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.

318 The Mutants Episode One

EPISODE: The Mutants: Episode One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 318
STORY NUMBER: 063
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 08 April 1972
WRITER: Bob Baker & Dave Martin
DIRECTOR: Christopher Barry
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 9.1 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - The Mutants
EPISODE FORMAT: 525 video RSC

"The mutants must be rooted out. They are evil and diseased!"

Through the mist an old bearded man runs, pursued by guards. He is showing the first signs of mutation with spines protruding from his back. The Doctor is working in his lab when a container arrives from the Time Lords for him to deliver. The Tardis suddenly becomes active so he and Jo leave with the container materialising on the Skybase orbiting the planet Solos. Ky & Varan, Solonian leaders, have arrived on the Skybase for a conference. Varan is summoned by the Marshall, the military official in charge of Solos. The Doctor & Jo are attacked by a Solonian guard who is starting to mutate, but rescued & held by human guards Cotton & Stubbs. The Marshall argues with the Administrator for Solos: The Administrator intends to use the conference to make Solos independent but the Marshall objects. The Doctor tries to deliver his container but it won't open for the Marshall or Administrator. The Marshall has Varan use his son to assassinate the Administrator, which happens as the Doctor, who has escaped from his imprisonment, enters the room & the box starts to open for Ky. Jo pursues Ky running into the base's teleport with him as the guards open fire...

We'll start with the obvious point: IT'S........ The opening to the episode, with the old man wandering out of the mist towards the screen is so The It's Man, played by Michael Palin, in the opening sequence to many Monty Python's Flying Circus episodes. All involved with this story deny any intentional homage on the DVD.

The Old Man here is David J. Grahame who was previously a Parisian Man in The Massacre, an pedestrian in The War Machines, a Control Room Technician in The Ambassadors of Death and a Villager in The Dæmons. He's back as a Chestnut Seller in The Talons of Weng-Chiang and a Coven Member in Image of the Fendahl.

Yet another mission for the Timelords here, following Colony in Space & Curse of Peladon. Here though we get no pretext about how the Doctor believes he's got the Tardis working: the box turns up and off we go.

JO: Doctor?
DOCTOR: Mmm?
JO: Are you going to be very much longer?
DOCTOR: No, nearly finished, Jo.
JO: What are you doing anyway?
DOCTOR: I'm making a minimum inertia superdrive for Bessie.
JO: Oh. Well, for your information, it's well past lunch time, and I'm
DOCTOR: Eh?
DOCTOR: Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
JO: Lunch?
DOCTOR: No.
JO: Bomb?
DOCTOR: No, nothing so exciting.
JO: Well?
DOCTOR: It's an assignment.
JO: Well then, it is exciting.
DOCTOR: No, it's a container of some kind, Jo, from them.
JO: Time Lords?
DOCTOR: That's right.
JO: Well, aren't you going to open it?
DOCTOR: I'm not allowed to open it.
JO: Huh?
DOCTOR: I couldn't, even if I wanted to. No, I'm not meant to. I couldn't open it, even if I wanted to. No, it's only meant for one person, and or creature. It will only open for one person.
JO: And or creature.
DOCTOR: Yeah, that's right. Yes, I'm just the messenger boy.
JO: Well, can't you just refuse?
DOCTOR: They only send these things in a real emergency, Jo. It's top priority, a three line whip. No, I've got to go.
JO: How do you know where to deliver it?
DOCTOR: I think that has already been decided.
JO: Hang on, wait for me. I'm coming too.
DOCTOR: That's out of the question. It's bound to be dangerous, probably difficult.
JO: All the more reason. You need me to look after you.
DOCTOR: Sorry, Jo, a lot of rubbish. Not this time. Au revoir!
JO: Oh, no you don't!

Several Doctor Who stories have a theme or are about something but the Mutants is possibly the most blatant of these so far. It essentially exists as a commentary on colonialism - at the time this story was written Britain was involved in withdrawing from it's colonial interests and, notably, a deteriorating situation in Rhodesia - and Aparthied - the commentary on the South African situation, can be found in elements of the set design here: The transporter to & from the planet is segregated into Overlords & Solonians and quite clearly labelled as such.

On screen we have Ky, representing those opposing colonial rule, while Varan supports it. Ky in turn blames the Overlords for the changes happening on their planet.

VARAN: Greetings, Ky.
KY: I knew you would be here, Varan, with your Overlord masters.
VARAN: And why are you here?
KY: I was summoned.
VARAN: You will attend the conference?
KY: The conference? More lies from the Overlords. More promises of freedom.
VARAN: Yet Ky still came?
KY: I came to demand that the Overlords stop murdering our people.
VARAN: The mutants must be rooted out. They are evil and diseased.
KY: Who tells us that?
VARAN: My eyes tell me.
KY: No, Varan, the Overlords tell you. They tell you to kill and you kill.
VARAN: My people are warriors. It is honourable to fight.
KY: Where is the honour in hunting down unarmed creatures?
VARAN: It is their duty, Ky. They are diseased.
KY: If it is a disease, what has caused it? Once we were farmers and hunters. The land was green, the rivers ran clear, the air was sweet to breathe. And then the Overlords came, bringing Earth's poisons with them, calling it progress. We toiled in their mines, we became slaves. Worse than slaves!
VARAN: Liar!
KY: Murderer! You have nothing else to hunt, so you hunt your own kind.

But what they don't know is that Earth has decided to cut it's losses and leave Solos. Unfortunately The Marshall doesn't seem keen to loose what he sees as his personal domain:

MARSHAL: I've asked for a full report, Administrator.
ADMINISTRATOR: I should think so. What happened to your security arrangements? And why wasn't I informed that Varan was here? Really, Marshal, on the eve of the independence conference.
MARSHAL: They'll be a full security clampdown. The Solonians will never know. As for Varan, he was merely reporting on Ky's activities.
ADMINISTRATOR: Spying for you, you mean.
MARSHAL: All part of security.
ADMINISTRATOR: Security? Such as we had tonight? Natives and the devil knows who else running amok. Good heavens, man, we're not at war with the Solonians. We're giving them independence.
MARSHAL: Oh, eventually.
ADMINISTRATOR: Not eventually, Marshal, now. Total and absolute independence. We're pulling out.
MARSHAL: Pulling out?
ADMINISTRATOR: I take it you've been too busy with security to study the latest reports from Earth? We can't afford an empire any more. Earth is exhausted, Marshal. Finished. Politically, economically and biologically finished.
MARSHAL: Then why go back? We could keep Skybase on Solos, take over the whole planet.
ADMINISTRATOR: Out of the question. Apart from the Solonians themselves, there's the problem of the atmosphere.
MARSHAL: Well, they're both problems that can be solved.
ADMINISTRATOR: Ky's already making political capital out of your experiments in that field.
MARSHAL: The mutants.
ADMINISTRATOR: Exactly.
MARSHAL: There is no proof that my atmospheric experiments have anything at all to do with these mutations. The Mutts are a menace and must be wiped out.
ADMINISTRATOR: And that's your alternative to independence? Genocide?
MARSHAL: Give them independence, they'll starve out of total incompetence.
ADMINISTRATOR: Nevertheless, they shall have their independence. Whether they're ready for it or not.
MARSHAL: When you summoned this conference, Administrator, I assumed it for your usual line.
ADMINISTRATOR: Which is?
MARSHAL: Fob them off with promises, a few minor concessions. It's always worked before.
ADMINISTRATOR: Well, this time I'm conceding all Ky's demands.
MARSHAL: But
ADMINISTRATOR: We have no choice. We must return to Earth.
MARSHAL: But I've put years of my life into this planet. The whole, my whole career
ADMINISTRATOR: Yeah, well, I'm afraid things are going to be a bit tricky for ex-colonial officials. Still, don't worry, old chap. We'll find you something. The Bureau of Records, perhaps. Something clerical.

Playing the assassinated Administrator is Geoffrey Palmer who was previously Masters in The Silurians. Over a long career he's been in nearly everything! Palmer features in Out of the Unknown three times playing the Chief Officer in the first episode No Place Like Earth, which you can see on the Out of the Unknown DVD Set, then returning in the third season as Gosford in 1+1=1.5 by Doctor Who author Brian Hayles and finally playing Jack Mervyn in he penultimate episode The Uninvited. He was in Doomwatch twice, as Major Sims in the second season episode Invasion, which is on The Doomwatch DVD and Chief Supt. Mallory in he missing third season episode Say Knife, Fat Man. He can be seen in The Sweeney as Commander Watson in Feet of Clay, Fawlty Towers as Dr. Price in The Kipper and the Corpse, The Professionals as Simon Sinclair in Where the Jungle Ends and Avery in The Ojuka Situation, in Clockwise as a Headmaster, Inspector Morse as Matthew Copley-Barnes in The Infernal Serpent, Blackadder Goes Forth as Field Marshal Haig in Goodbyeee, Ashes to Ashes as Lord Scarman in the eighth episode and Tomorrow Never Dies as Admiral Roebuck. He returned to Doctor Who as Hardaker in Voyage of the Damned, which was directed by his son Charles Palmer who's worked on many new series episodes.

Of the prominent Solonians Ky is played by Garrick Hagon, a familiar genre figure with a CV as long as your arm He appears in Terrance Dicks & Barry Letts' Moonbase 3 as Bruno Ponti in Behemoth, Outsiders & View of a Dead Planet. He returned to modern Doctor Who as Abraham in A Town Called Mercy. His career involves a lot of voiceover work, including providing the Skybase announcer voice here, and frequently appears alongside his wife the actress Liza Ross: Both were involved in one of my favourite TV shows Star Fleet, the English language version of the Japanese X-Bomber, with Garrick Hagan voicing Captain Carter and Liza Ross Lamia, amongst others. Star Fleet has finally come out on DVD so you can now enjoy it for yourselves. Best puppet series ever. Oh and Garrick Hagon was also in another science fiction film that you might have seen, but we'll come on to that in later episodes when another actor involved also shows up.

His opposite number Varan is played by James Mellor who was previously in The Wheel in Space as Sean Flannigan. He was also a man in the 1972 Doomwatch film.

Jonathan Sherwood plays Varan's Son who is used to assassinate the Administrator.

Varan's mutating bodyguard is regular extra Steve Ismay who'd been a BBC3 TV Crewmember in The Dæmons, a Guerilla & Stills Cameraman in Day of the Daleks and a Sea Devil in The Sea Devils. He returns as a Presidential Guard in Frontier in Space, a UNIT Soldier in The Time Warrior, an Army Soldier in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, an Exxilon in Death to the Daleks, a Guard in The Monster of Peladon, a Metebelis 3 Guard in Planet of the Spiders, a Guard in The Deadly Assassin, a Gracht Guard in The Androids of Tara, a Citizen in Full Circle and a Cyberman in Earthshock. He also plays another role in this episode! Outside of Doctor Who he's in Blake's 7 as a Scavenger in Deliverance, Guard in Dawn of the Gods, Convict in Moloch and a Hommik in Power while in Doomwatch he plays a man in Flood and The Islanders. He's in The Tomorrow People twice as a Vesh Rebel in Worlds Away and a S I S Sergeant in The Dirtiest Business, The Sweeney as a Policeman in Cover Story, a Driver in Golden Boy and a Villain in Stoppo Driver, and in Porridge he plays a Prison Warden in A Night In and a Gardener in Happy Release.

In the Solonians with Ky & Varan we find Vic Taylor who was a Saxon in The Time Meddler, a Cardinal's Guard in The Massacre, a Worker / Soldier in The War Machines, an English soldier in The Highlanders, an ATC Technician in The Faceless Ones, a Guard in The Enemy of the World, a Technician in Fury from the Deep, a UNIT Soldier in Doctor Who and the Silurians and a Villager in The Dæmons. In Doomwatch he's a man in Burial at Sea and a Police Constable in Fire and Brimstone. He was a TA Soldier in the Adam Adamant Lives! episode D for Destruction which features Second Doctor Patrick Troughton

Another Solonian is Brychan Powell, who we last saw as the Daleks' Guard and a Russian Aide in Day of the Daleks. He returns as the Prime Minister in The Green Death, a Mentiad in The Pirate Planet, a Noble in The Androids of Tara, a Logopolitan in Logopolis, an Umpire in Black Orchid, a Business Passenger in Time Flight and a Citizen in Planet of Fire. He can also be seen in Doomwatch as a Man in Flood.

Peter Whitaker meanwhile was the ill-fated Inspector Gascoigne in The Faceless Ones episode 1 and a Weather Station Worker in The Seeds of Death. He returns as a Thal Politician in Genesis of the Daleks, a Mentiad in The Pirate Planet, a Logopolitan in Logopolis, a Grecian Man in Four to Doomsday and an Onlooker in Remembrance of the Daleks. He was in Blake's 7 as a Scientist in Project Avalon and Doomwatch as a Ministry Inspector in Train and De-Train and a Man in Flood.

Amongst the Solonians this episode is the very first actor seen in Doctor Who: Reg Cranfield played the policeman at the start of An Unearthly Child, replacing Frederick Rawlings who fulfilled the same role in the pilot. Cranfield then went on to play a Parisian Man in The Massacre, a Lynch Mob Member in The Gunfighters, a Priest & a Man in the Market in the Gunfighters, a UNIT Soldier/Bunker Man in The Invasion and a UNIT Soldier in the Silurians. He returns as a Villager in The Green Death and a Time Lord in the Deadly Assassin. He also plays a Soldier in the Adam Adamant episode D for Destruction.

Finally one of the Solos Guards/Overlords is regular stuntman Terry Walsh.

317 The Sea Devils Episode Six

EPISODE: The Sea Devils: Episode Six
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 317
STORY NUMBER: 062
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 01 April 1972
WRITER: Malcolm Hulke
DIRECTOR: Michael Briant
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 8.5 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Beneath the Surface (The Silurians / The Sea Devils / Warriors of the Deep)
EPISODE FORMAT: 625 video

"I very much doubt it. You see, before you reactivated it, I reversed the polarity of the neutron flow!"

The Doctor, Jo, Hart and the naval base personnel are all captured by the Sea Devils. The Master wants the Doctor's help reviving the Sea Devils. Jo stages an escape through a small ventilation shaft. The Doctor starts to build a device the Master has designed, altering the plans to his own specification. Jo finds the room the Doctor is being kept in and the Doctor gives her instructions. He activates the machine incapacitating the Sea Devils allowing Jo to free Hart, while the cowardly Walker hides, and they both escape to sea in a hovercraft. The Master wants the Doctor taken back to the Sea Devil base with him & the machine. Jo & Hart return with a naval assault team which retakes the base. The Doctor is freed and the Master taken prisoner, but he uses his hypnotic powers to escape. He steels a powerboat but is pursued by the Doctor in another landing on a beach where the Doctor is taken prisoner by Sea Devils. The Sea Devils intend to wipe mankind out and retake Earth. The machine is activated to awaken the hibernating Sea Devils. Both the Master & the Doctor are imprisoned but the Doctor tells his foes that he has reversed the polarity on the neutron flow turning it into an explosive device that will destroy the base. He proposes they escape together which they do using the escape equipment taken off the submarine. They are rescued by hovercraft just as the base is destroyed beneath them, but the Master collapses as soon as he's aboard. Arriving on shore the Doctor is reunited with Jo, but the Master has staged his collapse and escapes in the hovercraft.

An all out action episode with the BBC using the full resources of the Navy and a few extra goodies beside.

The Hovercraft looks like it's from the Navy but I'd be willing to bet the jet skis were Jon Pertwee's idea. He looks like he's having a great time riding his while Roger Delgado is being doubled by a stuntman!

The Jet Ski sequence was shot at Priory Bay on the Isle of Wight which also provides the beach used for the Sea Devils capturing the Doctor at the end of it

Roger Delgado looks distinctly uncomfortable bobbing around in the sea at the end of the story: I'm pretty certain I read that he was afraid of the water!

If you're wondering where the gear they're using has come from, well that was setup in episode 5 Chekov's Gun style as the Doctor rescued the sub crew, who are missing this episode.

DOCTOR: Good afternoon, gentlemen. Er, look, would you mind keeping back for a moment? That is if you want to get out? Thank you!
RIDGEWAY: Who the blazes are you?
DOCTOR: Look, I've no time to explain now. Where are the rest of your men?
RIDGEWAY: Still in the submarine.
DOCTOR: Is the submarine still operational?
RIDGEWAY: Should be.
MITCHELL: They've ripped out the communicators and the escape gear, as you can see.
RIDGEWAY: But left the engines alone.
MITCHELL: Yes.
DOCTOR: Where's the sub now?
RIDGEWAY: In a kind of undersea harbour.
DOCTOR: Can you find the way?
RIDGEWAY: I think so, yes.
DOCTOR: Right, you'd better lead on. Here, take this. It's a gun. Now come on, let's hurry.

Captain Hart has a great episode playing the action hero leading from the front as first man out the episode blazing away with his gun and then operating heavy weaponry to help defend the base

PPS Walker meanwhile completely goes to pieces when under threat and locked up:

HART: It's no good! They've cut the power supply!
JO: Shush! Look, there's still some of them in there.
WALKER: This is monstrous! What are you going to do about it, Captain Hart?
JO: Captain Hart, what about this?
HART: Yes, we should be able to open it. But I could never get through the ventilation shaft up there.
JO: No, but I could.
HART: The table.
JO: Right.
HART: Here.
WALKER: What, what are you doing?
HART: We are going to put this table underneath that ventilation hatch and try to open it.
WALKER: Yes, but supposing you get caught? They might take reprisals against the innocent!
HART: A screwdriver. Jo, over there on the bench somewhere.
JO: Right.
WALKER: Don't you think we ought to leave these things to the Doctor? He said we ought to cooperate with them, you know?
HART: Tool kit. Underneath. Underneath the bench.
WALKER: Look, he's, er, he's not going to try and trick them, is he?
JO: Shush!
HART: That's it.
WALKER: This could have the most dreadful consequences! He, he, he made them a promise, you know.
HART: Yes, in order to save our lives! Now do you mind?

WALKER: Are you, are you really going to let a mere child risk her life?
HART: Well I could never get through that ventilation shaft. Would you like to try?

Come on, Jo. Now, once you're through the shaft, there's a hatch that comes out onto the roof of this building.

Unfortunately once free he quickly reverts to type wanting big explosions ....

WALKER: Now, perhaps you'll admit I was right all along. Massive nuclear strike. It's the only way.
JO: But not until we know what's happened to the Doctor.
BLYTHE: Excuse me, sir. I've just seen Lieutenant Scott. He said he saw the Doctor heading out to sea.
WALKER: Ha ha, gone to join his friends. Gone over to the other side.
BLYTHE: He seemed to be chasing another boat.
JO: He must have been after the Master.
WALKER: Well, be that as it may, they'll both have to take their chances. I'm going to put an end to these creatures right away. Kindly get me the Minister on the phone. I'm going to request that we launch a nuclear strike. Now.

And once that's organised he wants something to eat!

BOWMAN: Ships moving into position now, sir.
WALKER: Very well. This time we'll continue the attack until those creatures are finally destroyed. Now, how about some tea?

WALKER: Ah, thank you, my dear. Ah ha! Smoked salmon. Delicious.

The Doctor then gets to be delightfully devious twice in this episode.

First he sabotages The Master's "Revive The Sea Devils" machine so it incapacitates the ones that are awake:

And then, once they've been taken to the Sea Devil base, he rigs the machine AGAIN ....

MASTER: Once they see that the device works properly, they'll release me.
DOCTOR: I very much doubt it. You see, before you reactivated it, I reversed the polarity of the neutron flow.
MASTER: You did what? You realise what will happen?
DOCTOR: Oh, yes. Do you?
MASTER: Well, there'll be a massive reverse feedback into their whole power system.
DOCTOR: Exactly. In about ten minutes from now the whole place should go up. Enjoy your revenge.

MASTER: Guards! Guards, come back! You must release me! I must talk to your chief! Let me out! We're all in danger! Let me out!
DOCTOR: You're wasting your time, you know. Even if they heard you, they couldn't do anything about it.
MASTER: Why?
DOCTOR: Well, I built a self-destruct mechanism into the main control switch. You can't turn it off.
MASTER: But but we'll both be killed.
DOCTOR: That's right. Unless we can both escape.

At this point we're half way through the Third Doctor/Jon Pertwee era. There were 25 episodes in each of the first two seasons and this is the fourteenth of this season making a total of 64. There's 12 more to come this season and then two seasons of 26 episodes. We're also halfway through Jo's tenure as companion: this is her 39th episode and there's 38 more to come. So how does the third Doctor celebrate? By saying, for the only time during his five year tenure, his supposed catch phrase: "I've reversed the polarity of the neutron flow!" The Doctor reverses the polarity of many things and does lots of things to the neutron flow but here's the only time during the five years Pertwee was the Doctor that he uses the full phrase, though it later makes an encore appearance in the five Doctors. Pertwee, and subsequently in his absence Terrance Dicks, tells a story where Pertwee found he could sing it, and thus memorise it, to the tune of the Sailor's Hornpipe and encouraged Dicks to use it more often. Since this is the phrase's only appearance while he was the Third Doctor you can tell that this, like so many of Pertwee's stories, appears to have grown somewhat in the telling. We have one new cast member to mention here:

John Caesar plays C.P.O. Myers, the sailor who frees the Doctor and holds the Master prisoner. He was in The Dalek Invasion of Earth as a Roboman, The Romans as a Man in Market, The Daleks' Master Plan as an Egyptian Soldier, The Ark as a Monoid, The Gunfighters as a Cowboy, The Macra Terror as a Guard, The Space Pirates as a Spacesuited Pirate & Pirate Guard and Colony in Space as a Colonist and will return in Invasion of the Dinosaurs as an R/T Soldier. He's been in Paul of Tarsus, which starred Patrick Troughton as Paul, as a soldier in Herod the King and The Feast of Pentecost and appeared in A for Andromeda as a MP Corporal.

The Master's escape at the end of the story is an effective reuse of the end of his first appearance in Terror of the Autons: someone else is dressed up in a mask and his clothes while he makes a getaway. But a getaway in a hovercraft is rather more stylish than the small coach seen in that story!

Malcolm Hulke novelised the Sea Devils in 1974 as well as documenting the making of the story in the original version of The Making of Doctor Who which he wrote with Terrance Dicks. This book contains the first mention of the Brigadier's first name which we're still, four years after he first appeared, yet to hear on television. This is the first publication to really look behind the scenes at the show and contains the first story guide as well. Several years later Dicks would substantially revise the guide centring it around the production of the fourth Doctor's first story, the Dicks penned Robot.

The Sea Devils is one of the most repeated Pertwee stories being reshown as a 90-minute compilation on 27th December 1972 which was repeated on 27 May 1974 as an Unscheduled repeat of compilation, replacing a cricket match. A little dig through Cricinfo's 1974 archive reveals that England weren't playing that day so it must have been a first class game either in the county championship or involving the Indian tourists. The program was eventually repeated episodically as the third Doctor's initial entry into the 1992 repeat season. Of the Pertwee stories Spearhead from Space, The Dæmons, The Sea Devils & The Green Death have each been repeated three times by the BBC while The Silurians, Day of the Daleks, The Curse of Peladon, The Three Doctors, Carnival of Monsters, Planet of the Daleks & Planet of the Spiders have been repeated once. The overall winner of the repeat game has had four return appearances and we'll be seeing that in a little while....

The Sea Devils was released in a double video pack in 1995. It was released on DVD on 14 Jan 2008 as part of Doctor Who - Beneath the Surface with it's predecessor The Silurians and their joint sequel Warriors of the Deep.