Doctor Who 18x22

Directed by

Geoffrey Beevers as Melkur (voice) • Matthew Waterhouse as Adric • Anthony Ainley as Tremas • John Woodnutt as Seron

Tremas claims consular privilege to protect the Doctor and Adric from execution, though it binds his fate to theirs if they're found guilty of murder. Melkur strengthens his hold over Kassia while Seron decides to have rapport with The Keeper to learn truth, and Adric finds evidence of another TARDIS in the area.

Request examples:

!req Doctor Who 18x22 [02:32]
!req Doctor Who 18x22 [Doctor Who 18x22]
Syntax: !req EPISODE [quote or timestamp] (max. 8 square brackets)

For quotes, now you can request by index (e.g !req Doctor Who 18x22 [10-11]; !req Doctor Who 18x22 [20] [24]). Keep in mind, though, that index numbers might change at any time.
You can also generate a copy command with the quotes. Hover the desired subtitle and enter the amount of lines you want to copy.

Subtitle languages: English • Spanish • Brazilian Portuguese

Note: you must use specific languages with their specific pages/discord channels.

1. "What is Kassia's pact with Melkur? Will the Doctor find the Tardis? Can 'Rapport' with The Keeper uncover the traitor?" (Radio Times)

2. This episode was first shown on 7 February 1981.

3. It was seen by 6.1 million viewers.

4. Notice the green traverse curtain behind Melkur.

5. Keep it in mind later on when you see the Sanctum doors from other angles.

6. In the earliest version, the Keeper is based outdoors in the grove, not in a sanctum.

7. Until a very late stage of scripting, Melkur was nothing more than he seemed,

8. a being of infinite evil and cunning, who works on Kassia's superstitious sensibilities to his own ends.

9. But John Nathan-Turner felt the serial lacked something,

10. so he proposed changing the character into someone well-known to long-time Doctor Who viewers.

11. Melkur became the Master, a regular villain in early 1970s Doctor Who and a favourite of Nathan-Turner's.

12. This gave the producer a platform to relaunch the character as a new semi-regular adversary for the Doctor.

13. The Master became a mainspring of the following serial, 'Logopolis',

14. and went on to appear in a further eight adventures in the series of Doctor Who.

15. "The consuls are alarmed at this new declamation from Kassia," says the script.

16. "And in her moral confusion she points at her own eyes."

17. Johnny Byrne originally imagined the Fosters as monastic figures:

18. "Jovial, large-statured men, habited like monks".

19. Kassia is scripted as "a striking woman in her late twenties, with the eyes of a visionary".

20. There is a disparity of age between her and her husband, who is said to be in his forties.

21. Central to the characterisation is her moral rectitude: A production document calls her "fervently upright".

22. It is this which enables Melkur to delude her in earlier versions:

23. He poses as a penitent being whose experience of evil can be an asset in determining the succession.

24. Christopher Bidmead characterised Tremas as "the Chief Scientist of the Traken Union".

25. It's a reflection of his desire to avoid what he called "Doctor Who stock material"

26. that Tremas is shown to be a political leader as well as a technocrat.

27. This scene required several retakes, with difficult, strenuous consequences.

28. The Melkur had to be manhandled back up the steps each time.

29. A studio wit compared the job unfavourably with competing in It's a Knockout,

30. a 1970s BBC game show with crazy, wobbling giants.

31. The adult Traken costumes were made primarily of velvet.

32. In consequence they were very heavy, and hot under the studio lights.

33. With Kassia staring at him, says the script, Tremas finds it difficult to answer Seron frankly.

34. In developing 'The Keeper of Traken', Johnny Byrne drew unconsciously on 'The Metamorph',

35. a script he had written for the Gerry Anderson series, Space. 1999 (1976).

36. Along with some specific similarities that we'll cover later on, both scripts centre their action on a grove.

37. The key non-regular characters in the Space. 1999 script are a scientist and his talented daughter,

38. who were, deep down, the basis for the characters of Tremas and Nyssa.

39. The last line of the scene was cut.

40. Katura comforts Tremas over his wife's behaviour: "It's just her way. Don't upset yourself."

41. This was another scene requiring several retakes.

42. These phrases came out in a different order each time, but the sense was always the same.

43. On the first take, she bent down and found there were still some pins in her costume.

44. On the second take, this Foster was too heavy for her to move.

45. The "dead body" obligingly began to propel itself with its feet, which were in shot.

46. So, on the third take, the camera was directed to track away as she starts to drag the corpse.

47. Tom Baker was another actor who found it hot under the studio lights.

48. His dresser hovered close at hand throughout the recording, ready to whip off his scarf between takes.

49. In the script, the Doctor shows Adric his hand, covered with a fine white dust.

50. The scripted scene ends on a shot of Kassia, who all this time has been hiding behind the door with the Foster's body.

51. Nyssa was originally created and cast to appear in this serial alone.

52. In the earliest version, she was more alien and arrogant than she became on screen.

53. She also had an intense sensitivity to the presence of evil, which almost amounted to ESP.

54. It was only on the first day of studio recording that Sarah Sutton was invited to return to Doctor Who as a regular.

55. The script describes the setting as "a peaceful and sunny grove, enclosed by mossy stone walls".

56. Their breakfast, as ordered by Tony Burrough, was griddle scones.

57. BBC set designers often placed their sets around the studio wall, with the cameras in the middle.

58. Burrough did the opposite for several sets in 'The Keeper of Traken', allowing him to take up more of the studio floor.

59. The cameras here are shooting Tremas's quarters from the edge of the studio.

60. If you walked 180 degrees round from this camera position, you'd be looking into another set: Seron's room.

61. Johnny Byrne crafted dialogue with a slightly stylised, "medieval" feel to it,

62. in keeping with his conception of the Trakens as a people with strong spiritual inclinations.

63. Melkur quotes from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1595).

64. In an earlier draft, Melkur tells Kassia that Hellas (the Tremas character) Is too innocent to become Keeper.

65. Only a Traken with a "passionate sense of goodness" will do - and that means Kassia herself.

66. In the script, he's examining Tremas's energy detector.

67. The Source is based on the biotechnical computer Psyche, which Johnny Byrne created in 'The Metamorph'.

68. The French mathematician Joseph Fourier (1768-1839) developed a concept of periodicity

69. which is used in the analysis of wave harmonic functions like radio emissions.

70. In the script, the scene ends with the excited Adric telling Nyssa he thinks he knows what the emissions are.

71. The script indicates that Seron's quarters are "more austerely furnished" than Tremas's, and have no technology in them.

72. The term "hugger-mugger" creates another Shakespearian resonance.

73. It was commonly used in the sixteenth century, but almost everyone now knows it best from Hamlet (1600).

74. Seron is played by John Woodnutt (1924-2006).

75. Early in his career he was best known as the fearsome schoolmaster Mr Quelch in Billy Bunter (1954).

76. He went on to play a full range of professional figures:

77. Policemen (Dixon of Dock Green in 1965, Z- Cars in 1974);

78. army officers (The Avengers and The Corridor People in 1966, Codename and Special Branch in 1970);

79. doctors (The Sweeney in 1975, Shoestring in 1979, Terry and June in 1985);

80. and judges (Lady Killers in 1980, No Place Like Home in 1986, Sir Watkyn Bassett in Jeeves and Wooster, 1990-3).

81. He also played more fantastic figures such as magicians, including Merlin in Knightmare (1987-90)

82. He appeared under heavy make-up as alien creatures in 1973 serials of both The Tomorrow People and Doctor Who,

83. and had a notable dual role as a Scottish duke and a sucker-covered monster in a 1975 Doctor Who.

84. Rapport with the Keeper is based on one of the uses of Mass in the medieval Christian church.

85. A person under suspicion would be required to take Holy Communion as a poison ordeal.

86. A guilty man would be rejected by God, whereas the Mass would hold no dangers for the innocent.

87. The term "rapport" comes from 'The Metamorph',

88. in which it is a euphemism for the painful process by which the computer Psyche draws energy from living minds.

89. The courtyard scenes were recorded on 5 November 1980.

90. The area behind the gate is dressed with pot plants and foliage to sustain the illusion that the grove is there.

91. It isn't: The grove scenes were recorded the following day, 6 November.

92. By now, Tom Baker was well onto the final stretch of his seven-year stint playing the Doctor.

93. His departure had been announced to the press on 24 October,

94. and it was on 5 November, the serial's first day in the studio, that the new Doctor Who was named: Peter Davison.

95. There was a sombre atmosphere on the production, not helped by Tom's illness,

96. nor by the fact that, for the first time in two years, he was working without Lalla Ward, now his fiancée.

97. All this made his fellow actors tread a little more warily around him than they usually did.

98. In the script, we see the twin lights of Melkur's eyes playing on her face.

99. The band's central stripe is made of a reflective material which catches and returns light only on a particular plane.

100. The technique, called Front Axial Projection (FAP), is used to create the irradiation effect.

101. In the script, the band tightens around her neck, and she finds that she cannot remove it.

102. The intention was to suggest that there is a tiny creature sitting inside the head of Melkur.

103. Note the casters at the base of the sliding doors.

104. A scene was cut here, in which Nyssa and Adric arrive to find the grove entrance thronged with Melkur worshippers.

105. The Fosters on guard would let Nyssa through (because it is her job to tend Melkur) but not Adric.

106. The only other way into the grove would require them to seek her father's help, she remarks.

107. "Then it'll have to be this way," resolves Adric.

108. The script describes the Source as "a vacuum globe throbbing with glowing energy".

109. The shots of the grove through the eyes of Melkur were recorded on 6 November,

110. and played back onto the screens when the scenes inside the statue were recorded more than a month later.

111. The Doctor's homing device was introduced in 'Full Circle' earlier in the 1980-1series.

112. The control panels were supplied by Trading Post, a special effects firm which worked on Doctor Who in the late 1960s.

113. Sarah Sutton had an early make-up call each studio day to prepare her elaborate coiffure.

114. Her hair isn't naturally curly, so setting it took a long time and a lot of rollers,

115. followed by a long spell under a hairdryer, totalling three hours before she began the morning's camera rehearsals.

116. The Traken citizens are sullen and move reluctantly, says the script.

117. Sarah spent camera rehearsals in hairnet and rollers, to ensure that her curls didn't drop out before the evening recording.

118. Adric was originally conceived as a thief, partly based on the Artful Dodger in Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist (1838).

119. That's why the script here assumes he's an expert lock-picker.

120. Christopher Bidmead wrote this in, intending that it should feature again in later serials.

121. He also proposed that Neman should secure the gate after finding it unlocked,

122. which would increase the menace to Adric and his isolation from Nyssa.

123. Katura's unscripted hesitation was developed in rehearsal.

124. The actors speaking were not in the studio on the day this was recorded.

125. Their dialogue was recorded on the courtyard set the day before, and dubbed onto the soundtrack later.

126. "He turns to look at the grove," says the script. "It stretches ahead of him, overgrown, silent, and menacing."

127. "I'm not going to let a few old weeds frighten me," he says. "Anyway, the Doctor's here... somewhere."

128. In the script, the statue's eyes start to glow here.

129. The grove contains more than a few old weeds, as Adric put it.

130. There are ten tropical plants and twelve trees, ranging from eight to twelve feet in height,

131. plus assorted vines, branches, ivy, turfs, and clumps of grass.

132. Tony Burrough's sets have far more detail in them than the audience ever actually sees.

133. For instance, have you noticed a golden dragon anywhere - one with large frontal enhancements?

134. It was the magnificent centrepiece of the courtyard set, but barely features on screen.

135. Now, remember that green traverse curtain just on the outside of the Sanctum doors?

136. This is the reverse shot, but where's the drape?

137. The Doctor's Tardis, originally a "Mark One," was redefined as a "Type 40" in 'The Deadly Assassin' (1976).

138. The Doctor originally referred to a "humble" Type 40, until Christopher Bidmead remembered

139. that the Master's Tardis is also a Type 40, only a more advanced model than the Doctor's.

140. John Woodnutt considered it important to summon up complete conviction in the significance of what Seron is doing.

141. This effort of imagination was abetted by the detail of the sets, which allowed him to immerse himself in the world of Traken.

142. Rapport had a very different purpose in the first version of the serial.

143. It was the process whereby a Traken elder communicates

144. with the spirit of the dead Keeper so that he may name his successor.

145. On this occasion, the communication is telepathically intercepted by Zorca, using Mogen's powers,

146. and the upshot is that the succession falls on Zorca himself.

147. Reflective FAP material was applied to the actress's closed eyelids to create the glowing eyes effect.

148. This is meant to suggest that the creature inside Melkur is now seeing through Kassia's irradiated eyes.

149. In pre-production, Peter Logan considered fitting the neckband with light bulbs instead of using FAP.

150. John Black, the director of 'The Keeper of Traken', was a Scot.

151. He worked his way up through the BBC production hierarchy,

152. including a job as production assistant on Brensham People (1976) When he first worked with Denis Carey.

153. He began directing soon afterwards, with credits including Coronation Street (1976) And Play for Today (1977).

154. Look, the green curtain's back!

155. It's there, of course, to stop us seeing out beyond the set onto the studio floor with its cameras and cables.

156. Peter Logan initially thought of buying in the equipment from the scrap warehouse of the electronics company, Honeywell.

157. In the end, it too was supplied by Trading Post.

158. John Black wanted to try a new and perhaps less time-consuming way of making the Tardis appear.

159. The plan was to put a model police box into the full-size set using CSO, but the effect didn't work on the day,

160. so the usual locked-off cross-fade method was employed instead.

161. "But he continues to look into her face," says the script, "searching for the Kassia he once knew."

162. Fighting Melkur's domination, Kassia wrenches her head so that the lethal beams only strike Tremas a glancing blow.

163. The electrical pulses were added to the picture in post-production.

164. Also seen in this episode were:

165. Liz Adams, Barbara Bermel, Eileen Brady (Trakens)

166. Donald Groves, Fred Redford (Trakens)

167. Barry Summerford, Sheila Vivian (Trakens)

168. Uncredited production contributors included:

169. Roger Fenner (Senior Cameraman)

170. Alan Fogg (Sound)

171. Diana Roberts, Christine Vidier (Make-Up Assistants)

172. Hilary Briegel, CarolJohnson (Vision Mixers)

173. Robert Fleming (Properties Buyer) 9,435 —> 00:19:44,429 I therefore claim rapport with the Source so that you may make your judgement.

174. There we are.

175. - A fully fledged full backflow inducer. Doctor!

176. Yes?

177. - What does that mean? - It means the Keeper is being summoned.

178. Your judgement, Keeper?

179. You are blameless, Seron, but doomed.

180. And we are both betrayed.

181. Forgive me, Seron.

182. - Consul Kassia. - Forgive me.

183. But I serve a greater purpose.

184. Lost, degraded creature.

185. You betrayed your eeper and you're a sacred consular of the house?

186. Assia, reject this evil, reject it.

187. I cannot.

188. Now, Melkur, now!

189. You wait here.

190. Kassia.

191. Dead. Seron dead. How?

192. - What have you done, Kassia? - Tremas, my husband, I...

193. - Seron is dead, rejected by the Keeper. No!

194. Melkur is the cause of his destruction. Melkur. And those are his agents!

195. Seron, and now you, Tremas.

196. Is nothing sacred any more? Fosters, take them.

197. Quick. The vault. The vault.

198. Leave them! Come with me.

199. - Hurry, Doctor. - But we can't get out.

200. There are Fosters at the other door to the grove.

201. - You're forgetting about the Tardis, Adric. Come on, come on.

202. Wait, wait, wait.

203. - Will it work? - Well, give it a moment or two. Trust me.

204. - If you come up with a better idea, let me know. Doctor.

205. Recovering the Tardis won't help you.

206. - So you're the cause of all this. - Turn off your instrument.

207. Adric, Tremas, don't look at its eyes.

208. Doctor, look!

209. - Kassia, help us. - Yes, help me, Tremas.

210. Don't look at my eyes.

211. He should be all right. Come on. He's only stunned.

212. It is done, Melkur.

213. Oh, no, assia. It is only beginning.