Production Code: T
First Transmitted
Four Hundred Dawns - 11/09/1965 17:40
Trap of Steel - 18/09/1965 17:50
Air Lock - 25/09/1965 17:50
The Exploding Planet - 02/10/1965 17:50
Plot
The Doctor, Vicki and Steven arrive on an arid planet where they meet the occupants of two crashed spaceships: the beautiful Drahvins and the hideous Rills. The latter prove to be friendly, compassionate explorers while the former are a group of mindless cloned soldiers terrorised by a warlike matriarch, Maaga.
Both ships were damaged when the Drahvins precipitated a confrontation in space, but whereas the Rills' is almost ready to take off again (having been repaired by their robot drones, which Vicki nicknames 'Chumblies'), the Drahvins' is irreparable. When the planet is discovered to be on the point of disintegration, Maaga tries to force the time travellers to help her steal the Rills' ship. Instead, the Doctor allows the Rills to draw power from the TARDIS in order to refuel and escape, leaving the Drahvins to their fate.
Episode Endings
Inside the TARDIS control room, the Doctor consults his instruments while Steven waits impatiently. The Doctor announces that the Rills were correct; but the planet has even less time left than they thought. They must leave immediately, for tomorrow is the last day this planet will ever see!
The Doctor and Vicki make their way through the Rill Centre, pursued at a distance by a Chumbley. They enter a chamber where they discover a deactivated Chumbley. Suddenly Vicki screams; from behind a cloudy glass partition a pair of eyes are looking out at them.
Steven, trapped in the air-lock of the Drahvins' ship as Maaga has the air drawn out, collapses slowly to the floor.
The travellers relax in the TARDIS following their ordeal. They see a planet on the scanner screen and Vicki wonders what is happening on it... On a planet, a man named Garvey is lying on his back on the ground in a jungle. There is a terrifying animal screech and he wakes with a start, muttering: 'I remember, now. I must... I must kill... I must kill... I must kill.'
Roots
The forceful women of The Avengers.
Beauty and the Beast.
Brave New World.
Queen of Outer Space.
Journey into Space.
Lysistrata.
Dialogue Triumphs
Rill Voice : "It is easy to help others when they are so willing to help you. Though we are beings of separate planets, you from the solar system and we from another space, our ways of thought, at times, do not seem all that different. It has been an honour to know you and serve you."
Continuity
The TARDIS provides a power source for the Rills' ship. Drahvin society has two castes: Officers, bred in the usual manner (a small number of males are kept for reproduction, the rest are killed to preserve food supplies), and Warriors, who are fertilized in test tubes. [They aren't necessarily clones. Do the women undergo the indignity of childbirth? Perhaps the Drahvin reproductive system is in the males.]
The Rills, despite an ugly appearance, are curious travellers interested in meeting other races. They are telepathic, breathe ammonia and have advanced technology, creating robots which Vicki christens 'Chumblies'.
Vicki can cut hair (she does Steven's).
Location
The story does not take place in Galaxy Four. Maaga says Drahva is in Galaxy Four, indicating that this nameless planet is not (Maaga says it is '400 dawns' from Drahva [presumably a reference to the time taken to travel between the two]). All that is known about the planet is that it has three suns and is dying.
Links
Vicki refers to Xeros (The Space Museum).
Trivia
The Chumblies were very cleverly designed by scenic designer Richard Hunt. Four of the robots were made. Each was around a metre tall - just large enough to accommodate one of the small actors who operated them - and consisted of a fibreglass shell mounted on castors. A light was positioned at the top to indicate when the Chumbley was communicating with its Rill masters, and several rod-like arm attachments were fixed between the dome sections to represent ray-guns and other instruments. A number of pendulum-like objects were suspended around the base to represent the robot's motive units. Whenever a Chumbley was attacked or deactivated, its dome sections collapsed on top of each other; a dummy version was used for these shots.
The Drahvins' uniforms were predominantly green, with white leather accessories.
The trailer for this story, broadcast the day before the first episode's transmission, was narrated by Shaw Taylor, better known for his work on Police 5.
Contemporary documentation indicates that the Drahvins were created jointly by William Emms and Verity Lambert - presumably due to the latter deciding that they should be female rather than male, as they had been in Emms' draft scripts - and that the BBC is therefore part-owner of the rights to them.
Myth
The Rill voices were originally to have been provided by Anthony Paul, and the change of casting was so late that he was still credited in the Radio Times listing for the third episode. (Robert Cartland, the voice artist who replaced Paul, was correctly listed in Radio Times.)
William Emms, who scripted this story, was a schoolteacher who wrote only in his spare time. (Emms had once been an English teacher but had been a full-time freelance writer for some four years by the time he submitted his unsolicited idea for Galaxy 4 to the Doctor Who production team.)
Cast & Crew
Cast
The Doctor - William Hartnell
Steven Taylor - Peter Purves
Vicki - Maureen O'Brien
Chumblies - Jimmy Kaye
Chumblies - William Shearer
Chumblies - Angelo Muscat
Chumblies - Pepi Poup
Chumblies - Tommy Reynolds
Drahvin One - Marina Martin
Drahvin Three - Lyn Ashley
Drahvin Two - Susanna Carroll
Garvey - Barry Jackson
Maaga - Stephanie Bidmead
Rill Voice - Robert Cartland
Crew
Director - Derek Martinus
Galaxy Four