Doctor Who 8x1

Directed by Barry Letts

Roger Delgado as The Master • Richard Franklin as Mike Yates • John Levene as Sergeant Benton • Michael Wisher as Rex Farrel • Harry Towb as McDermott

When a Nestene Energy Unit is stolen and a radio telescope sabotaged, the Doctor is contacted by a Time Lord who tells him his old rival the Master is responsible.

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1. "A mysterious arrival at a circus... sabotage at a deep space research centre...

2. "and the Doctor is warned that his most deadly enemy has arrived on Earth.

3. This episode was first shown on 2 January 1971, and was seen by 7.3 million viewers.

4. Scriptwriter Robert Holmes originally envisaged a travelling funfair rather than a circus.

5. Rossini doesn't feature in that version - except as a sketchily drawn fairground owner who only appears in Part 2.

6. The script makes it clear that big, florid Rossini doesn't actually see the horsebox materialise:

7. He looks away to light his cigar, and when he looks back, there it is.

8. The Master is carrying an attache case in the script.

9. "He stares about him with a confident, almost imperious manner. Behind him the door closes silently."

10. Script editor Terrance Dicks suggested this sequence, though he imagined it rather differently.

11. He is also a gypsy, and resents the way society treats his people: "Harried, moved on, not wanted".

12. The Master establishes influence over him by somewhat prosaic means: Threats and bribery.

13. Hypnosis was Robert Holmes's idea, though he imagined the Master using more than just sheer force of personality,

14. and gave him a "mind-dominating ray" to subjugate his victims.

15. The Doctor's song was originally recorded by the Ink Spots in 1941.

16. These opening moments were improvised in rehearsal.

17. The scripted scene starts here.

18. Jo's introductory scene was partly written by Terrance Dicks.

19. but she also had to be someone who might plausibly be attached to a secret organisation like UNIT.

20. In practice, this made for a tension between two aspects of the character.

21. Jo is a "girl next door" - or, in Jon Pertwee's words, a "swinging teenager".

22. But she is also a "junior secret agent", a descendant of the Avengers ladies.

23. They were the Lammarians in the script.

24. He means they are literally "all thumbs" - even though it's Jo who's the ham-fisted one.

25. Coming up is an example of that ham-fistedness which arose by serendipity in the studio.

26. Katy Manning was extremely myopic, so she relied on thorough rehearsals to establish her precise movements.

27. Katy found herself doing this.

28. On the first camera rehearsal, she demolished the equipment as her hand went through.

29. "A" Level studies were taken at school by Sixth Formers

30. One of the production team's objectives for Jo was that she shouldn't be too bright, scientifically speaking.

31. Her predecessor, a Cambridge research scientist, was thought to be overqualified

32. for a role whose dramatic function is to have things explained to her for the viewers' benefit.

33. In the storyline, the energy unit had been transferred to the Ministry of Research and Development,

34. which is also, conveniently, home to a radio telescope,

35. Cut from the Doctor's next scripted scene is an altercation with the Brigadier about the energy unit.

36. The Doctor also asks him a favour:

37. "Keep that ridiculous child out of my hair, will you? She's been driving me crazy."

38. The Ministry of Technology was set up by Harold Wilson's government in 1964.

39. Terrance Dicks imagined the setting as the University of Manchester's giant radio telescope at Jodrell Bank,

40. but that's in Cheshire, too far from London to be a practical option for filming.

41. Director Barry Letts cast Andrew Staines, who plays Goodge, in three other Doctor Who serials:

42. 'The Enemy of the World' (1967-8), 'Carnival of Monsters' (1973), and 'Planet of the Spiders' (1974).

43. Goodge's egg rant goes on for longer in the script:

44. "When you've seen one boiled egg, you've seen them all," he insists. "Don't you agree, Professor Philips?"

45. The script calls for the Master to be seen as a dark shadow staring down through the control cabin's glass roof.

46. Goodge was scripted to sigh and stare at the boiled eggs with "gloomy hatred".

47. The script calls the Master's device a "compression tube".

48. "As his finger tightens on the impulse button, there is a flash and a sound like sizzling fat."

49. The Doctor later explains, in a deleted conversation with Jo,

50. that the manner of Goodge's death is "one of the Master's nasty little jokes":

51. Rather than being exploded, he has been imploded with a "compression ray".

52. The script contains more expository background about the Master's presence on Earth.

53. The Time Lords' tribunal, recognizing his "destructive genius" decided to imprison him.

54. But he escaped - "not without help" - before his Tardis could be "de-energised".

55. The energy unit is powered by internal batteries which ran out after about thirty seconds.

56. The shaft angle encoder supplies data about the orientation of the radio telescope dishes.

57. A quasar is a type of astral body which emits extremely high levels of light and radio waves.

58. In practice, much of the character was left to be developed by Katy Manning herself.

59. Katy drew on her own personal qualities,

60. In the script, Jo sees the Brigadier, crashes to attention like a soldier on parade, and salutes him.

61. Originally she was given an official UNIT rank: Lieutenant Josephine Grant.

62. with its "familiar office politics and a general air of suffused charm".

63. In the storyline, it is assumed that the missing scientists have stolen the energy unit.

64. The film camera is on one of the relay station's pylons.

65. played a vampire in a feature film, The House that Dripped Blood,

66. and done a summer season of cabaret at Butlins holiday camp in Clacton.

67. Jo's disappointed waggle was a spur-of-the-moment performance choice by Katy Manning.

68. The camera zooms in, but the background remains static, so it looks as if he's flying forwards.

69. Actually, 29,000 light years isn't all that far in galactic terms.

70. He's played by David Garth.

71. His other roles included King Charles I in The Further Adventures of the Musketeers (1967)

72. And a brace of solicitors in You Can't Win (1965) And Doctor Who (1966-7).

73. This sequence didn't impress the television critic of the Daily Mirror, Matthew Coady.

74. Coady liked Doctor Who to take itself seriously and to show "pride in its inventiveness",

75. He was also underwhelmed by the little he saw of the Autons in this episode:

76. "Those faceless plastic dummies may have had a nightmarish quality when they first appeared,

77. Terrance Dicks proposed that the Master intended the booby-trap for the Senior Time Lord.

78. The script also calls it an "Androgian canister".

79. Door-activated booby traps go back at least to the 1920s,

80. In a higher-tech earlier draft, the control cabin was reached by a lift rather than stairs.

81. Holmes also imagined a more futuristic control room, with a glass dome instead of a ceiling.

82. But the control cabin's rusty walls show how Doctor Who's vision of the near future was changing.

83. Holmes was thinking of the gleaming, technological research centres of the 1970 series,

84. but instead there's an untidy, almost ramshackle quality to lan Watson's set.

85. Lan Watson had previously designed a brighter Doctor Who future in 'The Space Pirates' (1969).

86. His pre-production estimate for this serial, made on 19 August 1970,

87. was 1,600 man-hours and £800 for six main sets, plus £1,100 for props.

88. The Director tells him it was "some positional measurements in the twenty centimetre band".

89. Boom mike alert!

90. Did you notice anything peculiar about Goodge's shadow in the lunchbox?

91. This episode is Captain Yates's first appearance in Doctor Who. ;

92. the character hadn't even been thought of when the previous Nestene serial, 'Spearhead from Space', was made.

93. Barry Letts had originally wanted lan Marter (1944-86) To play Captain Yates.

94. Marter had to withdraw because he wouldn't be free to appear in subsequent serials:

95. He had prior commitments in the theatre, notably Abelard and Heloise in the West End.

96. Richard Franklin became Yates after Letts saw him on stage,

97. and told his casting problem to the person sitting next to him - who happened to be Franklin's agent.

98. "They can't do much harm with only one energy unit," says Jo in the script.

99. In the script, the Doctor has little confidence in Jo's investigatory skills:

100. "She'll probably get herself lost," he says.

101. Someone had cloth ears: It was supposed to be a "pressure gauge".

102. Head of Drama Shaun Sutton had one serious complaint to make, about the Radio Times.

103. The cover promoted the new series with a large picture of the Master.

104. Some of the executives inferred that the Doctor was now being played by Roger Delgado.

105. One person who was especially displeased by the cover was Jon Pertwee.

106. The Master is interested in the computer because it controls the mix of plastic for the factory's production line.

107. These scenes really were filmed at a Dunstable plastics factory, on 23 September 1970.

108. The site was later offered for development after the firm ceased trading in 2008.

109. In the storyline, Jo is given nothing to do in this episode after her first scene.

110. So this sequence was requested by Terrance Dicks, to beef up the role.

111. What is Roger Delgado doing while the camera is on Katy Manning?

112. Pulling silly faces at her.

113. The end of the scene was cut: Jo comes to and says goodbye to Farrel, but evidently cannot see the Master.

114. "Quite a pretty little thing," comments the Master. "A pity I couldn't keep her."

115. A cut 7-second film sequence then showed Benton and his men doing just that.

116. The scripted scene began earlier in the conversation, with McDermott complaining of a day's lost production.

117. Farrel can't understand why McDermott has never met Colonel Masters:

118. He's the firm's biggest customer, and they've been dealing with him for years.

119. When the serial was retitled 'Terror of the Autons', a problem became apparent:

120. There weren't any Autons in this episode.

121. "Maybe there was nothing to find. If that energy unit is still in its box..."

122. The Doctor thinks that's "highly improbable", but gives orders for the zinc box to be brought in.

123. In the finished version, she tries to open the box in obedience to the Master's post-hypnotic suggestion.

124. What Dicks proposed, however, was over-confident disobedience.

125. The Doctor has told her to leave it alone, but she flatly ignores his instructions.

126. She is sure she can open it, and then... well, she came top in her bomb disposal course.

127. What's more, part of her "secret agent" equipment is a set of skeleton keys.

128. But take a closer look...

129. They're just ordinary Yale keys!

130. In the storyline, with no hypnotised Jo, the Doctor suspects a trap and opens the box by remote control.

131. There is a shattering explosion, and the end credits roll!

132. Also seen in this episode were:

133. Billy Horrigan

134. Tom O'Leary

135. Uncredited production contributors included:

136. Linton Howell Hughes

137. Jennie Betts

138. Sybil Cave

139. Peter Pegrum

140. Alan Rixon

141. Ray Hider

142. Shirley Coward

143. Bruce Best

144. Maurice Watson

145. Sarah Newman