Production Code: WW
First Transmitted
1 - 28/12/1968 17:15
2 - 04/01/1969 17:15
3 - 11/01/1969 17:15
4 - 18/01/1969 17:15
Plot
The TARDIS arrives on the unnamed planet of the Gonds, who are ruled and taught in a form of self-perpetuating slavery by the alien Krotons - crystalline beings whose ship, the Dynatrope, crash-landed there thousands of years ago after being damaged in a space battle.
The Krotons are at present in suspended animation, in a crystalline slurry form, awaiting a time when they can be reconstituted by absorbtion of mental energy. Periodically, the two most brilliant Gond students are received into the Dynatrope, apparently to become 'companions of the Krotons' but in truth to have their mental energy drained, after which they are killed.
When the Doctor and Zoe take the students' test, their mental power is sufficient to reanimate the Krotons. The Doctor discovers that their life system is based on tellurium and, with help from the Gond scientist Beta, he is then able to destroy them and their ship using an impure form of sulphuric acid.
Episode Endings
Gond students start smashing up the teaching machines. When Selris, the Gond leader, arrives with the Doctor, a snake-like probe emerges from the Dynatrope. It homes in on the Doctor and extends toward him.
The Doctor and Zoe, after reanimating the Krotons, have escaped through the back of the Dynatrope. Jamie however is still trying to enter through the main door. The Krotons allow him through in the belief that he can supply more mental energy. They subject him to the intelligence draining device and discover that he is not as intelligent as the Doctor and Zoe. One Kroton remarks that, in that case, the power will kill him.
The Gonds attack the Krotons' ship by attempting to undermine its foundations. The Doctor arrives too late to stop them and the ceiling starts to cave in. The Doctor is buried under a pile of rubble.
With the Dynatrope destroyed, the Gonds must find their own solutions from now on. The TARDIS leaves the planet.
Roots
The Prisoner episode 'The General' (fascist educational techniques) and the Paris student riots of 1968.
Theseus and the Minotaur.
John Christopher's Tripods novels.
Dialogue Triumphs
Zoe : "The Doctor's almost as clever as I am."
Beta : [To the Doctor] "We've been slaves for one thousand years. Do you think you can free us in one day?"
The Doctor : "Zoe is something of a genius... It can be rather irritating at times."
Dialogue Disasters
The Doctor : "Great jumping gobstoppers, what's that?"
Continuity
The Doctor carries an umbrella due to the planet's twin suns. He remarks that the architecture is more typical of low gravity planets. Zoe suggests Inca influence. The Doctor says the planet's atmosphere is a mixture of 'ozone and sulphur' [plus all the usual gases]. The planet is rich in magnesium silicate (mica) and tellurium (which the Krotons' life system is based on).
The TARDIS' Hostile Action Displacement System, seen in action when a Kroton attempts to destroy it, [is a version of the relocation device mentioned in The Mind Robber. The TARDIS moves back to its original location by the end of the story. The assumption seems to be that the TARDIS is not indestructible].
The Krotons have been on the planet for 'thousands of years'. Gond history talks of 'silver men' coming from the sky and bringing 'poisonous rain'. The Krotons are crystalline, as is their ship, the Dynatrope. They can't see in bright light, and cannot die, but 'exhaust' if their structure is destroyed.
They were part of a war fleet. Their heads can spin, and they carry cylindrical weapons in clamp-like hands. Tellurium dissolves them. The Dynatrope transfers mental power into energy but requires 'High Brains for transfer power'.
QV
Location
The unnamed planet of the Gonds.
Trivia
Popular Welsh actor Philip Madoc makes his first appearance in Doctor Who as Eelek.
Frazer Hines had originally intended to leave the series at this point but decided to stay on to the end of the season after he learned that Patrick Troughton would also be bowing out then. This was the main reason why a light-hearted story entitled The Prison in Space by Dick Sharples, in which Jamie was to have been written out and a new companion character called Nik introduced, was dropped at the last minute and The Krotons brought forward from later in the season to fill the slot.
Myth
This story was based on an idea by Robert Holmes for a science-fiction play that was passed on to the Doctor Who office after being rejected by Roger Parkes, the script editor of the BBC's Out of the Unknown anthology series.
(It was based on a storyline that Holmes had originally submitted to the Doctor Who office some three years earlier - although apparently at an even earlier stage, when Irene Shubik rather than Roger Parkes was script editor, it had indeed started life as an unsuccessful submission to Out of the Unknown.)
The Krotons were the winning entry in a Blue Peter 'design a monster' competition. (They weren't. Confusion may have arisen as one of the winning entries in a Blue Peter 'design a monster to beat the Daleks' competition, the 'Aqua-Man', resembled a cardboard box with legs and arms - not too dissimilar from the Krotons' appearance.)
Technobabble
Zoe gets Tellurium's atomic number (52) correct, but is out on its atomic weight (128 instead of 127.6). She describes hydrogen telluride as having 'the worst smell in the world'.
Goofs
The first shot is of a sliding door refusing to open.
Vana's cloak falls off when she raises her arms in episode one.
Jamie collides with Zoe whilst climbing in episode one, and in the same scene her knickers are briefly visible.
Zoe's jacket is badly torn at one shoulder in episode four.
Selris is Scottish.
Beta is magically transported from place to place.
Fashion Victim
Zoe in PVC.
Beta has amazing sideburns.
Cast & Crew
Cast
The Doctor - Patrick Troughton
Jamie - Frazer Hines
Zoe - Wendy Padbury
Abu - Terence Brown
Axus - Richard Ireson
Beta - James Cairncross
Custodian - Maurice Selwyn
Eelek - Philip Madoc
Kroton - Robert La'Bassiere
Kroton - Miles Northover
Kroton Voice - Roy Skelton
Kroton Voice - Patrick Tull
Selris - James Copeland
Student - Bronson Shaw
Thara - Gilbert Wynne
Vana - Madeleine Mills
Crew
Director - David Maloney
The Krotons