Production Code: OOO
First Transmitted
1 - 20/05/1972 17:50
2 - 27/05/1972 17:50
3 - 03/06/1972 17:50
4 - 10/06/1972 17:50
5 - 17/06/1972 17:45
6 - 24/06/1972 17:45
Plot
The Master, in the guise of Professor Thascales, has constructed at the Newton Institute in Wootton a device known as TOMTIT - Transmission Of Matter Through Interstitial Time - with which to gain control over Kronos, a creature from outside time. The creature is summoned but the effect proves uncontrollable, so the Master flees.
The Doctor shuts TOMTIT down but the Master later reactivates it, using it first to ensnare Krasis, High Priest of the lost city of Atlantis, and then to attack UNIT forces by way of a series of timeslips. The Master takes Krasis back to Atlantis in his TARDIS in the hope of stealing the sacred Crystal of Kronos, with which he aims finally to dominate the creature. The Doctor follows with Jo but is unable to prevent his enemy from seducing Queen Galleia and staging a coup. Galleia turns against the Master when she learns that he has caused the death of her husband, King Dalios.
The Master then unleashes Kronos, destroying Atlantis. The two Time Lords escape in their respective TARDISes and confront each other in the time vortex. The Doctor threatens to trigger a 'time ram' - a devastating collision - but cannot bring himself to do it.
Jo, held hostage by the Master, has no such qualms, and operates the controls herself. The two TARDISes reappear in a strange void presided over by Kronos - who now appears as a beautiful female face.
The time ram has released Kronos, who agrees to return the Doctor and Jo to Earth. The creature plans to subject the Master to eternal torment, but the Doctor pleads on his behalf and he too goes free.
Episode Endings
A radiation-suited Master is demonstrating TOMTIT to Newton Institute director Dr Percival and a group of observers, including Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. The device succeeds in instantaneously transporting a cup and saucer from the main area of the lab to a smaller inner area. From the inner area, lab assistant Stuart Hyde calls for the power to be switched off. Instead however the Master boosts it and shouts to Kronos to come to him.
The Master activates TOMTIT again and, as an astonished Dr Percival and a stunned Sergeant Benton look on, Krasis materialises in the inner area of the lab.
The Master directs a V1 flying bomb from the Second World War to fall on a UNIT convoy led by Captain Yates. The Doctor, Jo and the Brigadier witness the explosion from a distance. The Brigadier tries desperately to raise Yates on his walkie-talkie, but in vain.
The Master laughs as he sends the Doctor's TARDIS spinning into the time vortex with Jo left alone aboard it.
Jo is seized by Krasis and thrown into the Atlantean vault wherein lurks the Minotaur. She hears the creature roar and looks round in alarm.
Benton, having previously been regressed to a baby by TOMTIT, reverts to his normal age. He stands naked in the laboratory and demands to know what has been happening as the Doctor, Jo, the Brigadier, Stuart Hyde and Newton Institute scientist Dr Ruth Ingram look on in amusement.
Roots
Cleopatra.
Sodom and Gomorrah.
Pompeii.
Plato.
The Doctor's story about flowers and hillsides is a quote from Mumonkan, a Buddhist text where the Buddha holds up a flower, and Mahakasyapa understands Zen in that moment.
Atlantis.
The Minotaur.
Star Trek's Shore Leave.
A Taste of Armageddon.
The Devil in the Dark.
Wordsworth's The Leech Gatherer.
Arthur C Clarke's The New Serendip.
Dialogue Triumphs
The Master : "Ah, the tribal taboos of army etiquette. I find it difficult to identify with such primitive absurdities."
The Doctor : "When I was a little boy, we used to live in a house that was perched halfway up the top of a mountain. Behind our house, there sat under a tree an old man. A hermit, a monk. He'd lived under this tree for half his lifetime, so they said, and had learned the secret of life. So, when my black day came, I went and asked him to help me.'"
Jo Grant : "And he told you the secret? Well, what was it?"
The Doctor : "I'm coming to that, Jo, in my own time. I'll never forget what it was like up there. All bleak and cold, it was, a few bare rocks with some weeds sprouting from them and some pathetic little patches of sludgy snow. It was just grey. Grey, grey, grey. The tree the old man sat under was ancient and twisted, the old man himself - he was as brittle and as dry as a leaf in autumn."
Jo Grant : "But what did he say?"
The Doctor : "Nothing. Not a word. He just sat there, silently, expressionless, and he listened while I poured out my troubles. I was too unhappy even for tears, I remember. When I'd finished, he lifted a skeletal hand and he pointed. Do you know what he pointed at?"
Jo Grant : "No."
The Doctor : "A flower. One of those little weeds. Just like a daisy it was. I looked at it for a moment and suddenly I saw it through his eyes. It was simply glowing with life like a perfectly cut jewel, and the colours were deeper and richer than you could possibly imagine. It was the daisiest daisy I'd ever seen."
Jo Grant : "And that was the secret of life? A daisy? Honestly, Doctor!"
The Doctor : "Yes, I laughed too when I first heard it. Later, I got up and ran down the mountain and I found that the rocks weren't grey at all. They were red and brown, purple and gold. And those pathetic little patches of sludgy snow were shining white in the sunlight!"
Galleia : [Speaking of the Master] "Handsome? Aye, he looked well enough. But his face, Lakis. It was a face of power. Such a man would risk the world to win his desires..."
The Brigadier : "One moment you're talking about the entire universe blowing up and the next you're going on about tea."
The Brigadier : "You'll be consulting the entrails of a sheep next."
Dialogue Disasters
"All that Cretan jazz."
Stuart : "May God bless the good ship women's lib and all who sail in her."
Ruth : "Simmer down, Stew."
The Doctor : "Kronos can swallow a life as quickly as a boa constrictor can swallow a rabbit. Fur and all!"
The Master : "Nobody and nothing can stop me now!"
Double Entendre
The Master : [To the head of the Newton Institute] "I've never seen a more inept performance!"
Continuity
The Doctor has a precognitive dream. When he was a little boy, he lived in a house half way up a mountain, behind which sat a monk, or hermit, under a tree (see Planet of the Spiders, State of Decay, cf. The Invasion of Time). [Gallifrey] is described as bleak and cold [and has some form of religion, at least outside the Capitol].
The Master can duplicate the Brigadier's voice. Time Lords can survive in the time vortex (see Shada), and the TARDIS has an inbuilt rescue mechanism for when this happens, [the telepathic circuits locating the lost Time Lord by latching on to their unconscious thoughts]. TARDISes communicate telepathically, and exist outside time [in another dimension], with their appearance [the door] here (see The Hand of Fear). Travel time between places depends on the mood of the ship, which the Doctor states is alive (as Bessie is).
Jo knows Greek. There are lots of UNIT HQs worldwide and the Seventh Enabling Act allows the Brigadier to take over from Government forces (cf. The Green Death).
Kronos knows of the Doctor.
QV
Location
Wooton, outside Cambridge (and 30 minutes' drive from UNIT HQ), a few days including Michaelmas (29 September, or perhaps just a reference to Oxbridge Autumn term), [1971]
Atlantis (the Thera or San Torini islands, off Greece), c 1500BC, during the Minoan era.
Trivia
There is a new TARDIS interior set in this story, designed by Tim Gleeson.
Popular horror film star Ingrid Pitt stars as Queen Galleia.
Dave Prowse, later to play (but not voice) the masked Darth Vader in the Star Wars films, features in an equally incognito role as the Minotaur.
Myth
Well-known actress Susan Penhaligon, making an early television appearance as Galleia's handmaiden Lakis, was originally to have been credited as Virginia Mull. (Virginia Mull was a different actress who had a small uncredited walk-on role as a serving girl in the Atlantis scenes of this story. Susan Penhaligon, who was a late replacement for actress Ann Michelle, was always to have been credited under her own name.)
Technobabble
E=MC³ in the extra temporal physics of the time vortex. 'Being without becoming, an ontological absurdity!' The Doctor makes a 'time flow analogue' from a Moroccan burgundy bottle, spoons, forks, corks, keyrings, tea leaves and a mug. 'The relationship between the different molecular bonds and the actual shapes form a crystalline structure of ratios.' [Since the Doctor and the Master made these at school (the Academy) to spoil each other's time experiments, it is only the shape of the things that are important.] The Master works out his landing coordinates with map and compass. A lot of polarities get reversed.
Goofs
The Master has a Greek accent for about two minutes. (Why does he persist in working in England under UNIT's very noses?)
In episode one, we see that the TARDIS is an empty police box.
The V1 is on black and white film.
Why does the UNIT/Roundheads battle last so long, and with no casualties?
What significance is there to the volcanic action on modern day Thera?
Why does the Doctor dream about it?
The Doctor's supposedly backwards dialogue when played backwards is still rubbish.
'Chronovore' is an awkward mix of Greek and Latin.
Where does the second cork come from?
Fashion Victim
Jo's frock and obvious Atlantean wig.
Hippias' eye shadow.
The humanoid Kronos' Pan's People make up.
Cast & Crew
Cast
The Doctor - Jon Pertwee
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - Nicholas Courtney
Captain Mike Yates - Richard Franklin
Jo Grant - Katy Manning
Sergeant Benton - John Levene
Crito - Derek Murcott
Dalios - George Cormack
Dr. Cook - Neville Barber
Dr. Percival - John Wyse
Dr. Ruth Ingram - Wanda Moore
Face of Kronos - Ingrid Bower
Farmworker - George Lee
Galleia - Ingrid Pitt
Guard - Melville Jones
Hippias - Aidan Murphy
Knight - Gregory Powell
Krasis - Donald Eccles
Kronos - Marc Boyle
Lakis - Susan Penhaligon
Master - Roger Delgado
Minotaur - Dave Prowse
Miseus - Michael Walker
Neophite - Keith Dalton
Proctor - Barry Ashton
Roundhead Officer - Dave Carter
Stuart Hyde - Ian Collier
Unit Sergeant - Simon Legree
Window Cleaner - Terry Walsh
Crew
Director - Paul Bernard
The Time Monster