4 episodes
Aired between 13th March 1971 and 3rd April 1971
Written by Bob Baker and David Martin
Produced by Barry Letts
Directed by Michael Ferguson
Synopsis
As with the Nestene Meteorites, staff at UNIT track a UFO approaching Earth.
This couldn't have come at a more inopportune time as the Brigadier is having to entertain an inquiry from a Conservative MP - Horatio Chinn.
This is on top of trying to coordinate a strategy between UNIT and Washington Agent Bill Filer for dealing with the Master.
Chinn is most put out that there isn't any paperwork on the Doctor, and demands to know who this "Doctor" is. Chinn is obnoxious to the point where he is incredibly rude to Agent Filer and basically tells him to bugger off back to Washington because none of this concerns him.
Their heated argument gets interrupted by the arrival of the UFO. Chinn immediately takes control of the situation and demands that missiles are launched at it! Due to the fact that he seemingly has got the authority to do so, missiles are indeed launched. Much to Chinn's bewilderment however, the ship disappears from radar screens before the missiles can impact.
The Doctor calculates the landing area based on the UFO's trajectory and suggests they all go and warn the nearby Newton Power Complex. All except Bill Filer is seems, as Chinn is totally hell bent on excluding him. Filer smiles and capitulates, biding them all farewell.
Out in the countryside, a lowly tramp called Pigbin Josh messes about trying to find himself a new bike.
On his way across the countryside, the sky unexpectedly opens up with a flash blizzard (a freak weather event caused by the UFO's atmospheric entry). The UFO crashes with a blaze of light so bright that it causes poor Pigbin to career into a freezing river. The Tramp swims back ashore and goes to take a closer look. He can see a small tunnel-like opening sticking out of the ground. Suddenly, a tentacle shoots out of the opening and drags the poor tramp inside where he's scanned by an eerie alien voice before he's drained of all energy and discarded back out.
As the UNIT crew warn Sir George Hardiman and Professor Winsor (controller and head researcher of the Newton Power Complex), Agent Filer races in his car to the downed UFO. Just like Pigbin Josh, he too is captured and analysed, but he's found to have a bit more intelligence, and so is kept prisoner. It just so happens that his cell mate is none other than the Master!
The UNIT crew eventually make it to the UFO where they cautiously enter the ship. Inside, they are greeted by golden skin and haired humanoids called Axons.
They say they crash landed and need fuel. In return, they will share secrets of a strange element they call Axonite. The Axons claim that Axonite is a "thinking" molecule that can replicate any substance, or make things shrink and grow.
The Doctor is skeptical of the Axon's motives, suggesting that they could have just replicated fuel. Despite this, Chinn gets very excited at the prospect of growing food hence ending world hunger and decides that he will restrict Axonite to just England.
Despite being ordered to stay behind, Jo slips into the Axon ship and goes exploring.
She hears Bill Filer's screams and follows them, coming face to face with a horrendous shapeless monster.
Her screams brings the Doctor running to her. She tells him that she heard Bill Filer, but he insists that she's just hallucinating.
Returning to the Axons, the Doctor convinces Hardiman and Professor Winsor that the Axonite must be analysed before it can be distributed. When they get back to UNIT HQ however, Chinn contacts the Ministry and gets permission to restrict distribution of Axonite to whomever the UK decide. He also gets permission and authority to imprison the Brigadier and the rest of the UNIT staff until the situation is under control.
Professor Winsor insists on keeping the Doctor with him to help analyse the strange substance. Chinn reluctantly agrees.
The experiments get underway, and it becomes clear that Axonite will defy analysis. The Doctor suggests splitting the element apart into atoms by using Professor Winsor's particle accelerator (equipment he is using to hopefully gain an understanding of time travel), but he's not willing to risk it. The Doctor does however get him to agree to bring the TARDIS to the power station and use the equipment in that. Once Professor Winsor has left, the Doctor goes against the Professor's wishes and uses the particle accelerator on the Axonite, sending waves of pain throughout the Axons.
Back on Axos (the ship), the Axons duplicate the captive Agent Filer and send the Doppelganger over to the Newton Power Station to stop the Doctor. The Axons also strike up a deal with the Master to let him go, provided he can convince the humans to distribute the Axonite worldwide.
He asks for his TARDIS back, but Axos won't give it.
The fake Agent Filer arrives at the station and attacks the Doctor. He's about to get the upper hand until the real Agent Filer manages to escape from Axos and races to the centre to stop them. In the tussle the fake Filer gets pushed into the particle accelerator and gets electrocuted before turning into a frothy mess.
Professor Winsor returns and is furious at the Doctor. He tries to shut the equipment down and gets electrocuted and drained of all energy. This leads the Doctor to believe that the Axonite, the Axons and Axos are all the same thing. They are all part of the ship - a living entity trying to mislead them into distributing parts of it worldwide. Before he can capitalise on the knowledge, the Axons storm into the lab and surround him, Jo and Agent Filer. They knock Agent Filer out and take Jo and the Doctor back to Axos.
Chinn turns up and the Axons tell him that the Doctor did something stupid so they've taken him to the ship to check him over. In the meantime, they insist that Chinn gives immediate worldwide distribution of Axonite. Any further delay or analysis means the deal is off. The power hungry Chinn knows better than to argue.
Elsewhere, the Master makes his way into the Newton Power Complex by jumping off a bridge onto a moving truck and hypnotising the driver.
Once at Axos, the Doctor is interrogated and analysed by the ship.
It knows that the Doctor is a Time Lord and by threatening to prematurely age Jo, it gets the Doctor to agree to giving up the secret of time travel. He states that the Time Lords have put a block on his knowledge of dematerilisation codes, but Axos says it can remove those blocks.
Chinn reports that the Axonite is on its way to every major city and science establishment in the world. With that underway, Axos orders its Axons to head over to Newton Power Complex's reactor and suck it dry of energy.
Over at the power complex, the Master bluffs his way in via disguising himself as an Army officer.
He goes inside the Doctor's TARDIS brought there by Professor Winsor and seeks to escape the planet. He didn't count on the fact that the Doctor's TARDIS has had its console pulled apart and is a mass of jumbled wires.
The Brigadier and co manage to get in touch with Geneva and get clearance to place Chinn under arrest. The Brigadier convinces the regular army to help free him and he rushes off to stop the distribution, finding out its too late as he sees the meatball version of the Axons attacking and destroying soldiers all over the place. To top it all off, they're impervious to bullets. Getting hold of Sir George Hardiman, the Brigadier takes him to the lab to find out what they're doing to the reactor.
As they look at the readouts, the Master leaves the TARDIS, trying to hook up the particle accelerator to the TARDIS to get it working again. The UNIT troops surround the Master and take him prisoner. The Master bargains for his freedom, in exchange for helping them kill the Axons. The Brigadier agrees and they begin to set up a massive nuclear power surge and dump all the energy into Axos all at once, thus blowing it up. The only drawback is that the Doctor and Jo are in there.
The Master's hypothesis is incorrect. Axos can take the power output, even if it's a struggle. What it does do however is confuse Axos long enough for the Doctor and Jo to escape.
They rush back to the Newton Power Complex just in time to thwart the Master escaping once again.
Together, the Master and the Doctor put their heads together to think of a way to defeat Axos. This is a concept that makes the freshly recovered Agent Filer a bit uneasy.
His suspicions are well founded as the Doctor talks in secrecy with the Master, convincing him to go along with a plan to repair the TARDIS and leave the planet and everyone else to the Axons. The Master is skeptical at first, but eventually agrees.
Filer is furious that they've been double crossed but the Doctor and Master duck into the TARDIS before he can do anything. With a newly repaired TARDIS and time lord knowledge blocks removed, the Doctor and Master take off in the TARDIS leaving everyone behind. The Master is surprised to learn however that their first port of call is to Axos itself.
Once outside, the Doctor proposes to the living ship that if it connects to their TARDIS, then Axos will become a time machine and the TARDIS will become a part of Axos. He will allow this on the condition that Axos goes with him to wreak revenge on the High Council of the Time Lords. The ship is in agreement and he begins to set up the relevant equipment.
Over at the power complex, the Axons begin to invade the lab, making time very short for the Brigadier and his men.
Watching the Doctor at work, the Master suddenly realises that his old foe is creating a time loop with which to trap Axos in. He panics and tries to warn the ship but it's too late. He seizes the opportunity in Axos' confused state to run into his own TARDIS and escape.
The time loop is initiated and the attacking Axons dematerilise back into the ship and the ship of course dematerialises from Earth. This leaves the reactor to go critical and the UNIT team are forced to flee. Sir George stays behind to disconnect the particle accelerator but dies in the process.
Within the time loop, Axos curses the Doctor and says that if it's trapped, so is the Doctor. The Doctor disagrees and boosts the TARDIS's power cells, tearing free of the time loop and leaving Axos trapped forever.
The TARDIS materialises back in the power complex in time to see it going up. The Doctor runs back into the time machine just in time and does a short trip away.
Down the road, the Brigadier, Jo, Bill Filer and the rest of the UNIT team watch as the Newton Power Complex goes up in an atomic explosion (that clearly leaves no fallout whatsoever).
The group all rendezvous in the ruined complex where the Doctor explains what he did to Axos,
He says that his intent to leave them all was just a ruse. The Brigadier does however tease him into admitting that when the TARDIS burst free of Axos, the Doctor wasn't actually intending to return to Earth. It seems that the Time Lords have programmed it to do so at the end of every trip like a "galactic yo-yo".
Trivia
- This story went through many names in production: "Doctor Who and the Gift", "The Friendly Invasion", "The Axons" and perhaps the much better title of "The Vampire From Space". Indeed, The Vampire from Space was used in the first two episodes, but was changed by production of the third, meaning the other two were changed just before airing.
- Perhaps the most discussed piece of trivia surrounding this story is the problem of location filming. Shot out of sequence, the production team suddenly had a problem as freak weather conditions saw snow covering much of the landscape on one day, torrential rain the next, then blazing sunshine. They had to put in the throwaway line of "freak weather conditions" into the story to cover it
- As a testament to the odd weather, if you watch the scene where Benton and Yates drive around with Axons clinging to the car - that sky behind Benton WASN'T a blue screen overlay, it was the actual sky!
- Good old Pigbin Josh was played by none other than stunt coordinator Derek Ware, who thought it would be a nice change to get a speaking and acting part! Well, if you call shouting "ooh arrr" a lot a speaking part...
- Another interesting fact about Pigbin is that Derek Ware had to ride the rickety old bike into the river in the freezing cold. He claims that it was warmer in the water than out, but even so, he was very glad that the bike wheel bent so he didn't have to do a retake!
What worked
- The shots of Axos approaching Earth were very good, especially where you can see it breathing
- The "freak weather conditions" actually helped give a sense of scale to the threat the ship posed and also worked very well
- Pigbin Josh's corspe disolving was pretty frightening. No wonder Barry Letts decided to blank it out on the transmission
- Although it makes no sense for the Axons to jump on the UNIT jeep rarther than blow it up with their tentacles, the car chase was quite good
- Ok, I'll come out and say it....for 1971, I thought the monsters looked pretty damn good too!
- Finally, the Doctor's betrayal wasn't so out of character as you might think. You only have to look back to the then of Inferno to see why. It made this scene a bit tense and unpredictable
What didn't work
- So you find a UFO and your first instinct is to shoot it down with missiles?
- Anything about Pigbin Josh
- The inclusion of the Master
- The inclusion of Bill Filer
- I'm sorry, but the music in this for me was a total failure (except the final fight scenes with the Axons in episode 4).
- The bit where the Master hypnotises the UNIT soldier and tells him to help him...all whilst he's right in front of another UNIT soldier!
- The frog CSO
- The whole reactor meltdown bit. I mean this is a facility that supposedly supplies power to the entirity of Britain!
Overall Feelings
I could go on for twelve paragraphs here about how much I hate Chinn, but I won't because that was the point. Instead, I'll draw attention to the other elements of the story.
On the surface, the Claws of Axos tries to fit into the formula of what has gone before. We have a government installation, we have a clearly idiotic Government official, we have a clear and present alien threat, and we even have the Master. In each of these cases, the writers fall short of the mark with plot holes and lack of detail e.g. Newton Power Complex powers the whole of Britain? Way to put all your eggs in one basket. The official has the power to launch missiles at UFO's, tells the US Agent to take himself off out of it, arrests UN soldiers, oh and undertakes distribution of Axonite across the world - yet his superior has absolutely no confidence in him.
Given the examples above, it's unusual then to see that this story delivers in spades in other, less orthodox aspects. What I mean by that is best illustrated in the look and feel of the story. The visuals at times are positively trippy, the monsters had genuinely good special effects, the music was as experimental as ever (I didn't like it, but at least Dudley Simpson was trying)...the production team was trying something they hadn't done since Season 2. They were pushing the limits and seeing just what Doctor Who could be.
I think it's a great shame that just that little bit more rationale wasn't put into the plot to make it more believable. Even so, it's still a joy to watch and fills me with feelings of the era. I would go so far as to say it would be an awesome experience to sit down with this story, put the sound on mute and play Bay City Rollers, T-Rex, Slade, Mungo Jerry and others over the top... whilst eating those 70's tastic sweets - Drumsticks and popping candy of course.
Rating
8 out of 10
Great components to the story and stunning visuals, but a bit too many inconsistencies to be top of the class
Rewatchability Factor
9 out of 10
Yeah, it's got its problems, but this is a quick, unusual story, with visuals unlike anything before or since
Watch this if you liked...
- The Keys of Marinus (episode 2 more than anything)
- The Rise of the Cybermen (Doctor Who Series 2)
- Lexx
Consulting the Matrix
"What's your favourite organic Dr Who monster?
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