Doctor Who 14x22

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

The Doctor and Leela investigate the strange events in Victorian London. But a mysterious masked figure lurks in the shadows.

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1. "Giant rats in the sewers of Victorian London... a macabre phantom beneath the Palace Theatre. What is the connection?" (Radio Times)

2. This episode was first shown on 5 March 1977,

3. and was watched by 9.8 million viewers- a drop of a million and a half on the first episode's figures.

4. As Robert Holmes originally envisaged it, the rat wasn't actually seen until the end of Part 3:

5. All the script asks for in this scene is "a glimpse of something grey and huge in the tunnel",

6. followed by the impact of "something heavy" hitting the ladder "with shuddering impact".

7. There was a crowd of onlookers when this sequence was shot.

8. One of them made himself unpopular by shouting "Go to it, Doctor!" During a take.

9. In the script, the Doctor's retort is: "You can't get a field howitzer down a sewer."

10. The scripted scene ends with the Doctor explaining that they need a plan of the sewers to locate another way in.

11. In the script, Jago takes Casey even less seriously than on screen.

12. He's too busy admiring the cellar walls: "Not a spot of damp. Sound as the day they were built."

13. Casey is played by Chris Gannon, who specialised in Irish roles,

14. ranging from comic leprechauns in such series as Rumpole of the Bailey (1978)

15. To an IRA commander in Gangsters (1976).

16. He had also appeared in the BBC's drama-documentary series Jack the Ripper (1973).

17. An "E.B." monogram also features in the Sherlock Holmes story 'The Adventure of the Abbey Grange' (1904),

18. but it appears on a gentleman's letterhead rather than a lady's glove.

19. Sergeant Kyle is played by the Scottish actor David McKail (born 1938).

20. He had recently played the sixth suspect in the BBC's Lord Peter Wimsey serial 'Five Red Herrings' (1975).

21. Later television roles included a police inspector in 1990 (1978) And a pathologist in A Touch of Frost (1992-2008).

22. In the script, Leela incriminates herself here:

23. "I killed him," she says, and the Doctor physically hustles her out.

24. At the time this serial was being made, a lot of the routine paperwork in the Doctor Who office

25. was being handled by Graham Williams, who was in the process of taking over from Philip Hinchcliffe as the series' producer.

26. "Jago almost leaves his skin," says the script here.

27. He then infers that Chang has come back "to practise some new piece of preternatural prestidigitation".

28. 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang' was made at a time when Doctor Who's budget was at its highest in real terms.

29. Here are some examples of the production costs estimated in advance by different BBC departments.

30. The make-up department quoted £4,351.

31. The Outside Broadcast facilities for location taping were quoted at £9,598.

32. The costume department quoted £6,640.

33. The design department, which supplied the props and scenery, quoted £15,915.

34. These figures, remember, are not necessarily the actual costs,

35. they're just what the departments budgeted for those costs.

36. In reality, things turned out a little more expensive...

37. In the script, Chang mutters, "Occidental pig," as he watches Jago return to his office.

38. The organist playing on the soundtrack is Leslie Pearson, who was regularly booked for Doctor Who in the 1970s.

39. Among his notable recent contributions was the majestic Time Lord theme in 'The Deadly Assassin' (1976).

40. He later specialised in performing baroque keyboard music.

41. His 1970s film work included Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975) And Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978).

42. The sound effects here were dubbed on afterwards

43. because the trapdoor is really made of wood.

44. The script describes this as a "Phantom of the Opera set with Chinoiserie dressing".

45. As Doctor Who's script editor, Robert Holmes encouraged writers to pastiche well-known horror scenarios.

46. In this serial he evokes Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera (1911),

47. which had been made into three classic horror films between 1925 and 1962.

48. Leroux's story features a masked villain with his lair in the sewers beneath a theatre,

49. though unlike Weng-Chiang he's not a serial killer: He only abducts one girl.

50. That aspect of the plot owes more to white slavery and Jack the Ripper,

51. while Chang is a variant on Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu,

52. the fiendish oriental villain of fifteen books published between 1913 and 1959.

53. Fu also appeared in five horror films between 1965 and 1968, played by Christopher Lee.

54. The first of these was The Face of Fu Manchu,

55. which was shown by the BBC on 12 March 1975.

56. It has several elements in common with 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang'.

57. In the film, Fu Manchu lurks in an underground base near the Thames, with access to the sewers,

58. and he is abetted by a band of murderous, devoted fanatics.

59. Meanwhile, the hero's sidekick, Dr Petrie, is a pathologist,

60. just like Professor Litefoot.

61. If you didn't spot the mortuary's electrical sockets in Part 1, here's another chance.

62. After playing the Doctor for three years, Tom Baker was confident in the part and had begun making significant script changes.

63. There's a small one in his next line. The Doctor was supposed to say

64. "I think so."

65. The exchange of dialogue coming up parodies a line in Oscar Wilde's comedy The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

66. Lady Bracknell's response to hearing that her prospective son-in-law was an orphan found in...

67. "A handbag?"

68. In fact, there really was a case of a baby girl found abandoned in a hatbox,

69. in the Arizona desert on Christmas Eve 1931.

70. In this shot, can you spot when the Doctor smells the liquor on PC Quick's breath?

71. PC Quick is played by Conrad Asquith.

72. He had recently played Little John in the BBC's anti-heroic version of Robin Hood (1975).

73. The end of the scene was cut: Litefoot says he'd like to pick the Doctor's brains,

74. and Leela says, "I'm so hungry I could eat an owrus."

75. This was filmed at Clink Street, Southwark, on Tuesday 14 December 1976.

76. Filming for the cab interiors had taken place the day before, at Ealing Studios.

77. Two cabs were hired for the production, one for Litefoot and one for Chang.

78. Both were the four-wheeled model known as a Clarence,

79. which the Victorians nicknamed "growlers" (from the sound of the wheels on cobblestones).

80. The punitive expedition brought an end to the Second Opium War (1856-60).

81. Peking was shelled by the British in reprisal for the murder of diplomats taken hostage by the Chinese.

82. Afterwards Admiral Hope stayed in Peking, like Litefoot's father, to help the Chinese authorities.

83. After completing the cab scenes at Ealing, the crew went to Southwark for the evening,

84. to film this sequence at Cardinal Cap Alley on the Bankside.

85. At the end of this scene, an unscripted contribution by Louise Jameson helps to establish that Leela is an alien:

86. Leela's reaction line isn't in the script.

87. 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang' began life as a joint idea by Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes.

88. The basic story concept was about somebody from Earth's future returning to the present day or recent past.

89. Holmes gave the idea to the experienced television scriptwriter Robert Banks Stewart,

90. who had handled two Doctor Who serials the previous year, including the concluding six-parter for the 1975-6 series.

91. Stewart developed the story structure in collaboration with Holmes and Hinchcliffe,

92. and on 7 May 1976 he was formally commissioned to write the storyline.

93. The working title was 'The Foe from the Future', and the planned delivery date was 31 May.

94. Stewart was a day late (which wasn't unusual in television writing at the time): He delivered the storyline on 1 June.

95. Knowing that he'd left the job in safe hands, Holmes went to Italy for his first holiday in several years.

96. It didn't go quite according to plan: On the way home his wife was taken ill in Germany,

97. and when he got back to the office, much delayed, a six-part script by Robert Banks Stewart was conspicuously not there.

98. Instead there was a note from Stewart explaining that he had accepted a job at Thames Television,

99. and his duties as script editor of Armchair Thriller meant that he wouldn't be able to write for Doctor Who after all.

100. There was no time to start work with another writer before the serial was due to go into production,

101. so Holmes had to set aside the usual BBC rule against script editors writing for their own series.

102. On 12 November 1976, with just over a month to go before filming, he was formally commissioned to write the scripts.

103. That's why the serial has no credited script editor: Holmes did the job as usual, but was only credited as the writer.

104. The pile of hay on the left is not all that it seems.

105. The scene was filmed on Thursday 16 December in Wapping Pier Head Square.

106. Local residents were approached the weekend before,

107. and asked not to park their cars in the square on the night of the filming.

108. Came the night, there was a Porsche parked prominently in shot.

109. A frantic search failed to locate the owner.

110. Designer Roger Murray Leach solved the problem: Remembering that Victorian London's horses had to eat,

111. he fixed a tarpaulin over the car and made a hay mound of it!

112. Watch the Doctor's fingers: They're making the spider's legs wriggle.

113. In English superstition, tiny spiders are called money spiders or "money-spinners", and it is considered unlucky to kill them.

114. In the script, the Doctor adds that "emanations of some kind" are "affecting fauna in the vicinity".

115. Litefoot and Sherlock Holmes both have a housekeeper named Mrs Hudson.

116. Oddly enough, Sherlock Holmes was mentioned as one of three archetypes for the Doctor

117. in the character description that was issued to writers in 1974 when Tom Baker took over the part.

118. The others were Bernard Shaw and Professor Quatermass.

119. As a savage, Leela has no concept of civilised behaviour.

120. Robert Holmes enjoyed writing scenes like this which contrasted her barbarian innocence

121. with the civilised conventions of Victorian times, as exemplified by Litefoot,

122. who knows it's polite not to embarrass guests.

123. The key to the time cabinet was originally scripted as a pendant rather than the hand-held device seen here.

124. In reality, Litefoot's house is a private address in Twickenham,

125. not far from the home of the serial's director, David Maloney.

126. The exterior scenes there were filmed on the night of Wednesday 15 December 1976.

127. Chang is carrying the dummy version of Mr Sin.

128. Another element of this serial drawn from literary sources is Mr Jago's name:

129. Jago is the name of a fictitious East End slum in Arthur Morrison's novel A Child of the Jago (1896).

130. In the script, Jago doesn't faint: He runs away blindly, and knocks himself out against a pillar.

131. All Leela's costumes, including her underwear, were designed and made specially for the serial.

132. This was quite unusual for mid-1970s Doctor Who.

133. The costume budget was usually allocated to the futuristic serials which needed unique designs.

134. Generic period clothing would usually be hired from a theatrical costumier,

135. while modern outfits would be bought off the peg.

136. Holography is a technique for recording high-resolution three-dimensional images.

137. It was originally developed in 1947 by the Hungarian scientist Dennis Gabor.

138. Lasers were first used in the process in 1964.

139. "Pre-pre-production" got under way on 6 August 1976, when David Maloney was booked to direct the serial.

140. The incidental music here quotes Harry Dacre's popular song 'Daisy Bell' (1892); you'll hear the words in Part 4.

141. In the script, after seeing Weng-Chiang moving behind the stage curtain, the Doctor follows him to the orchestra pit,

142. where Weng-Chiang attacks him with a chair.

143. This was replaced at a late stage by the chase through the theatre flies which you're about to see.

144. The flies are the area over the stage used to "fly" in scenery from above.

145. At Northampton Repertory Theatre, the flies were still in their authentic Victorian condition,

146. so David Maloney devised an extended chase sequence there, which also helped to fill out the episode's running time.

147. As you can see, the principal actors needed a head for heights making these scenes, but some stunt doubling was unavoidable.

148. Here's Max Faulkner as Weng-Chiang.

149. The stunts were all arranged and co-ordinated by Stuart Fell, who also doubled for miscellaneous coolies and both the series regulars.

150. Here he is-in a curly wig!

151. He'll give us his Leela in the next episode.

152. In developing the chase sequence, David Maloney consciously drew material from The Phantom of the Opera.

153. Much of the action in Leroux's story takes place backstage, with the masked phantom prowling around after the heroes.

154. The story also features a scene where a character descends from flies to stage via the backcloth, just like the Doctor.

155. David Maloney (1933-2006) Began his career in the 1950s as an actor in the repertory theatre.

156. He joined the BBC as a floor manager in the 1960s and worked in that capacity on The Forsyte Saga (1967).

157. In 1968, he took the BBC director's course, and one of his first directing jobs was the Doctor Who serial 'The Mind Robber'.

158. Over the next nine years he directed a further seven Doctor Who serials,

159. as well as adaptations of classic novels such as Ivanhoe (1970) And The Last of the Mohicans (1971).

160. 1977 saw a significant career change which began on the night this sequence was filmed.

161. Maloney was told to ring the Head of the BBC's Drama Department,

162. who offered him a job producing a new BBC-1 science fiction series.

163. Maloney accepted and worked as Blake's 7's producer for three series (1978-80).

164. And that's why 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang' was his last work on Doctor Who.

165. Also seen in this episode were

166. David J. Grahame (Chestnut Seller);

167. John Cannon, Jean Channon, Bill Hughes (Passers By).

168. Uncredited production contributors included

169. Sue Box (Floor Assistant)

170. Linda Graeme, Jo Ward (Assistant Floor Managers)

171. Stan Cresswell, Bobby Gould (Film Operatives)

172. Rosemary Parsons, Carol Bolt (Director's Assistants)

173. Alan Hughes (Costume Assistant)

174. Gerry Scott, Graham Lough (Design Assistants) somebody out there watching the house.

175. Someone stepped back into the shrubbery as I looked out.

176. Some scoundrel up to no good! Odd thing, I could swear he was a Chinese!

177. Whoever he is, I'll give him more than he expected! No, you wait here!

178. - How are you feeling? - The ghost, I saw it!

179. - Casey, forgive me! - No, it was a hologram.

180. I thought there was something unnatural about that cellar!

181. There's nothing unnatural about a holograph technique -

182. a projection of light by laser beam.

183. It wasn't known in this century.

184. - Drink this. You'll feel better. - What was that?

185. Sh!

186. Agh!

187. - Oh, Doctor! - Cheer up, Jago. Cheer up!

188. He's gone back to his rats. Are you all right?

189. Yes, I think so. Who the devil was it?

190. I've no idea. He didn't introduce himself.

191. - Shall I call in the police? - Oh, Henry Gordon Jago!

192. Then our reclusive phantom would simply vanish! Boof!

193. - Good heavens, yes. - We can tackle it together. You and I.

194. What are you going to do?

195. Think. I'm going to have some supper!

196. (LITEFOOT) Nobody out there. Fellow must have got wind of...

197. Professor?

198. Are you there?

199. Professor!