Doctor Who 10x15

Bernard Horsfall as Taron • Prentis Hancock as Vaber • Tim Preece as Codal

The planet Spiridon, the year 2540. The Doctor and Jo arrive on the trail of the Daleks, and find unexpected allies in the shape of a Thal suicide squad. But what has brought the Daleks here in the first place?

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1. "The TARDIS lands on a strange planet with the Doctor unconscious and apparently gravely ill.

2. "Jo looks for help and finds herself facing the dangers of an alien jungle."

3. This episode was first shown on 7 April, 1973 to an audience of 11 million people.

4. Terry Nation (1930-97) was considered the pre-eminent scriptwriter in the early years of Doctor Who.

5. 'Planet Of The Daleks' was his first contribution to Doctor Who for seven years.

6. There had been a change or two in the interim.

7. Back in the mid-1960s, every episode had its own individual on-screen title.

8. The practice was discontinued in 1966, but Nation went with what he was used to when he drafted this serial.

9. So he gave each episode an individual title. This one was called:

10. And what exactly was Destinus? Stay tuned for the answer!

11. Jon Pertwee was self-conscious about the size of his nose,

12. so he hated camera angles like this.

13. The spinning effect here was unplanned.

14. This serial continues directly from 'Frontier in Space', which ended with the Doctor being shot in a mêlée.

15. That was a late rewrite, to tie in with the way Terry Nation had started off this adventure.

16. As we'll see, that wasn't the only thing he recycled from his 1960s Doctor Who scripts.

17. When Jo reaches the console, it's time to play spot the moving boom shadow.

18. And in case you missed it the first time...

19. Jo refers to the events of 'The Dæmons' (1971).

20. In the script, she speculates that the Time Lords might have brought the TARDIS back to their own planet.

21. In the script, Jo hears a "wet, slapping noise" coming from outside the TARDIS.

22. written by Malcolm Hulke for the behind-the-scenes publication, The Making of Doctor Who (1972).

23. The normal human range is once or twice a second.

24. The script assumes that, up to now, Jo is still wearing the costume she started off in.

25. And, just as she starts to change, the camera discreetly mixes away to the outside of the TARDIS.

26. At an early stage, it was hoped to show the fungus visibly spreading across the police box door.

27. In the script, one of the stones is carved with strange symbols.

28. It was made from leftover materials procured for the jungle wall flats.

29. Yes, even jungles have walls when they have to be created inside BBC studios.

30. The trees and plants were placed inside a jagged set wall which ran for about 17 yards of studio.

31. There were seven triangular alcoves of denser foliage along the set wall.

32. The larger leaves were artificial props made of PVC by an outside contractor, the scenery firm Zircon.

33. Effects designer Clifford Culley dressed the whole jungle with an artificial "cobweb" spray.

34. "The colour of the night is green," says the script.

35. And this is dawn against a studio cyclorama.

36. The script says that the plants are constantly in movement, giving off a sinister, whispering sound.

37. "The temperature seems to be shooting up" was the scripted line.

38. Terry Nation devised the tape-recorded log to solve a problem of practical dramaturgy.

39. For him, the first principle of structuring a Doctor Who story was to split up the regular characters.

40. And it adds to the tension: Jo is separated from her customary protector,

41. so all she has left to rely on are her own resources of courage, knowledge and intelligence.

42. In the mid-1960s, when Nation began writing for the series, it was also a practical necessity:

43. There were four regular characters, so keeping them together would have overcrowded the scenes.

44. But applying the same approach when there are only two series regulars has a built-in drawback.

45. The Doctor can talk to the absent Jo because he's dazed and confused, but who will Jo talk to?

46. She was scripted to use a handkerchief, not the seat of her trousers.

47. You'll notice that people are walking about the studio as Pertwee performs.

48. "It was launched from a mother ship, and made a power-assisted glide onto the surface of this planet."

49. Note the use of green gel filters on some of the studio lights.

50. The spaceship's landing site and interior were built in the studio as a composite set.

51. The scene continues in the script: Jo finds a few rudimentary medical supplies for the Doctor.

52. On the floor, she notices a pool of water from a fractured metal container in the roof.

53. Then Jo hears a sound from outside, something is trying to get into the ship.

54. Desperate and terrified, she hides behind some fittings, and we cut to the Doctor in the TARDIS.

55. "Less than an hour," he mutters in the script.

56. "The movement is gentle and slow," says the script, "and in its very slowness, menacing."

57. This was written as a close analogue of a sequence in the first Dalek story (1963-4).

58. A young woman is followed through the jungle by an unseen creature.

59. We see its human hand touch her on the shoulder, as Taron was scripted to do to Jo.

60. In both serials, the apparently menacing being turns out to be a Thal, beautiful and benevolent.

61. When the Doctor met the Thals on Skaro, he was accompanied by two schoolteachers from Earth.

62. Some elements of this set were made of vacuum-formed plastic.

63. This was a relatively new process which used a mould and a thin sheet of hot plastic.

64. A vacuum would pull the plastic tightly onto the mould and it would set in that shape as it cooled.

65. It was a cheap way of mass-producing identical set components ,

66. but the results were not durable and didn't stand up well to manhandling by the BBC's scene-shifters.

67. In the next shot, for instance, note the dent in the white panel to the bottom right of Jo.

68. Terry Nation imagined the locker as a much more confined space than this.

69. His scripts often played upon common human fears, like claustrophobia here.

70. They gave an enthusiastic welcome to the start of a new Dalek adventure.

71. The hollow clump of Jo's footsteps betrays the fact that this is a raised set built on rostra,

72. enabling the stage hands to rock the entire set like this.

73. The levitating green object is a cordless telephone handset.

74. The prop was made six years earlier for the ITV series, The Prisoner (1967-8).

75. This also enabled stage hands to "ransack" the cupboard from behind!

76. Instead, the characters use circumlocutory pronouns like "they" and "them".

77. A stage hand entirely dressed in yellow picks it up by a yellow handle on top.

78. The yellow backdrop, stage hand and handle are all electronically replaced with a shot of the spaceship set.

79. It was a relatively expensive piece of legerdemain: The effects bill for that one shot was £100.

80. Note the castor at the left end of the TARDIS wall, for the convenience of the scene-shifters.

81. In Terry Nation's 1960s scripts, the Doctor is often unable to get into the TARDIS and leave.

82. But this time he has a mission to go on,

83. so Nation devised the twist of trapping him inside the place where he is usually safest.

84. "By showing this headgear," he wrote, "the BBC is inviting children to kill themselves

85. "by putting their heads in plastic bags and suffocating to death."

86. "so that such dangers can be eliminated before the damage is done and a tragedy occurs".

87. Producer Barry Letts responded swiftly: "The actors did not put plastic bags over their heads."

88. The danger of imitation by children had already been taken into account in deciding the design:

89. "Solid transparent helmets" with "plastic capes to protect the shoulders".

90. The Doctor is, of course, describing the events of the original Dalek serial.

91. The director of 'Planet of the Daleks' was David Maloney (1933-2006).

92. He had five years' directing experience, having qualified in 1968.

93. One of his first productions was the last serial in the 1967-8 series of Doctor Who, 'The Mind Robber'.

94. including classic-serial adaptations of Ivanhoe (1970) And The Last of the Mohicans (1971).

95. He returned to Doctor Who under its next production team to direct four highly-regarded serials:

96. The Thals are likewise their salvation, giving them a supply of anti-radiation drugs.

97. The name "Spiridon" is Ukrainian.

98. Terry Nation originally intended to use it only for the planet's invisible inhabitants.

99. In his first draft, the planet itself was christened something else.

100. A world devastated, or scarred, by an atomic war? Skaro.

101. A planet with a somewhat unusual ocean? Marinus.

102. A world of parching deserts? Aridius.

103. A planet ruled by robots? Mechanus.

104. Naturally that would have to be named "Destinus".

105. And that was, you'll remember, the title assigned to this episode in the draft script.

106. Plans were laid to show an invisible Dalek's "footprint" moving along the ground.

107. The effect was costed at £60, but was abandoned at a late stage.

108. Here's all that remains of that idea.

109. He took the assignment because he saw an opportunity to learn a new technical skill.

110. he had never before worked with the Colour Separation Overlay process.

111. For the next shot, a Dalek prop was painted yellow and "keyed out" of the picture by CSO.

112. Also seen in this episode was:

113. Alan Casley

114. Uncredited production contributors

115. Gerry Burrows

116. George Bayton

117. Scota Raquesen

118. Ken Dodds

119. Sue Hedden

120. Michael Turner

121. Bill Bonner

122. Sarah Newman

123. Carole Bisset