor Who: John Ringham, as Ashe, was previously Tlotoxl in The Aztecs & Josiah Blake in The Smugglers. Early in his career he appeared in An Age of Kings the BBC adaptation of William Shakespeare's history plays playing Lord Berkeley in Richard II Part 1: The Hollow Crown & Richard II Part 2: The Deposing of a King, Vintner in Henry IV Part 1 Rebellion from the North, Porter / Fang in Henry IV Part 3 The New Conspiracy, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester in Henry IV Part 4 Uneasy Lies The Head, Henry V Part 1 Signs of War, Henry V Part 2 The Band of Brothers, Henry VI Part 1 The Red Rose And The White, Henry VI Part 2 The Fall of A Protector & Henry VI Part 3 The Rabble From Kent, A Father That Hath Killed His Son in Henry VI Part 4 The Morning's War, Watchman in Part Thirteen The Sun in Splendour and Sir William Catesby in Richard III Part 1 The Dangerous Brother & Richard III Part 2 The Boar Hunt. He appears in the first Dad's Army episode The Man and the Hour as Bracewell but his character was dropped because it was deemed to similar to Private Godfrey! He returns later in the series playing Captain Bailey 4 times in A Stripe for Frazer, Under Fire, Room at the Bottom & Don't Fence Me In. In the first series of Juliet Bravo he plays Superintendent Lake in Shot Gun, The One Who Got Away & Lake in Relief. In The Tripods he plays Herr Krummel in the third episode of the second series. I first saw him in Just Good Friends where he plays Norman Warrender, Penny's father. Later he features in The Piglet Files as Major Andrew Maxwell. Very late in his career he was in V for Vendetta as an Old Man . He died October 20 2008, aged 80.
ASHE: Yes.
DOCTOR: You set up your main dome here, with all your subsidiary domes around it.
ASHE: That's right. I made a preliminary survey before I sent for the others.
DOCTOR: And you were convinced that this planet was suitable for habitation, despite the exhaustion of the soil?
ASHE: Well, worn out soil can be reclaimed, Doctor, as you well know. We should have had subsidence crops within the year.
DOCTOR: Exactly. Should have.
ASHE: The cover crop refuses to grow. We plant it, it shoots up and then withers, again and again. There seems to be no reason for it.
DOCTOR: Well, in theory, you should have a bumper crop by now.
ASHE: I can't feed my people on theories, Doctor.
By far the most famous member of the cast is making her only Doctor Who appearance. Now I'm obsessive about what other actors have been in but Helen Worth, as Mary Ashe the daughter of the colony's leader, should be recognisable to almost anyone: She's Gail Rodwell (nee Potter, Tilsley, Platt, Hillman & McIntyre) from Coronation Street.
John Line plays Martin. He'd been in the Out of the Unknown episode Thirteen to Centaurus, where he played Capt. Sanger, which you can see on the Out of the Unknown DVD Set. He later appears in Survivors as Alistair McFadden in Face of the Tiger and The Professionals as Somerfield in Operation Susie.
Mrs Martin is played by Mitzi Webster who returns under the name Mitzi McKenzie to play Nancy in The Green Death.
David Webb plays Leeson. He appears in the Blake's 7 episode Star One as Stot and later became known for his work as an anti-censorship_campaigner.
Jane Leeson is played by Sheila Grant who previously voiced the Quarks in The Dominators. She can be seen in the surviving 1971 Doomwatch episode No Room for Error, as Gillian Blake, which is on The Doomwatch DVD. She later provides voices for the Captain Zep - Space Detective episode The Lodestone of Space.
Completing the named colonists in the first episode we have Nicholas Pennell who plays Winton.
We've heard him many times before as the voices of the Daleks & Cybermen but making his on screen d�but in Doctor Who is Roy Skelton as Norton. He's got four further in front of camera appearances in Planet of the Daleks as Wester, The Green Death as James, The Android Invasion as Chedaki and The Hand of Fear as King Rokon.
His Dalek co-conspirator John Scott Martin is the Robot here, making his first appearance in the show since 1967's Evil of the Daleks.
Frequent Doctor Who extra Pat Gorman plays the Primitive. There's two Primitives in this episode so I'm not sure which one is Gorman, who was credited, and which was Les Clark, who isn't.
All three Time Lords we saw at the start of the episode also have had or will have other Doctor Who appearances:
Graham Leaman previously played The Controller in The Macra Terror Price in Fury from the Deep and The Grand Marshall in The Seeds of Death episode five & six. He's a Time Lord here and in The Three Doctors, presumably the same Time Lord. He also has Doomwatch on his CV appearing in the second season opener You Killed Toby Wren as Professor Eric Hayland, which exists and can be found on The Doomwatch DVD, and Cause of Death as Wilfred Ridge, the father of one of the leading characters, John Ridge. Sadly this appearance is one of the many later Doomwatch episodes which is missing.
Peter Forbes-Robertson was a Guard in The Power of the Daleks and will be the Chief Sea Devil in The Sea Devils. He appears in The Tripods as Schenker in the first episode of the second series.
John Baker returns as Ralph in The Visitation. He appears in Blake's 7 as a Scientist in Project Avalon.
The outfit one of the colonists is wearing catches my eye: he appears to be wearing a spacesuit from Ambassador of Death!
