034 - The Macra Terror

Broadcast:

11^th March - 1^st April 1967

Doctor:

Patrick Troughton

Companions:

Ben, Polly, Jamie

Adversary:

Macra, Oppressive regime

Written by:

Ian Stuart Black

Director:

John Davies

Music:

Dudley Simpson

Script Editor:

Gerry Davis

Producer:

Innes Lloyd

Average Viewers:

8.2m (8.0, 7.9, 8.5, 8.4)

Summary: In a colony where everything is just wonderful, something nasty lurks in the shadows but woe betide anyone who suggests such a thing exists

I first heard about the Macra when they featured briefly in 2007's Gridlock almost as an after thought because Russell T Davies thought it would be nice to have some proper footage of them, since their original appearance was lost and presumably gone forever. This gave them a certain amount of cult status so I was looking forward to finally seeing The Macra Terror, albeit in telesnap recon form. Fortunately, a couple of brief clips do still exist and were included, just enough to hint at how good they might have been, but also their potential to have been lumberingly inanimate. I needed to forget my hopes and expectations and view it in its own right...

As the first episode was broadcast, Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva had just defected to the USA and the Cambodian Civil War began between the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. As the serial progressed, nine executives of the German pharmaceutical company Grunenthal, creators of thalidomide, were charged with breaking drug laws (the trial wouldn't begin until the following year but would continue until December 1970 following a settlement in April that still sees the government and Grunenthal paying support to victims) Similar rulings and payments are made around the world and international drug regulations were revised as a result. The world's first supertanker, Torrey Canyon, ran aground midway between Land's End and the Scilly Isles, with around 32 million gallons of crude oil spilt, most of which ultimately headed east with a large quantity collected and dumped into a quarry in Guernsey to keep it off the beaches and still has an impact 47 years later, despite numerous clean-up attempts (suggested reading 1, 2.) Again, international regulations were changed as a result and the then little known botanist David Bellamy came to public prominence as an environmental consultant during the disaster and would go on to be a popular children's presenter in the 80s. Meanwhile, there was a military coup in Sierra Leone and a 'Be-in' in New York's Central Park consisting of 10,000 people.

In the entertainment world, The Who perform their first concert in the US, Lennon and McCartney received the Ivor Novello award for "Michelle" - Britain's most performed song in 1966 - and the Beatles as a whole posted for the "Sgt Pepper..." album cover. Just as iconically, Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar at The Astoria London. Engelbert Humperdinck's "Release Me" remained at number one throughout the serial's broadcast, while cinemas débuted the likes of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Follow Me, Boys!, and The Viking Queen which featured a certain Patrick Troughton!

Finally, on the 11th March not only introduced a new Doctor Who serial, but also ushered in a new title sequence with a squarer appearance and featuring the Doctor's face for the first time, and future friend of the Doctor and head of Torchwood John Barrowman was born.

032 - The Underwater Menace

Broadcast:

14^th January - 7^th February 1967

Doctor:

Patrick Troughton

Companions:

Ben, Polly, Jamie

Adversary:

Mad Scientist

Written by:

Geoffrey Orme

Director:

Julia Smith

Music:

Dudley Simpson

Script Editor:

Gerry Davis

Producer:

Innes Lloyd

Average Viewers:

7.48m (8.3, 7.5, 7.1, 7.0)

Summary: The TARDIS lands on a stony beach but the Doctor can't determine where on Earth they are. However it soon transpires that they have arrived at the lost city of Atlantis in 1970 and a missing scientist is promising to rise it from the depths.

The Underwater Menace is an odd duck. Metaphorically. I've written about thirty one adventures so far and it seems that a significant number of them either hold honorary positions for various reasons, or are marked by dubious honour of some form. The Underwater Menace is yet another, but on multiple layers. Most importantly at the time of writing is the fact that it includes the only existing episode not to have been released on DVD, yet it has been due for well over a year and a few months ago appeared to be dead in the water (if you'll excuse the pun) It was one of the key arguments in support of the so called 'omnirumour' that many more 'missing' episodes, if not all of them, have been discovered and are secretly being withheld (for a number of suggested reasons). After all, why else would an incomplete story be so quietly delayed especially after being included in a "Coming Soon" trailer. A couple of hours after watching the recon, I read that BBC Worldwide had issued a statement hoping that The Underwater Menace would be released next year with the missing episode replaced by animation. This was quite a relief, but not concrete enough to quash the rumours...

Meanwhile, focussing on the serial itself, scripting issues meant that the episodes were only recorded the week before they were broadcast! News events at time of broadcast may never have been more relevant...

Just ahead of the first episode, Dr James Bedford died and became the first person to be cryonically preserved and there was a military coup in Togo. In San Francisco, a mass peaceful protest at the Golden Gate Park took place, partly in reaction to the banning of LSD, and was dubbed the Human-In. It included Timothy Leary's famous "Turn on, tune in, drop out" speech and set the stage for the Summer of Love as well as starting the -in suffix ("love-in" "sit-in" and even "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" comedy television show). Meanwhile in the UK, Parliament decided to nationalise 90% of the British steel industry, began negotiations for joining the EEC, and founded Milton Keynes as a New Town.

In Munich, the trial of Wilhelm Harster began, as leader of German security police during the occupation of the Netherlands he was accused of the murder of 82,856 Jews and would ultimately be sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin was in the UK for an eight-day visit including a meeting with The Queen on 9 February, while demonstrations outside the Soviet embassy in Beijing got out of hand, three US Astronauts died during a launchpad test of Apollo 1 on the same day that the US, UK and USSR signed the Outer Space Treaty.

In the entertainment world, news reported in the Daily Mail inspired the Beatles song "A Day In The Life" and The Monkees topped the charts with "I'm a Believer". Cinemas were full of spy movies The Quiller Memorandum, Murderers' Row, and The Spy in the Green Hat made up of two episodes from "The Man From UNCLE" that hadn't been broadcast in the UK. Other movies included the sequel Return of the Seven and The Night of the Generals.

In the Doctor's world, things were about to get a little odd and a new companion was having his first TARDIS experience"

024 - The Celestial Toymaker

Broadcast:

2^nd - 23^rd April 1966

Doctor:

William Hartnell

Companions:

Steven, Dodo

Adversary:

Celestial Toymaker

Written by:

Brian Hayles (Extensively rewritten by Donald Tosh)

Director:

Bill Sellars

Music:

Dudley Simpson

Script Editor:

Gerry Davis

Producer:

Innes Lloyd

Average Viewers:

8.3m (8.0, 8.0, 9.4, 7.8)

Summary: Trapped by the Celestial Toymaker, the travellers must play his games to win their freedom, but will he play fairly?

Continuing Doctor Who's transition, The Celestial Toymaker was the first under new producer Innes Lloyd and with Gerry Davis he wanted to refresh the show and take it in new and exciting directions. However, due to the show's almost constant production they would first have to get past stories inherited from John Wiles and Donald Tosh. The credit for The Celestial Toymaker is given to Brian Hayles but his original draft fell short of what Wiles and Tosh had wanted and was therefore rewritten (with the agreement that Tosh would receive the main credit while Hayles would receive a "From an idea by" credit - this would have been possible because Tosh knew he would no longer be Script Editor when it was transmitted). However, Lloyd wasn't happy with it when he took over and chose to have further rewrites carried out by Davis, including an idea to write out and replace William Hartnell. Unsurprisingly, Donald Tosh was unhappy with the new scripts and refused to have his name associated with it so the credit fell back to Brian Hayles despite bearing very little relation to his work!

While children were watching Steven and Dodo playing the Celestial Toymaker's twisted games, their parents were following political developments as Prime Minister Harold Wilson bolstered his fragile and unworkable majority by winning a snap election with an extra 91 seats. In Russia, Leonid Brezhnev became General Secretary of the Soviet Union, as well as Leader of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. while the Soviet space probe Luna 10 became the first man-made object to enter orbit around the moon. Back in the UK, Barry Butler, captain of Norwich City F.C. was killed in a car accident, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley finally went on trial and Hoverlloyd inaugurate the first Cross-Channel hovercraft service. The music charts were topped by "Somebody Help Me" (The Spencer Davis Group) and "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" (Dusty Springfield), while cinemas were showing the likes of Battle of the Bulge, The Great St. Trinian's Train Robbery (the fourth in the series) and The Ugly Dachshund.

When viewers had last seen the Doctor at the end of The Ark he was fading out and had become invisible so they would have been eager to find out what was going on...

016 - The Chase

Broadcast:

22^nd May - 26^th June 1965

Doctor:

William Hartnell

Companions:

Ian, Barbara, Vicki

Adversary:

Daleks

Written by:

Terry Nation

Director:

Richard Martin

Music:

Dudley Simpson

Script Editor:

Dennis Spooner

Producer:

Verity Lambert

Average Viewers:

9.42m (10, 9.5, 9, 9.5, 9, 9.5)

Summary: The Daleks pursue the TARDIS and the Doctor in particular across time and space through desert, sea and jungle. Arriving on contemporary Earth provides a tempting opportunity for Barbara and Ian while a haunted house might be ideal for facing the Daleks head on...

As promised and teased, the Daleks were back for a third encounter with the Doctor. The public loved them and BBC heads wanted more of them but their creator, writer Terry Nation was not so keen and felt he had done all he could with them so The Chase was partly devised by its Director and Story Editor. Sadly some of Nations ideas and visual descriptions were rejected as either too intense or unachievable and the resulting rewrite (by Martin and Spooner) falls a little short and is a little muddled like The Space Museum before it. However, it does bring some interesting flavours to the show and hints at a world created from nothing but fear as well as mixing future alien threats with a historical context. Doctor Who was at a turning point. It was about to lose the last of the original companions, Dennis Spooner left as Story Editor after just 6 stories and producer Verity Lambert was preparing things for her departure as well...

In the news at the time were a bloodless coup in Algeria, Australian troops joined the Vietnam War and Muhammad Ali knocked out Sonny Liston with the "Phantom Punch". West Ham became the second British team to win a European trophy, the British Government announced plans to introduce blood alcohol limits in the fight against drink-driving and two mining incidents barely a week apart took over 500 lives (274 in India and 237 in Japan).

Cinemas were showing the usual mix of horror and humour: Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, The Knack ...and How to Get It, When Strangers Meet and The Skull featuring Peter Cushing. The music charts were topped by "Where Are You Now (My Love)" (Jackie Trent), "Long Live Love" (Sandie Shaw), "Crying in the Chapel" (Elvis Presley), and "I'm Alive" (The Hollies). It was a good month for The Beatles as they were about to appear on Doctor Who and receive MBEs from the Queen - the first popular entertainers to do so, which ruffled a few feathers - though the two were not exactly related!

014 - The Crusade

Broadcast:

27^th March - 17^th April 1965

Doctor:

William Hartnell

Companions:

Ian, Barbara, Vicki

Adversary:

El Akir - A rogue Saracen

Written by:

David Whitaker

Director:

Douglas Camfield

Music:

Dudley Simpson

Script Editor:

Dennis Spooner

Producer:

Verity Lambert

Average Viewers:

9.38m (10.5, 8.5, 9.0, 9.5)

Summary: The travellers find themselves in 12th century Palestine and get caught in the crossfire of the Third Crusade. Barbara is captured by a Saracen so the rest try to ally themselves with Richard The Lionheart to save her.

Doctor Who was on its first period of decline and despite modern opinions being favourable The Crusade would be the least welcomed serial for twelve months (based on average Audience Appreciation figures). The appreciation index average dropped below 50% for the first time and viewing figures went below 10m for the first time since Planet Of Giants at the start of the series - though they were still higher than the bulk of the previous series. The boost provided by the return of the Daleks had subsided and the show was set to remain at its current level for the rest of the year until part way through the third series. The Crusade was a solid history piece with the TARDIS and its passengers laid on top. With few exceptions, David Whitaker wrote both the Christians and Muslims fairly and the only sense of enemy for the viewer comes from the fact that Barbara is taken early on. This coupled with the audio-only presentation of episodes 2 and 4 on the "Lost In Time" DVD set made for quite a dull first viewing 10 years go but the Loose Canon reconstruction breathed some life back into it...

Viewers watching the original broadcast would have done so with the knowledge that NASA had launched their first 2 man orbiter, the Intelsat "Early Bird" became the first commercial communications satellite (though it wouldn't come into service for a couple more months) and protests of the time included a third civil rights march to Alabama with a crowd of 3200 growing to 25,00 over a four day period and the same number of students protested against the Vietnam War. The pop charts handed the Number One spot over from The Rolling Stones to Unit 4 + 2 with "Concrete and Clay" and then Cliff Richard's "The Minute You're Gone". Cinemas were screening The Sound of Music, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Masquerade, while Morcombe And Wise were The Intelligence Men. Anyone wanting to stay in on Wednesdays could now tune in to antiques gameshow "Going For A Song" which started the week after episode one...

009 - Planet Of Giants

Broadcast:

31^sd October - 14^th November 1964

Doctor:

William Hartnell

Companions:

Ian, Barbara, Susan

Adversary:

Size

Written by:

Louis Marks

Director:

Mervyn Pinfield, Douglas Camfield

Music:

Dudley Simpson

Script Editor:

David Whitaker

Producer:

Verity Lambert

Average Viewers:

8.57m (8.4, 8.4, 8.9)

Summary: When you're only an inch tall, the whole world is against you but when chemicals, murder and corruption are added to the mix is there any way of making everything right?

Because Planet Of Giants was the opening story of Doctor Who's second season it gained the dubious honour of being the first three part story, something that wouldn't happen again until Delta And The Bannermen in 1987 when the show was being crippled out of existence. You could argue that An Unearthly Child was in fact comprised of a single episode story and a three episode story, since there were no story titles applied at this time, only episode titles, but the official records show it as a single four episode story because that is how it was produced. Interestingly though, that opening story was original intended to develop into an adventure featuring the main characters being reduced to a tiny size and experiencing all manner of problem in a class room... The idea was deemed impractical and was shelved in favour of the caveman story but the idea was still something that the production team were keen to use and so here it was almost a year later opening the second season instead (with some detail changes and a new story) Something else that Planet Of Giants has in common with An Unearthly Child is that it too was actually produced as a four episode story. However, it was decided that although it was a good story and would normally have been acceptable, as it was to be the season opener it needed a bit more punch or a bit less flab. Consequently episodes three and four were cut down and edited into one giving it another dubious honour - that of being the longest episode so far (and I dare say it kept that record, though I have yet to prove this). Excluding titles and credits it is already over 25 minutes rather than the average 23. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

After The Reign Of Terror, Doctor Who went off air for six weeks (although production had continued and wouldn't rest for a few more months) and a lot had happened that is worth noting... The Sun newspaper had started publication, Malta and Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) obtained independence from the UK, the Warren Commission published the first official investigation into Kennedy's death, and the Shinkansen rail system (otherwise known as the Bullet Train) became the world's first high-seed railway in Japan in readiness for the Tokyo Olympic Games where Great Britain won 4 Gold, 12 Silver, and 2 Bronze (12 of the 18, including all 4 golds were in Athletics). The Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1, the first multi-person spacecraft and the first without space suits, while Martin Luther King Jr became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize recipient. Similarly, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin became the first British Woman to win the prize for Chemistry (for determining structures of biochemical substances through the use of X-Rays). Parliamentary elections in the UK saw the Labour Party gain control of the country from the Conservatives after 13 years and Harold Wilson, the new Prime Minister, created the Secretary of State for Wales which would become the Welsh Office and ultimately lead to the National Assembly For Wales the next time Labour came to power in 1997 - I mention this here because the revived Doctor Who is made in Cardiff by BBC Wales. Oh and on the other side of the Atlantic, Canada had a new flag!

In music, Pete Townsend destroyed his first guitar (in the name of auto-destructive art), something that would become a regular occurrence, The Rolling Stones made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Kinks released their first album and Dr. Robert Moog demonstrates the prototype Moog synthesizer - paving the way for much over-use of synthesizer music in the 1980s (Keff McCulloch, I'm looking at you) Topping the Charts were Herman's Hermits "I'm Into Something Good", Roy Orbison's "Oh Pretty Woman" and Sandie Shaw's "(There's) Always Something There To Remind Me" (Orbison would return to the top during Planet Of Giants) while in the cinemas were Goldfinger, The Gorgon featuring future Doctors Peter Cushing and Patrick Troughton and The Black Torment also featuring Patrick Troughton. During the stories broadcast, the House Of Commons voted to abolish the death penalty for murder and ITV started daily broadcasts of soap opera "Crossroads" which would run until 1988, so starting a year after Doctor Who and ending two years before (it would also see its own revival in the new millennium running from 2001 to 2003, two years before Doctor Who returned)