Doctor Who 10x12

Directed by Paul Bernard

Roger Delgado as The Master • Harold Goldblatt as Professor Dale • Richard Shaw as Cross • William Wilde as Draconian Captain • Dennis Bowen as Prison Governor

The Master rescues the Doctor from the lunar penal colony, aiming to take him and Jo to the Ogrons' planet, and the Doctor's attempt to escape leaves him stranded in space.

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1. "'Rescued' by the Master, the Doctor and Jo find themselves prisoners in his space ship.

2. "The Doctor's escape plan involves a daring space walk. But the Master is not fooled." (Radio Times)

3. This episode was first shown on 17 March, 1973, and pulled the serial's lowest audience, 7.1 million viewers.

4. The programme you are about to see was discussed at the senior BBC executives' weekly review meeting on 21 March.

5. It was adjudged "a satisfactory episode".

6. A planned shot was omitted here: An air gauge slowly dropping to zero.

7. In the early 1970s, the BBC's Design Department followed a policy of allocating individual Doctor Who serials

8. to a broader range of its staff designers than had been customary in the previous decade.

9. Once considered a chore and a bore by the design managers, Doctor Who was now seen as an exciting opportunity.

10. Some of the allocated designers were relatively new to the department, including Cynthia Kljuco.

11. This serial was an early assignment in a BBC career which was later dominated by sitcoms, such as Casanova 73 (1973),

12. The Other One (1977), Rings on Their Fingers (1980), and Only Fools and Horses (1981).

13. 'Frontier in Space' was her only work on Doctor Who.

14. This is the main prison area redressed with different wall flats.

15. The script calls for a framed picture of the President on the office wall.

16. Cross is played by Richard Shaw (born 1920).

17. His film career had already included another character named Cross, in West of Suez (1957),

18. and a Dale - albeit a detective sergeant rather than a professor - in Hour of Decision (1957).

19. Long-term Doctor Who viewers might have remembered him as a bored governor in charge of 'The Space Museum' (1965),

20. but his most memorable television role was the haunted drill operator Sladden in Quatermass and the Pit (1959).

21. "A meaningful glance passes between the Governor and Cross," says the script, "which is not unnoticed by the Master."

22. Distinctive badges and circular logos on the chest were part of Paul Bernard's costume design concept for this serial.

23. The Governor and his staff all wear an emblem with vertical stripes: Prison bars.

24. The design on the Master's chest might give you a clue about his true allegiances.

25. The "trusty" system, which used trustworthy prisoners as "prefects", operated in twentieth-century British prisons.

26. The wall flat in the background was hinged for easy adjustment, and for folding up when it was struck.

27. Look carefully and you may spot one of the hinges above the Governor's head.

28. In the script, the Governor is surprised, because the Doctor is a political prisoner, "mixed up in some conspiracy with the Dragons".

29. The Master suggests that the Doctor was bribed: "He'll do anything for money."

30. "Sounds like a pretty bad type," nods the Governor.

31. One recurrent theme in early 1970s Doctor Who was a disdain for petty bureaucracy and its trivial regulations.

32. "You have to admire his nerve, don't you?" remarks the Master in the script. "One of the most accomplished confidence men in the galaxy."

33. The Effects Department supplied two models of the Master's police spaceship, in different sizes.

34. This is the small one.

35. The front end was a ping-pong ball, so it was around six inches long.

36. It was made at the last minute, when they realised the large version wasn't to scale with the lunar surface.

37. Effects assistant Mat Irvine was given the task of making it just half an hour before the moonscape shot was to be filmed.

38. The Master refers to the events of 'The Sea Devils' (1972), Malcolm Hulke's previous Doctor Who serial.

39. The cage was something of a challenge for the cameramen.

40. With evenly spaced bars on all four sides, they had a tricky job getting a clear line of sight, especially on close-ups.

41. That last shot of the Master was achieved by bringing the camera almost right up to the bars.

42. The grey blur on the right of the screen is an out-of-focus bar a few inches in front of the camera lens.

43. Look at how the bars are spaced and you'll have a sense of just how close the camera had to get to look through them.

44. He calls it a "monitor lens" in the script.

45. This sequence was slightly restructured at rehearsals.

46. As scripted, we go with the Master when he leaves and see him arrive on his flight deck.

47. Then we cut back to the Doctor and Jo in the cell, hatching their escape plan.

48. When rehearsing, however, they realised that the Master's surveillance camera has sound as well as vision,

49. so this dialogue had to happen now or never.

50. The Doctor's string file was a new gadget, introduced in the previous serial, 'Carnival of Monsters'.

51. The set is a redressed version of the cargo ship's flight deck, seen in the first two episodes.

52. The spaceship's control sounds were dubbed on in post-production.

53. Some scenery pieces were rented from Pinewood Studios.

54. The script calls for a shot of the cell, with the Doctor and Jo clinging to the bars as the ship vibrates.

55. This really is the lunar surface, taken from an Apollo landing module.

56. The Doctor is describing - rather loosely - the events of 'The War Games' (1969), another Malcolm Hulke serial.

57. Note that Jo is surreptitiously unpicking the bedding as she listens.

58. It relates to something that was in the script, and got rehearsed, but was dropped from the finished programme.

59. What was it? All will be revealed in a little under six minutes' time. Stay tuned!

60. In the script, the Doctor tells Jo that they just have to sit and wait:

61. "He's taking this ship to the Ogrons' planet, and that's where the TARDIS is."

62. "I can always rely on you to reach the obvious conclusion," cuts in the Master over the intercom.

63. The novel was published in 1898.

64. This is the larger police ship model.

65. It was made by lan Scoones, using a light bulb for the nose cone.

66. Scoones enjoyed working on this serial, not least because it enabled him to renew his acquaintance with Roger Delgado.

67. They had met before in 1966, on the set of the Hammer horror film The Mummy's Shroud,

68. in which Delgado played a villainous Arab.

69. "Suppose he's watching?" asks Jo in the script.

70. "He won't be watching us every single second," says the Doctor. "We'll just hope we're lucky!"

71. What a rickety cell door it is!

72. In the script, Jo tries to wedge it shut with a piece of cloth from the bed.

73. That doesn't work, so she has to sacrifice the lining from her shoe.

74. The script specifies the contents of the locker: Uniforms, police truncheons and a thick book, Archibold's Interplanetary Law.

75. One of Jon Pertwee's habitual mannerisms as the Doctor was to rub the back of his neck.

76. Malcolm Hulke helpfully suggested that Katy Manning wouldn't need to learn the whole monologue:

77. "This could be pre-recorded, or simply read from a page of script."

78. Here she's saying: "Goodness knows what he's taking us to. Just a few of those Ogrons are bad enough.

79. "Great, stupid, ugly lumbering things."

80. Here's another of the scripted ramblings of Jo Grant that didn't make the final cut:

81. "Perhaps if we help him, he'll take me home in his TARDIS. At least he seems to be able to steer his one."

82. In 1973, the casting of Roger Moore gave James Bond a new lease of life: The first film was released a few months later, in June.

83. One of the earliest pre-production decisions on this serial was taken just over a week after the scripts were finished.

84. On 7 July, 1972, they booked a stage at the BBC's film studios at Ealing for 14 September next,

85. to shoot the spacewalk sequences.

86. It was the last day of pre-filming, a Thursday, and Jon Pertwee was the only actor in attendance.

87. He then had a long weekend off before the start of rehearsals the following Wednesday, 20 September.

88. In Earth-normal gravity, there's only one budget-friendly way to simulate the weightlessness of deep space.

89. Look carefully here and you'll see the wires.

90. Before the five days of live-action filming in September, all the miniatures were shot at Ealing in August.

91. The intention had been to spend three weeks - 15 working days - filming around 60 model shots.

92. Things didn't go according to plan.

93. For one thing, the allocation was cut down to two weeks, and then three days of that were cancelled.

94. This left the production with just seven days of model filming: 14-17, 21, 23, 25 August.

95. In consequence, the finished serial features fewer spaceship shots than the production team had hoped for.

96. Moreover, the effects team were not allowed to hire a freelance cameraman.

97. The lighting cameraman assigned by the BBC had no experience of working with miniatures,

98. and lan Scoones, who directed the model sequences, was disappointed with the results.

99. "For a second it looks as though he is going to float by and miss, drifting off into space," says the script.

100. Now we come back to the question of Jo Grant and the dismembered mattress. What was she doing with it?

101. The script calls for her to make a dummy of the Doctor in bed, out of a pillow and his jacket.

102. She uses mattress stuffing to simulate his hair.

103. The script assumes that he is already wearing his blaster, in a holster.

104. When the Doctor reaches the top, you'll get a fleeting glimpse of some floor assistants.

105. One of them is outside the ship: Watch the shadow of his head merge with the Doctor's coming the other way.

106. If you were too busy looking at the top of the screen,

107. you might like to go back and look at the lower left-hand corner of the hatch as it opened.

108. Someone was giving it a helping hand...

109. "Not knowing what else to do, she has decided to try and continue with her monologue," says the script.

110. "But she is too upset to make a very good job of it."

111. The Master's next line was scripted as: "Very affecting, Miss Grant, but you can drop this masquerade now."

112. Roger Delgado substitutes the traditional kindly phrase said to an actor at the end of an unsuccessful audition.

113. At first, Jon Pertwee disliked the character of the Master, feeling he distracted attention from the Doctor.

114. Later, however, Pertwee's attitude changed, partly because he had developed a strong professional relationship with Delgado.

115. Now he had a quite different concern about the Master.

116. The character kept on coming back, kept on plotting and kept on being outwitted by the Doctor.

117. Didn't this make the Master look a bit of a fool?

118. Pertwee put this to Barry Letts, and suggested a way of making the Master a more effective villain:

119. They should run an adventure in which, just for once, the Doctor is beaten by the Master.

120. Letts had reservations: Such an ending, with evil triumphant over good, would impair Doctor Who's moral integrity,

121. so Pertwee's bright idea got no further.

122. Malcolm Hulke imagined a tighter shot, with the Doctor's hand creeping into frame and tapping the Master on the shoulder.

123. The scene was scripted to end in a karate fight, "during which the Master tries several dirty tricks which are foiled by the Doctor".

124. Many of the model shots were filmed upside down.

125. This was because model spaceships, like life-size Doctors, can only fly with the aid of wires.

126. The viewer's eye will usually notice visible wires above a model, but not if they are underneath it.

127. Jon Pertwee and Roger Delgado performed the fight themselves, without benefit of stunt doubles.

128. A stuntwoman, Kathy Jones, was booked to stand in for Katy Manning during filming, but, in the event, she was never used.

129. "I have reasons of my own for wanting you alive, Doctor," he says in the script. "But Miss Grant is of no value to me."

130. Malcolm Hulke felt that the Master's ongoing reluctance to kill the Doctor arose from their shared background:

131. He conceived them as the only two Time Lords who have ever gone renegade, so that, in a sense, they are "partners in crime".

132. But, by now, the actors were starting to feel there was something a bit peculiar about the Master's scruples.

133. Jon Pertwee suggested to Barry Letts that a later serial might reveal that they are, in fact, brothers.

134. That brainwave was another non-starter.

135. In the script, the Doctor calmly takes the blaster out of the Master's hand and puts it to one side.

136. In rehearsal, they reasoned that the Master wouldn't stand for that, so the Doctor resorts to persuasion instead.

137. In the script, the Doctor asserts that the Master is trying to foment a war between Earth and Draconia.

138. The Draconian Captain looks cursorily at the "warrant", then tears it to pieces.

139. "Well," the Doctor was scripted to say, "you wanted to start a war, and it looks as if you're going to succeed.

140. "How does it feel to be on the receiving end?"

141. Draconian guards gather round the Doctor, the Master, and Jo, preparing to shoot them.

142. And that was where this fourth episode originally ended.

143. What you've just seen was the resolution of the cliffhanger in the scripted Part 5.

144. Even then, there was a dicey moment when the Draconian Captain insisted that there was no need to give his captives a fair trial:

145. "The state of emergency gives me the authority to deal with you now."

146. Fortunately, he concludes that they are "a prize crew", and decides to take the ship to Draconia.

147. They're put in the cell and Jo notices the missing bar which the Doctor sawed through earlier.

148. The Doctor's line was Jon Pertwee's unscripted contribution.

149. The script describes this as "cruder and more primitive" than any of the other spaceships we have seen.

150. A bit like the Ogrons themselves, then...

151. Also seen in this episode were:

152. Gary Dean, Laurence Held (Lunar Guards)

153. Uncredited production contributors

154. Kay Stephens (Assistant)

155. Sybil Cave (Artists' Bookings)

156. Ruth Hyde (Props Buyer) > 00:17:54,646 Come on!

157. Right, in you go, Miss Grant.

158. Can you hear me, Doctor?

159. Are you on the flight deck? If so, listen to this.

160. Miss Grant is in the air lock.

161. Unless you surrender yourself to me immediately,

162. I shall open the outer door and hurl her into space.

163. What an ingenious fellow you are, Doctor!

164. Oh, no, you don't!

165. JO: Please let me out!

166. Doctor! Please let me out, somebody!

167. Now hold it, Doctor, hold it!

168. Get that blaster over to me or I press this button,

169. and that will be the end of Miss Grant!

170. Thank you, Doctor.

171. Well, we appear to have company.

172. Would these be your Ogron friends?

173. Why, no, no.

174. Well, I should try and be a bit more hospitable, old chap.

175. Come on, put that gun away. They've probably got us outnumbered.

176. Welcome on board my ship. To what do I owe the honour?

177. Why have you violated the Draconian frontier?

178. Uh, yes, I'm most apologetic about that, but it was really beyond my control.

179. You see, my prisoners were trying to escape and my...

180. - My ship was thrown off course. - Prisoners?

181. Yes, I am the commissioner of Earth's Interplanetary Police.

182. I'm taking these two people back to planet Sirius 4 for... for trial.

183. Uh, here is my warrant of authority.

184. Now, don't believe this man, he's lying.

185. I'm not concerned in disputes between Earthmen.

186. Owing to the many insults and outrages

187. committed against the empire of Draconia,

188. a state of emergency exists

189. and all diplomatic relations have been severed.

190. You have violated Draconian space. The penalty is death.

191. I insist on speaking to higher authority!

192. You are in Draconian space. I am the authority here.

193. Captain, you cannot condemn us without a trial.

194. Now, I have vital information for your Emperor.

195. At least give me the chance to speak to him?

196. We shall take them to Draconia. Put them in the cage.

197. But you can't do that!

198. I'm a commissioner of Interplanetary Police!

199. This is my spaceship! I tell you, you can't do that!

200. Well, personally I'm quite happy to be going to Draconia, Jo.

201. Perhaps we can convince the Emperor

202. what our friend here has been trying to do.

203. You really think he'd believe you?

204. Well, this won't be my first visit to Draconia, you know?

205. Many years ago, I spent quite some time there.

206. I was able to help them through a period of very great difficulty.

207. (SCOFFING) Displaying your usual sickening lovability, I suppose?

208. So there's a good chance that they'll believe you, huh?

209. Well, it was a long time ago. Things may have changed.

210. But I do understand the Draconian mentality, Jo.

211. It all depends how you approach them.

212. So, if they do believe the Doctor, you've had it!

213. Perhaps, Miss Grant, perhaps.

214. But one never knows when help may be at hand.

215. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think that this is going to be

216. rather a long journey, so, uh, good night.

217. We'll wake you with a cup of tea in the morning.

218. Thank you.