4 episodes
Aired between 2nd January 1971 and 23rd January 1971
Written by Robert Holmes
Produced by Barry Letts
Directed by Barry Letts
Synopsis
The Carnival is in town, and the circus leader - Luigi Rossini spots a strange horsebox in his entourage.
Little doe he know that the horsebox materialised out of thin air only seconds before. He watches in disdain as a man with a goatee beard, dressed head to toe in black, exits the box. Rossini confronts the man who calls himself the Master, but he's easily overpowered and hypnotised.
Under the Master's spell, Rossini becomes an accomplice in stealing the last remaining Nestene meteorite on Earth.
Over at UNIT HQ, the Doctor is undertaking some rather sensitive experiments on his TARDIS components when a lady arrives. She is called Josephine Grant (Jo for short) and despite the Doctor mistaking her for a tea lady, she persists in telling him that she's his new assistant. Jo bungles the experiment and makes a bad impression on the Doctor.
In a temper, he tells the Brigadier to get rid of her. Needless to say, the Brigadier reminds the Doctor that Liz Shaw has left UNIT and returned to Cambridge because she said the Doctor only wants someone to hold test tubes and tell him how brilliant he is all the time. If the Doctor wants to get rid of Jo, he has to tell her himself. The Doctor calls Jo in, but looking at her kind, naive face, he can't bring himself to give her the sack, so he grumbles and decides to keep her on.
The Master meanwhile, heads off to a deep space radio telescope, and sneaks up on the workers there: Professor George Phillips and his assistant, Goodge. Once they're out of the way, he connects up the Nestene Meteor and sends a signal into outer space.
UNIT get word of the goings on and rush to the telescope. As the Doctor is about to enter the control room, he is visited by one of the Time Lords, who is dressed as a very middle class Englishman, complete with bowler hat and umbrella, and hovers mid-air!
The Time Lord warns the Doctor that his old acquaintance and fellow Time Lord, the Master has arrived on Earth. He suggests that the Doctor should defeat him, and points out that he's rigged the control room door with a bomb just before he disappears again.
The Doctor is less than impressed at being given orders but he decides he's going to stop the Master anyway.
With lightning reflexes, the Doctor bursts into the room and catches the bomb just before it hits the floor, thereby avoiding an explosion. The room is deserted, and the meteor is gone, but to his horror, the Doctor finds Goodge has been shrunken and placed inside his own lunchbox, dead.
Over at a local plastics factory, it seems that the owner, Rex Farrell has taken on a new client, Colonel Masters. The Colonel has begun to take the factory in a different direction, persuading Rex to commission new production lines into household items instead of dolls. The Production Manager, James McDermott is concerned at the amount of sway Colonel Masters has, especially seeing as Rex has newly taken over the business from his father. He tries to persuade Rex to rethink this new approach, but is met with a stern rebuff.
Back at UNIT HQ, the Doctor explains how he's positive that the Master is in league with the Nestene's.
The Brigadier orders his men to start investigating plastics factories in the area, whilst the Doctor gets back to work on his TARDIS. Being given the impression that she's of no use to the Doctor or the Brigadier, Jo decides to help investigate the factories and sneaks off. By sheer chance, she drops on the right factory and spies on the Master and Rex Farrell talking. She accidentally gives her location away and the Master hypnotises her, sending her back to UNIT HQ with a mission.
Jo arrives back at base with a crate that she claims contains the missing Nestene Meteorite but as she begins to open it, the box starts to smoke, alerting the Doctor to the fact that it's a bomb. They manage to throw it out of the window into a nearby dock where it explodes harmlessly. The Doctor undoes the hypnosis on Jo and makes sure she's alright.
At the plastics factory, McDermott demands to see Colonel Masters and confronts him over his domination of the factory. Colonel Masters (can you see what he did there, with the name....) is very amenable and suggests that McDermott tries the products to see how good they are.
He offers him to sit in one of their new inflatable plastic chairs. No sooner as McDermott sits down, the chair deflates, swallowing him up and suffocating him.
Rex is shocked, but the Master stops him helping, saying that he doesn't tolerate insolence. Despite the plastic chair's success, the Master decides to try and create even smaller, more efficient plastic products that will help to kill human beings.
Jo comes out of the hypnosis, but cannot remember where she run into the Master. It seems that they're no further forward.
Informed of the death of his old friend, McDermott, Rex's father pays a visit to the factory and tells his son in no uncertain terms that he doesn't like Colonel Masters and he must get rid of him. The Master tries to hypnotise Mr Farrell, but his will is so strong that he fails. He smiles and tries a different approach, giving the irate Mr Farrell a small troll doll as a product proof. He implores the man to take it home and try it, thereby seeing just how good this new product line is. Mr Farrell doesn't want any of it, but the Master tosses it on the back seat of his car as he leaves.
Once he gets home, Mr Farrell explains to his wife what's gone off, and tosses the troll doll on the table by the radiator. The heat from the radiator activates the Auton doll, and it comes to life, running across the room and strangling poor Mr Farrell to death whilst his wife makes some tea.
UNIT eventually get a lead when they find some loose turf by Professor Phillips' missing car. This leads them to the site of Rossini's circus. The Doctor goes ahead alone, despite the Brigadier and Jo's protests. Jo wants to help but both her superiors refuse, resulting in her stowing away in "Bessie".
The Doctor gets to the circus and find the Master's TARDIS, cleverly disguised as a horsebox. He goes in and removes a small device from it. As he emerges out of the TARDIS, Rossini and his strongman, Tony, capture him. Shortly afterwards, she sees the missing Professor Phillips, dressed as a clown, enter the horsebox. She runs off and calls the Brigadier to let him know what's gone off.
As the Brigadier and his men race off to the circus, Jo goes to find the Doctor. She sees him inside a trailer, being interrogated by Rossini and Tony.
She waits until Rossini leaves to call the Master and she smashes Tony on the back of the head with a vase. The Doctor isn't too impressed that she disobeyed him, but she points out that he really does need her.
Suddenly, a mentally conditioned Professor Phillips rushes into the trailer, clinging to a grenade. The Doctor convinces him to fight the conditioning, resulting in Phillips diving out of the car, blowing himself to bits. The explosion brings all the carnie's to the trailer. Rossini is angry and orders all the workers to beat the crap out of Jo and the Doctor, which they begin to do. The Police arrive and smuggle the two of them into the car before they can be attacked any further. The car makes a quick exit from the mob. The Doctor and Jo thank the Police officer's for their help, praising the Brigadiers insightful decision to send a car to help them following Jo's phone call. Little does the Doctor know that the Brigadier and Captain Yates arrive at the circus in a car one moment after the Doctor has left.
Jo spots the fact that the Police car isn't heading back to UNIT HQ. When the Doctor questions it, the Police man turns around, being revealed to be an Auton.
The Doctor fights the Auton, causing the car to crash in a nearby quarry. Both he and Jo escape from the car, running to hide in the rocky dunes. As the Autons look for them, the Brigadier and his men turn up, rescuing them in the nick of time.
Once they're back at UNIT HQ, the Doctor triumphantly explains that he has replaced the Master's dematerilisation circuit with his own faulty one.
He tries the Master's component in his own TARDIS but finds it's incompatible. The Doctor gets into a sulk and becomes childish, but soon cheers up when he realises that without his circuit, the Master is stuck on Earth too.
Finally, the Master perfects a plastic household component to his specification - plastic daffodils.
He orders Rex to take a host of disguised Autons (wearing huge plastic heads) to the streets to distribute the daffodils.
A little time wears on, and both McDermott and Mr Farrell's strange asphyxiation comes to the Brigadiers attention, in conjunction with a host of other deaths with similar symptoms all across London. The mention of McDermott's death jogs Jo's memory and she remembers Rex Farrell.
Catching the lead, the Doctor and Jo go to see Mrs Farrell who recounts what happened. She didn't see the doll alive, but said it wasn't in the spot it was left at. The Doctor takes the doll for analysis.
Whilst they're out of the office, a telephone repair man turns up unannounced to work on the Doctor's phone in the lab. Sgt Benton is suspicious, but his papers check out. The repairman fits a new, longer cord to the phone and leaves.
The Brigadier, the Doctor, Captain Yates and Jo get back to base and begin theorising about how the troll doll is activated.
Whilst waiting for proper analytical equipment, the Brigadier and the Doctor head off to look at Rex's plastics factory whilst Jo and Captain Yates stay behind and wait for the equipment.
Once at the factory, the Brigadier and Doctor find evidence that Rex has abandoned the place and used his money to hire a minibus. On the table is a single plastic daffodil. The Doctor opens the safe to find an auton waiting inside. He quickly shuts and locks the door just in time. Satisfied, they both head back to UNIT HQ.
Jo and Captain Yates meanwhile decide to pass the time by having a cup of cocoa.
They fire up the bunsen burner, and whilst Mike is out getting the supplies, the heat activates the toll doll. It comes after Jo, nearly killing her, but Yates returns just in time and shoots it to pieces.
Although initially furious, the Doctor realises how the troll was activated and knows they're a step closer to finding the Master.
The UNIT crew all rush off to round up the daffodils, leaving the Doctor to examine the specimen he has. He receives a phone call from the Master who holds up a beeping device to the phone which causes the cord to come to life and nearly strangle the Doctor.
The Brigadier hearing the Doctor's cries for help, comes and cuts off the phone.
The Doctor thanks the Brigadier for the close call and gets back to his experiments on the daffodil with the help of Jo.
It's not long before they discover that the daffodil is activated by radio waves, and shoots out a thin piece of plastic film that covers a victims nose and mouth, suffocating them. It nearly does this to Jo, but the Doctor pulls it off at the last moment. The Doctor is puzzled. If this was the cause of all the deaths, how come none of the film was found on the bodies? As he hypothesises this, he breaths on the film and it melts in his hands, leaving no trace. As he comes to this conclusion, the Master appears in his lab, holding him at gunpoint with his unique weapon: the tissue compression eliminator.
The Doctor is confident that the Master won't kill him because if he does, it means he'll never know the location of his Dematerilisation Circuit. Jo blurts out that UNIT have located the minibus full of Autons and are going to blow it up with an air strike. The Master smiles and says that in that case, he will keep them as hostages to ensure the strike doesn't go ahead. He takes them to the minibus and ties them up inside it, ensuring they will die if the strike goes ahead.
Watching from a nearby hill, the Brigadier and his men spy the Doctor and Jo's predicament and manage to call off the air strike just in time.
Whilst they're tied up, the Doctor manages to get his foot to the minibus brake and taps out a morse code message using the brake light, whilst Jo (skilled in escapology) gets out of the shackles.
With the air strike out of the window, UNIT are forced to move in conventionally in a pitched battle with the big headed Autons.
Once to safety, the Doctor runs off with the Brigadier to the radio telescope to stop the Master from summoning the rest of the Nestene race to Earth. Once they get to the control room they see that the Master has indeed fixed up the radio telescope once more and is beaming out a signal. The Doctor convinces the Master however that once the Nestenes get here, they won't be able to tell the Master apart from any other human. They will kill everyone. This revelation causes the Master to shut off the signal and step down.
As the Doctor and Brigadier take control of the telescope, the Master slips away and runs back to the minibus. They give chase to him and watch as he runs onto the bus. A moment later, he emerges, hands up.
The Doctor says he'll have something up his sleeve and not to trust him. Sure enough, the Master reaches for his weapon and is gunned down. When they approach the body however, they see that it's actually Rex, dressed in one of the Masters great disguises.
From over the field the real Master starts up the minibus and drives off into the sunset.
Back at base, the Brigadier announces disappointed that the Master has given them the slip. The Doctor seems quite happy however, and explains that the Master is still stranded on Earth, and he's looking forward to the opportunity for a rematch.
Trivia
- Okay, any fan of the classic series will probably know this, but for those of you who don't - the concept of the Master came about from a conversation between Terrence Dicks and Barry Letts. They very much saw the Doctor as a type of cosmic Sherlock Holmes; and if he was Sherlock, then it only stood to reason that there should be a Moriarty. Hence, the Master was conceived as a smarter but polar opposite Time Lord to battle week in and week out. There was only one man who had the gravitas to pull this role off, and Barry knew him well. As soon as he offered Roger Delgado the chance to play the evil Time Lord, he welcomed it with open arms.
- Meanwhile, the end of Inferno saw the end of Derrick Sherwin's influence and the very start of Barry Letts ideas coming to the foreground. One of the hangovers he found was the problem of Liz Shaw. In his view, Liz should be a very capable scientist, but that gave him headaches from a production point of view, because it meant that there was no audience identification figure at all. He needed someone to pull the dads in, but at the same time ask the questions that everyone at home would have. That's why from the Silurians on wards, Liz's wardrobe choice alters dramatically from when we see her in Spearhead from Space. For the new series, Barry effectively decided to cut out Liz Shaw rather than make her someone she wasn't. This unfortunately caused Caroline John to get a bit offended, but as it turns out, she was three months pregnant and would have had to leave the show anyway - it was just the manner in which the blow was delivered that got her back up.
- So, once Caroline was out of the picture, Barry began to look for a new Doctor's companion. He held auditions during which one seemly girl came in. She was a teenager, short sighted, and very mild mannered, but Barry saw something really special in her when she had to pretend that a hatstand was transforming into a monster. He got Jon Pertwee's approval and offered the girl the job. That girl was Katy Manning, and the next three years would see the development of one of the most loved companions ever.
What worked
- The suffocating chair scene will stay with you as something really disturbing and silly at the same time.
- The Autons look far more effective in this than previously. Their voices (this is the only story in which they talk if you discount Rory Williams) are gravelly and wonderfully creepy.
- Even the over sized heads of the Autons are a little bit disturbing like a clown
- You only have to watch a couple of episodes from this story to know that Barry Letts was in love with CSO overlay (bluescreen). One of the happy coincidences of this was that it created one of the most bizarre and unnerving weapons in all of Doctor Who - the tissue compression eliminator.
- Jon Pertwee gets to really stand out here. The inclusion of the Master gives him a true voice of authority over the Brigadier and a sense that he knows more than humans, rather than being arrogant and self assured
- The UNIT family also get better development here with the inclusion of Captain Yates and the chance to call in air strikes
What didn't work
- Sounds very out of character for Liz Shaw to say what she did about the Doctor, especially since the last shot was of her having a whale of a time with the Doctor
- The circus scenes add very little to the overall story
- Why does carbon dioxide get rid of the daffodil film when people will obviously breathe on it?
- I hate how conveniently the quarry where the Auton fight sequences are held, just so happen to be right next door to the radio telescope.
- The battle for Earth came down to a few UNIT soldiers and half a dozen Autons - all of whom should go on to play storm troopers on account of their marksmanship
- The end is a bit of an anti-climax
Overall Feelings
It's fair to say that by the end of 1969, Doctor Who's popularity was waning. The 1970 season showed us just what could be done and what a radical direction the show could move in, but there were only bare bones to it, with each story being about yet another Government project gone wrong. Season eight finally gave Producer Barry Letts an opportunity to put his mark on it, effectively this would be another reboot. As discussed above, he and Terrence Dicks introduced the Master and a new companion, and also fleshed out the UNIT family.
To ensure the show would get a good start, they turned to the reliable Robert Holmes to kick things off. What he presented was just a showground to highlight all these new concepts. When you take a step back and examine the story, the Master knicks an artifact, goes to a telescope to summon aliens and then realises that there's another three episodes to fill, so goes on an elaborate cat and mouse game with his nemesis until he remembers what he's meant to be doing and goes back to the telescope. Looking back, the story almost works better without the threat of alien invasion because the ending comes down to the Doctor saying "I don't believe you wanted to do that".
Taking the middle bit which is pointless to the plot, we ironically can see a lot of the value here. The cat and mouse set up gives us something intriguing. The Master is a purely mischievous character who does stuff for the sake of messing with the Doctor. In addition, the development of Auton death devices such as an armchair, doll and daffodil prove some of the most horrifying scenes in the shows history, purely because Holmes takes the everyday and mundane and turns it fantastical. If this were Troughton's era, aliens would have been the ones appearing in front of chintz wallpaper and gunning down Mr Farrell as a show of turning the mundane into fantastical. In the Barry Letts era, we get the everyday object being the culprit, highlighting that any one of the millions watching at home might meet a sticky end tomorrow if they turn the heating up. This is genius and helped captivate a nations mind.
Rating
8 out of 10
Not as good as Spearhead because of the pointless setup and conclusion of the radio telescope business. Still, lots here to enjoy.
Rewatchability Factor
8 out of 10
Short and sweet. I will definitely return to this story in the future.
Watch this if you liked...
- Rose (Doctor Who Series 1)
Consulting the Matrix
Who did you like better: the Auton's or the Master?
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