Doctor Who 14x21

Directed by David Maloney

John Bennett as Li H'sen Chang • Christopher Benjamin as Jago • Chris Gannon as Casey • Trevor Baxter as Professor Litefoot • Deep Roy as Mr. Sin

London, the 1890s. As magician Li H'Sen Chang captivates audiences, a spate of disappearances amongst young women goes largely unnoticed. But almost upon their arrival, the Doctor and Leela find themselves confronting the feared Tong of the Black Scorpion, and a menace from another time. And there's something fishy in the sewers, too...

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1. This episode was first shown on 26 February 1977, when it was seen by 11.3 million viewers.

2. This was a little out of the ordinary at a time when most location scenes were made on film.

3. The theatre was booked for the production on 26 November 1976, seven weeks before recording started.

4. which was painted white again after the recording, at the BBC's expense.

5. But it wasn't the only location used in Northampton.

6. Between shots, Chang and Buller have been propelled about two miles,

7. The production moved to the hospital in Duston after finishing at the theatre on 12 January,

8. leaving the rep free to stage its seasonal play, David Wood's The Owl and the Pussycat Went to See.

9. In the script, Buller adds, "Stiff as a plank, six feet off the ground."

10. The script also makes Chang more talkative and less inscrutable.

11. and finally concludes that the cabbie must be a blackmailer.

12. Buller denies it: He doesn't want money, he wants Emma.

13. The serial's film sequences were shot in London in mid-December 1976.

14. Much of the dilapidated riverside colour comes from the locations in Wapping and Southwark.

15. Tom Baker improves on the scripted line: "You'll catch your death of cold."

16. The script describes the Doctor's topcoat as "a viciously checked ulster",

17. and the original intention was for Leela to wear a long period skirt.

18. Her cap and knickerbockers are made of corduroy and the jacket is cotton,

19. with braid and ribbons appliquéd to make the decoration.

20. Little Tich was the stage name of the diminutive comedian Harry Relph (1867-1928),

21. who was best known for his dance in long boots.

22. A short scene was cut here, showing Chang, lit only by an ornate incense burner,

23. sitting on the floor of his dressing room, in deep concentration.

24. You won't find "oopizootics", Jago's word for hysteria, in the Oxford English Dictionary,

25. but it is a real word, coined by the Australian poet C. J. Dennis (1876-1938).

26. Scriptwriter Robert Holmes enjoyed colourful vocabulary and arcane dialects,

27. and he often enriched his dialogue with entertainingly idiosyncratic terms.

28. An example was this scene's cut final line

29. "It's time to crack the monica," Jago tells Casey.

30. The percussionist made the "zinging" sound by agitating an extended car spring.

31. There are several singular things about the four coolies in the fight sequence coming up.

32. For one thing, they're not all Chinese.

33. In 1976, there were no Chinese stuntmen in Britain, so the ones who fight had to be European.

34. The first to attack the Doctor is the fight arranger, Stuart Fell.

35. This one's Alan Chuntz,

36. and here's Max Faulkner, whose shots were censored from the serial's 1988 BBC Video release

37. The stuntmen didn't enjoy their work.

38. And here's another oddity: Three stuntmen on the right, two genuine Chinese on the left,

39. making five coolies, when earlier there were only four.

40. That's because the extra playing the fifth coolie arrived late.

41. The production team was keen to move away from the stereotype of the screaming female companion,

42. and had initially planned an uncouth cockney girl from Victorian times.

43. She would be an independent, positive female character with whom girl viewers might identify.

44. Leela turned out somewhat differently, of course, but the period setting reached fruition here.

45. The audience's vocal reaction and applause were dubbed on afterwards.

46. The levitation trick was originally to have been more elaborate.

47. In the script, the girl's lying across three chairs, and Lee takes out the middle one.

48. This was changed to avoid slowing up the action later with two more chairs to remove.

49. The necessary equipment was provisionally booked for the location shoot,

50. but in the event it was all done by practical stage magic.

51. No metal bar, no wires,

52. but if you look closely you can see that she's actually lying on a black pedestal.

53. The illusions were all devised by the production's two magic advisers, Larry Barnes and Ali Bongo.

54. but he was best known as the compere of a children's cartoon compilation for the BBC,

55. Ali Bongo's Cartoon Carnival (1971).

56. It was Larry Barnes, however, who was on hand in the theatre when the magic sequences were recorded.

57. She had worked mainly in the theatre, including an extended period with the Royal Shakespeare Company (1973-5).

58. The role of Leela was her first big break into series television.

59. She later had notable appearances in Tenko (1981-2), Bergerac (1985-90), and EastEnders (1998-2000).

60. Believe it or not, Louise has blue eyes.

61. She's wearing tinted contact lenses to make them appear brown.

62. It wasn't at all comfortable, because the red lenses filtered out all other colours.

63. This was a make-up decision: Blue eyes looked odd with Leela's tanned skin.

64. Later it was discovered that "Leela" means "dark-eyed beauty" in the Indian language Urdu.

65. The Doctor's speaking Chinese was unscripted business worked out in rehearsal.

66. He starts by saying,

67. "How are you?"

68. But this bit isn't Chinese at all!

69. The ghoul is played by Patsy Smart (1918-96),

70. who was best known for her role as the sour lady's maid Miss Roberts in Upstairs, Downstairs (1971-3).

71. The corpse was supplied by the BBC's Visual Effects Department.

72. They deposited the "body" up a dark alley a few hundred yards from the filming area,

73. Another suspected body in the river features in the Sherlock Holmes story 'The Man with the Twisted Lip' (1891),

74. which also contains a few other elements in parallel with this serial,

75. notably an expedition to an opium den.

76. The scripted line was: "When was I last in China? With Marco Polo?

77. "No, it must have been before that, but at some more recent time."

78. The "venom capsule" is really a plastic "jewel" from a child's bracelet.

79. Tongs are Chinese secret societies, often founded for benevolent purposes

80. but also often involved in organised crime, like an oriental version of the Mafia.

81. 'Pale Hands I Love', shown on 30 January 1976.

82. In the script, the Doctor addresses Li H'sen as "Chairman Chang",

83. The closing lines of the scene were cut.

84. After Chang leaves, Leela remarks that the smell of death has gone,

85. "It clings to the yellow one like mist over a swamp."

86. The Doctor wasn't aware of it: "All I noticed was a disagreeable odour of old joss sticks."

87. Another disagreeable odour in the studio was the "fog".

88. It was made by an oil burning device.

89. For foggy studio scenes, the ventilators were turned off to keep the miasma in shot.

90. That's why there's usually more of it on location than in the studio,

91. the fresh air made the stench a little more bearable!

92. Another influence on the plot was the Victorian serial killer Jack the Ripper,

93. who murdered five London prostitutes over a ten-week period in the autumn of 1888.

94. No girls went missing: He left behind his victims' mutilated remains in the streets of Whitechapel.

95. The killer was never caught and his identity remains a mystery,

96. but the case later produced a flood of imaginative fictional solutions in films and pulp fiction.

97. Two versions were made of Mr Sin, Chang's ventriloquist's doll.

98. One was a dummy,

99. the other an actor's costume.

100. and they would sometimes get a shock when the actor inside moved unexpectedly!

101. allowing his jaw to move freely when Mr Sin has to speak or laugh.

102. The actor in question is Deep Roy,

103. He later worked extensively as a stunt performer in 1980s and '90s Hollywood.

104. In fact there is no ancient Chinese god called Weng-Chiang,

105. only Wen Ch'ang, the benevolent god of literature.

106. In reality there was no public mortuary in the East End of London.

107. Post mortem examinations had to be conducted in makeshift sheds.

108. That's not the only anachronism connected with the mortuary.

109. A short exchange between the Doctor and Leela was cut here,

110. in which he comments that she was right about the different sounds of death.

111. The mortuary exteriors were filmed at Wapping Pier Head Square.

112. The hatchet was made by effects assistant George Reed, who specialised in weapons.

113. It was designed to be fired from a compressed air gun

114. but this didn't give an accurate enough aim,

115. so in the end the axe was thrown manually at Tom Baker by Reed himself.

116. Luckily Tom was good-humoured about the situation!

117. Reed also supplied the blow-pipe, which had previously been used in another programme,

118. but had to be shortened to fit down Leela's bloomers.

119. The name of Leela's poisonous thorn was originally to have been pronounced differently,

120. In the background you can hear the sound of a cylinder piano.

121. It's a track from Roy Mickleburgh's record, Music of the Streets (1968).

122. These particular streets are dressed with straw and horse dung to hide the modern road markings.

123. In reality anyone wanting to access a London sewer would have needed a key.

124. A line was cut from the sewer sequence in which the Doctor makes it plain that they are looking for a large rat:

125. "I hope they keep it on a chain," he tells Leela.

126. The squeaking isn't really made by rats: It's a radiophonic simulation.

127. The rats themselves were borrowed from a pet shop in Shepherd's Bush market.

128. Unfortunately the rodents wouldn't co-operate with the recording.

129. As well as running out of shot, they kept biting the rat wrangler.

130. This is a model shot.

131. The miniature sewer was made by effects assistant Andy Lazell, with the assistance of George Reed.

132. The main difference from the full-size set is that the model has no water in it.

133. The model shots were recorded in a presentation studio at the BBC Television Centre.

134. But the rat sequence wasn't all the work of the Visual Effects Department,

135. see if you notice anything suspicious about the rat in the next shot.

136. Also seen in this episode were

137. Charles Adey Gray

138. Arnold Lee, Kevin Sullivan

139. James Haswell, Richard Sheekey

140. Jim Delaney, Colin Thomas

141. Marie Anthony, Lisa Bergmayr

142. Uncredited production contributors included

143. John Sterling

144. Pat Mordecai

145. Stan Swetman

146. Brian Hall

147. Steve Diamond

148. Bill Eldridge