Production Code: HHH
First Transmitted
1 - 10/04/1971 18:10
2 - 17/04/1971 18:10
3 - 24/04/1971 18:10
4 - 01/05/1971 18:10
5 - 08/05/1971 18:10
6 - 15/05/1971 18:10
Plot
The Time Lords discover that the Master has stolen their secret file on the Doomsday Weapon and decide to send the Doctor to retrieve it for them.
The TARDIS takes the Doctor and Jo to the desolate planet Uxarieus in the year 2472. There they become involved in a dispute between some beleaguered colonists and the crew of an Interplanetary Mining Corporation (IMC) spaceship over the ownership rights to the planet. The Doctor learns that the indigenous Primitives and their High Priests worship a large machine tended by a creature called the Guardian.
The Master meanwhile arrives in the guise of an Adjudicator sent from Earth to decide the fate of the planet. He forces the Doctor to take him to the Primitives' underground city, where they learn that the machine is in fact the Doomsday Weapon, capable of destroying entire planets. Its radiation emissions have brought about the decline of the Guardian's race and are also responsible for the crop failures that the colonists have been experiencing.
The Doctor persuades the Guardian to destroy the Weapon rather than let it fall into the Master's hands. The two Time Lords get clear just in time as the machine explodes, and the Master then escapes in his TARDIS. The colonists, meanwhile, attack the IMC men and force them to surrender.
Episode Endings
The Doctor, investigating the colonist Leeson's dome, is menaced by a robot.
The Doctor is again menaced by the IMC mining robot, which is now directed by the security chief Morgan and wields a pair of vicious claws at the ends of its arms.
The Primitives drag Jo into their city through a door that swings open in a rock face.
A gun battle breaks out between the colonists and the IMC men. The Master tells the Doctor and Jo that they are both about to become the victims of 'stray bullets' and aims a gun at them...
The Master sees on a hand-held scanner device that Morgan and the IMC scientist Caldwell are about to rescue Jo from his TARDIS, where she is held prisoner in a sealed transparent tube. He prepares to press the button on the front of the device that will cause the tube to be flooded with poison gas...
The TARDIS materialises back in the UNIT lab, where the Doctor and Jo find the Brigadier waiting for them. The Doctor tells Jo that they have arrived back only seconds after they left. The Brigadier is confused, but the Doctor cautions Jo not to try to explain - he would never understand.
Roots
Land claim Westerns.
Dialogue Triumphs
The Doctor : "I am every kind of scientist."
Captain Dent : "All colonists are eccentric. That's why they're colonists."
The Master : "One must rule or serve. That is the basic law of life. Why do you hesitate? Surely it's not loyalty to the Time Lords, who exiled you to one insignificant planet?"
The Doctor : "You'll never understand. I want to see the universe, not to rule it."
The Master : "It's always innocent bystanders who suffer."
Dialogue Disasters
The Doctor : "There's no animal life, just a few birds and insects."
Double Entendre
The Doctor : "Don't worry, Jim'll fix it!"
Continuity
The Doctor recognises Uxarieus, but knows nothing of it. He's an expert in agriculture, carries sample jars, and can do conjuring tricks. The Master has a more advanced TARDIS than the Doctor, disguised as a spaceship. A sensor beam across the door alerts the Master who activates a knock out gas. Inside are filing cabinets, and holding tubes for prisoners. His rod-like device can kill and features some sensors. He also carries gas bombs and a device showing his TARDIS' interior.
The Time Lords have stranded the Doctor by fixing a homing control in his TARDIS, which he futilely hopes to bypass by making a new dematerialization circuit (see the yo-yo line from The Claws of Axos). The TARDIS travels outside the space/time continuum, during which the scanner shows swirling colours [the vortex] which resolve into a picture of the approaching planet [the TARDIS appears back in normal space on its way to a landing].
The Time Lords secretly send the Doctor to Uxarieus, since they're aware that the Master has stolen the Doomsday Weapon report and the file on the planet. [The three of them talk covertly, and are watching a Time Space Visualizer, breaking the laws of time without a second thought - very CIA. One of them is played by Graham Leaman, who was also a Time Lord at the Doctor's trial, and may well be the same character. They're obviously worried that somebody will get their hands on a stellar manipulator (cf. Remembrance of the Daleks).]
The Uxariens have mutated into three varieties, all psychic, the highest of which can communicate and teleport small items. At the height of their civilisation they used the Doomsday Weapon to destroy a star, forming the Crab Nebula.
Location
Earth, [late 1970/early 1971;]
Uxarieus, 1-5 March 2472 (despite the fact that the calendar uses the days of the week for 2471).
Future History
Earth during this period is home to 100 billion people, and is polluted, with a repressive government. Humans are still prone to epidemics, and some are housed in floating island blocks. Planets are assigned for either colonisation or mining (the Interplanetary Mining Corporation, its HQ on Earth, seeks duralinium for building), but can be spared the latter on grounds of historical interest. Disputes are resolved by the Adjudicators Bureau. Robbing spaceships is a capital offence under interplanetary law (cf The Space Pirates).
Trivia
The TARDIS materialises and dematerialises instantaneously, rather than fading in and out as usual.
Mary Ashe is played by Helen Worth, now best known for her long-standing role in Coronation Street.
The Master's TARDIS is now disguised as the Adjudicator's spaceship and its interior is seen for the first time (barring a tight shot of one wall seen on a screen in Terror of the Autons).
Myth
The main action of this story takes place on the planet Exarius. (The name given to the planet in Malcolm Hulke's script for Episode One is Uxarieus.)
Goofs
IMC still use tape spools.
In episode two the monitor screen onboard their ship turns bright blue in every close up.
The Brigadier is fortunate that when he walks to where the TARDIS vanished and tells it to 'come back at once', that it does so in a different corner of the room.
Jo's scepticism about the TARDIS being mobile is odd as she saw it dematerialize in the last story.
The 'popping' (rather than fading) TARDIS materialisations.
If the Master was so ready to kill the Doctor at the end of episode four, why does he use a non-lethal gas when the Doctor goes into his TARDIS? (He only learns that the Doctor can guide him into the primitive city after he releases the gas!)
Fashion Victim
Jo's big belt.
The colonists' hippy gear.
Dent's hairdo.
Cast & Crew
Cast
The Doctor - Jon Pertwee
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - Nicholas Courtney
Jo Grant - Katy Manning
Alec Leeson - John Tordoff
Alien Priest - Ron Haymann
Allen - Stanley McGeagh
Ashe - John Ringham
Caldwell - Bernard Kay
Colonist - Pat Gorman
Dent - Morris Perry
Guardian - Norman Atkyns
Holden - John Herrington
Jane Leeson - Sheila Grant
Leeson - David Webb
Long - Pat Gorman
Martin - John Line
Mary Ashe - Helen Worth
Morgan - Tony Caunter
Mrs. Martin - Mitzi Webster
Norton - Roy Skelton
Primitive and Voice - Pat Gorman
Robot - John Scott Martin
The Master - Roger Delgado
Time Lord - Peter Forbes-Robertson
Time Lord - John Baker
Time Lord - Graham Leaman
Winton - Nicholas Pennell
Crew
Director - Michael E Briant
Colony in Space