Doctor Who 8x4

Directed by Barry Letts

Roger Delgado as The Master • Richard Franklin as Mike Yates • John Levene as Sergeant Benton • Michael Wisher as Rex Farrel • Pat Gorman as Auton Leader

The Doctor discovers the plastic daffodils are designed to fire a spray that asphyxiates people, causing havoc prior to the Nestene's arrival, but before he can alert anyone he and Jo are captured by the Master.

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1. "The Doctor discovers the deadly secret of the daffodils - but is captured before he can warn the Brigadier.

2. This episode was first shown on 23 January 1971, and was seen by 8.4 million viewers.

3. In the studio, all the sets were built on the same level,

4. but the bomb sequence in Episode 2 established that the Doctor's lab is not on UNIT HQ's ground floor.

5. So watch Nicholas Courtney's eye movements as the Brigadier hears the Doctor calling for help.

6. The dummy staircase outside the door completes the illusion of an upper-storey setting.

7. The scene after this one, aboard the Auton coach, was cut altogether.

8. Now he plans to leave them to deal with his "unfinished business".

9. "You have wasted too much time on your feud with the Doctor," the Auton Leader rebukes.

10. "I speak for the High Command. You are failing in your principal task."

11. "In a few hours," retorts the Master, "when the operational signal is transmitted,

12. "the main Nestene assault force will land on Earth unopposed. Does your High Command call that a failure?"

13. In the script, he runs electrical currents through the flower rather than using the Bunsen burner.

14. The burner is set on a very low flame, so that the hot air moves the leaves but doesn't melt or ignite the prop.

15. Post-production planning for this serial began even before the start of rehearsals.

16. On 25 September, Barry Letts met with the composer and the sound effects man at the Radiophonic Workshop.

17. The score was realised entirely at the Workshop using a synthesiser, the VCS3.

18. so that the electronic score could be written precisely to the time required.

19. Doctor Who's UNIT serials were consciously set in the near future rather than the present day,

20. but the Brigadier's map shows the English counties as they were before the boundary changes of 1974.

21. The call to the RAF was introduced in revision, to replace something a little more ambitious...

22. Post-production editing took place on four days between 12 October and 1 November.

23. Dudley Simpson then composed the music, though he wasn't formally commissioned until 4 December.

24. The complete score ran to 22 minutes and 31 seconds, amounting to a little over five minutes in each episode.

25. There's also one stock track, for a circus sequence: 'Spotlight Sequins No. 1 ',

26. composed by Keith Papworth and played by the International Studio Orchestra under the baton of Jack Trombey.

27. He's even fiercer in the script, which calls for him to be armed with a machine carbine.

28. In the storyline, the coach has been traced to the Sussex Downs.

29. "Aren't you going to offer them a chance to surrender?" Asks Jo in the script.

30. "The Doctor tells me these Nestenes are in constant two-way communication," scintillates the Brigadier.

31. "I want the others to know the sort of thing we've got waiting for them."

32. In 1968, the Army helped out Doctor Who by supplying men and equipment to fight the Cybermen in 'The Invasion'.

33. The production team hoped for a repeat arrangement in staging UNIT's attack on the Autons.

34. In fact, one of the serial's "selling points'was'a full-scale pitched battle between Autons and UNIT soldiers".

35. This time, however, the Army was unable to help.

36. And that's why the planned attack on the coach at ground level turned into an air strike by the RAF.

37. Jo uses the standard-issue TM45 UNIT radio, originally made by BBC Visual Effects for 'The Invasion' (1968).

38. The prop has been refurbished with a new aerial.

39. This sequence was added at scripting stage, to show one of the Nestene daffodils at work.

40. In the storyline, the flowers are pre-programmed to kill when the ambient temperature reaches 65 Fahrenheit,

41. so the Nestenes have been waiting for a spell of hot, dry weather.

42. The daffodils' mode of operation gives the working title its central pun:

43. A spray of flowers emitting a spray of death.

44. Their range is specified as eight feet.

45. The script specifies the solvent: Dimethyl sulfoxide.

46. Sprayed onto the skin like that, it would give Jo a nasty rash.

47. In the storyline, the weather has been unseasonably cold, causing a delay to the Nestenes' plans.

48. Terrance Dicks was unconvinced by this aspect of the plot: "Why not go to Morocco?" he asked.

49. Dicks proposed the alternative method of activation by radio waves.

50. Ten minutes are shaved off the scripted 47, to give the situation a little added urgency.

51. The next effects shot was at first deemed impossible to achieve.

52. The solution lay around a cheese roll in somebody's lunchbox.

53. Cling-film was a new product on the market, and shrivelled when sprayed with a particular solvent.

54. This is a variant on the poison darts in the Sherlock Holmes film Terror by Night (1946),

55. which melt without a trace into the very wound they have made.

56. The script calls the weapon a cobalt laser.

57. The vainglorious "almost" was Roger Delgado's unscripted contribution.

58. In the storyline, the Master explains the logic behind his choice of plastic flowers.

59. To achieve maximum impact, it must be distributed economically across a large number of weapons.

60. Roger Delgado based aspects of his performance on his memories of his father, a proud Spaniard.

61. The Master also has his hands full in the script: He has grabbed and pinioned Jo,

62. so that each Time Lord has something the other wants.

63. Delgado opted to underplay the Master, feeling that "casual villainy" was more effective than ranting.

64. He aimed to suggest a character who always seemed in control, both of himself and of the situation.

65. He had struck up a good working relationship with her while making 'Inferno' (1970),

66. and Barry Letts agreed that this had helped him handle the stress of his leading role.

67. Rex Farrel is played by Michael Wisher (1935-95).

68. Barry Letts had previously directed him in Adventure Weekly (1969), in which he played a police constable.

69. He later originated the role of Davros in 'Genesis of the Daleks' (1975).

70. According to the storyline, Farrel comes to himself because he is out of the Master's "mesmeric range".

71. A total of 743 feet of film was shot for this serial, totalling just under twenty minutes' worth of action.

72. The Master's scripted line refers to Farrel's mother, not his father.

73. This is the battery-operated energy unit.

74. The effects team also built a version powered through wires, which ran up the sleeve of the actor carrying it.

75. The Doctor's shirt has a zip front rather than buttons, for ease of dressing.

76. Several duplicate shirts were made - but some had slightly different zips.

77. This doesn't match any sequence of letters in the decoded message.

78. When he was cast as Captain Yates, Richard Franklin had long hair, which was fashionable for men in 1970.

79. He tried his best to keep it: Surely soldiers in the future were allowed to be hirsute, he argued.

80. Barry Letts disagreed, but, as you can see, he didn't insist on a very severe military short-back-and-sides.

81. The upcoming climax back at the radio research centre replaced the storyline's simpler ending,

82. in which the Master is merely defeated by UNIT firepower before it gets hot enough to trigger the daffodils.

83. Dicks proposed that, once the Nestenes realise that the daffodil terror has been defeated,

84. they would intervene directly and transmit one of themselves down the radio telescope.

85. Then he locates and punctures the exhaust pipe.

86. Channelled inside the coach, the swirling exhaust fumes start to melt the Autons' plastic.

87. The Master Is forced to stop the coach.

88. A pitched battle with UNIT troops ensues.

89. The Master makes his escape over the South Downs, pausing only to kill Rex Farrel.

90. Jon Pertwee was eager to do the jump from the coach himself.

91. But the vehicle was going to be moving at around 15 miles per hour in the shot where the Doctor leaps out.

92. That wasn't a safe speed at which to jump, except for a stuntman.

93. The disappointed Pertwee accepted the situation, asking only that his stunt double should look like him.

94. So cue Terry Walsh!

95. Jon and Katy did their own landings, of course.

96. Plans to have UNIT attack the coach with tanks were abandoned when the Army wouldn't help.

97. In the script, it's the Doctor who might be hurt:

98. "Doctor, are you alright?" asks Jo. "If I break in half when I stand up, then I'm not," comes the reply.

99. The injury was transferred to Jo to help explain why she might be limping after Katy sprained her ankle for real.

100. Stuntman Roy Scammell did the forty-foot fall from the radio tower.

101. There were lots of empty boxes at the bottom to break his fall.

102. When the stunt was set up, Jon Pertwee lent a hand - or rather a head - to get the boxes into place.

103. "There is a flash, and the Master falls back with a cry."

104. The script calls for "a writhing, growing coil of energy, suspended like a filament between two dishes".

105. It turns into "a palpitating, squid-shaped radiance":

106. Its tentacles whip over the control room's glass dome and smash the windows.

107. Some younger viewers in 1971 felt that Doctor Who was starting to become silly.

108. In an effort to check such tendencies, they appealed to the highest known authority.

109. This was of course Michael Aspel, host of the long-running children's clips show, Ask Aspel (1970-81).

110. On 29 January, Ask Aspel reshowed this battle sequence as an example of the silliness at issue.

111. For comparison, viewers were also shown a clip of the Doctor's greatest enemies in 'The Power of the Daleks' (1966).

112. "The Master controls his computer like a man on a Hammond organ," says the script.

113. There were preliminary attempts to realise the squid monster as a model, but they proved unsatisfactory.

114. In the finished episode, the Nestene is an electronic effect.

115. The fragments of the monster "vanish into the sky, as quickly as sparks up a chimney," says the script.

116. He back-pedalled a little from the week Only the troll sequence in Part 2 was unacceptably frightening.

117. Monica Sims persisted: Her anxiety lay in the fact that the series was now set in the real world,

118. but she liked the idea of the Master, "so that Doctor Who was not the only clever one".

119. Ronald Marsh had good news for her: The Master would soon be back.

120. But Huw Wheldon, the Managing Director of Television and a long-time Doctor Who fan, had another wish.

121. He very much disliked having the series set "in the real world of Brentford",

122. so he hoped the Tardis would soon be repaired, and would land on another planet.

123. The Doctor doesn't want him shot, but the Brigadier insists:

124. "How many deaths has he caused? How many more if he escapes?"

125. So the Master is caught in "a hail of bullets" from the UNIT firing party.

126. But when they examine the body, it is made of plastic: A faceless Auton in the Master's clothes.

127. It was a very late decision to make it Rex Farrel's last stand instead.

128. Wisher played dead so convincingly that the crew wondered if he had really passed out.

129. That's not Roger Delgado at the wheel, it's stunt driver Stan Hollingsworth.

130. In the storyline, we see the Master race back to his horsebox with the Brigadier's men on his tail.

131. He tries to dematerialise, but the horsebox "grinds down, shudders, and belches flames and smoke".

132. The ruse with the disguised Auton gets him past the soldiers, and he makes his getaway in a stolen UNIT van.

133. After this serial wrapped, the regulars had Sunday off before travelling to Kent to begin shooting 'The Mind of Evil'.

134. Ronald Marsh, Head of Serials, thought this too stark and explicit,

135. and asked Terrance Dicks for a softer closing line.

136. You have also been watching:

137. Les Conrad

138. Roy Street

139. Marc Boyle, Alan Chuntz, Stuart Fell, Billy Horrigan

140. Dinny Powell, Roy Scammell, Terry Walsh, Derek Ware

141. Uncredited production contributors

142. Edward Pugh

143. Rita Dunn

144. Graham Southcott

145. John McPherson

146. Penny Forster

147. JO: So, the one he took from you...

148. Belonged to my Tardis, yes.

149. Yes, I've been trying to repair it for months.

150. And now he's stuck here on Earth.

151. Yes, I'm afraid so.

152. Think he'll turn up again, Doctor?

153. Mmm, bound to.

154. You don't seem very worried about it.

155. I'm not. As a matter of fact, Jo, I'm rather looking forward to it.