Production Code: 4Q
First Transmitted
1 - 01/01/1977 18:20
2 - 08/01/1977 18:30
3 - 15/01/1977 18:20
4 - 22/01/1977 18:25
Plot
The TARDIS arrives on a planet where a savage tribe called the Sevateem worship a god called Xoanon. The Doctor discovers that Xoanon is in fact a spaceship computer that he tried to repair at some point in his past and inadvertently drove mad by giving it a multiple personality.
It is tended to by another tribe of humanoids, the ascetic Tesh. These are the descendants of the ship's original technicians, while the Sevateem are the descendants of the original survey team. The Doctor, with the help of a Sevateem girl called Leela, manages to gain access to the ship and wipe the additional personalities from the computer, leaving it sane and in proper control once more.
Leela, deciding that she no longer wants to stay on her own planet, pushes her way on board the TARDIS. The Doctor has gained another companion.
Episode Endings
Leela takes the Doctor to see the image of the Sevateem's 'Evil One' carved into the side of a cliff. It is the Doctor's own face. The Doctor muses that he must have made quite an impression.
The Doctor and Leela climb into the carving of the Doctor's face through the mouth and see the shadow of a figure moving in the tunnel ahead of them. Xoanon meanwhile psychically attacks the Sevateem with invisible creatures.
A young man named Tomas attempts to hold the creatures off with a gun, and the energy it discharges reveals them to have the likeness of the Doctor's face. The tribe's leader Andor is killed and Tomas fires repeatedly in the creatures' direction in a desperate attempt to defend himself.
The Doctor tries to convince Xoanon of his identity but the computer determines not to listen and bombards him with images of his own face shouting out denials. Finally the image of the Doctor shouts in a child's voice: 'Who am I?'
The Doctor returns to the TARDIS, where Leela is waiting for him. She asks him to take her with him but he declines. She darts into the TARDIS ahead of him and refuses to come out. As the Doctor follows her in, she operates the controls and the TARDIS dematerialises.
Roots
The Three Faces of Eve (multiple personality disorder).
Star Trek episodes 'The Return of the Archons', 'The Changeling', 'The Omega Glory' and 'The Ultimate Computer'.
Forbidden Planet.
Lord of the Flies.
Night of the Demon (the immobile monster).
Harry Harrison's Captive Universe.
The Doctor quotes Kipling's Barrack Room Ballads ('Be thankful you're living, and trust to your luck'), mis-attributing it to Gertrude Stein.
Much biblical parody ('I created a world in my own image').
Dialogue Triumphs
The Doctor : "Would you like a Jelly Baby?"
Leela : "It's true then. They say the Evil One eats babies."
Leela : "The Evil One!"
The Doctor : "Well, nobody's perfect, but that's overstating it a little."
The Doctor : "Now drop your weapons or I'll kill him with this deadly jelly baby."
Neeva : "We start getting proof and we stop believing."
Tomas : "With this proof, we don't have to believe."
The Doctor : "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering."
The Doctor : "You can't expect perfection, even from me!"
Continuity
The Doctor is trying to reach Hyde Park. He carries a clockwork egg timer. He describes the planet's development to Jabel: 'Outside the barrier, physical courage and strength. Inside the barrier, paraphysical development and the sort of psi-power you used on Leela. It's an experiment in eugenics.'
The Doctor notes that the invisible phantoms are 'projections from the dark side of Xoanon's id.' He also says Xoanon was a 'marvellous host I remember one of his dinner parties...' [He's probably being facetious.]
The Horda are carnivorous crab-like creatures. 'Ten of them could strip the flesh from a man's arm'.
Leela uses janis thorns which paralyse, then kill. There is said to be no cure, but the Doctor uses a bioanalyser to identify the poison and make an anti-toxin to save Leela.
Location
An unnamed Earth colony, many centuries after the Mordee Expedition.
Future History
The Doctor states he helped the Mordee, which may be the name of the ship itself or a future human ethnic group. The ship seems to have originated on Earth (this is confirmed in The Invisible Enemy). According to the legends of the tribes, the Sevateem left the Place of Land while the Tesh remained. The Sevateem's holy gesture is the sequence for checking the seams on a Starfall Seven spacesuit.
Untelevised
The Doctor's first visit. He used Sidelian memory transfer to reprogram the Mordee computer with his own brain patterns. He claims to have been taught the crossbow by William Tell.
Trivia
Pamela Salem and Rob Edwards provide two of the voices of Xoanon. Both actors were at the time rehearsing for the following story, The Robots of Death.
Anthony Frieze, credited as one of the voices of Xoanon, was the young winner of a competition to visit the Doctor Who studios. Philip Hinchcliffe arranged for a recording of his voice to be made shouting 'Who am I?' for the climax to Part Three.
This story was actually promoted in Radio Times as the first in a new season of Doctor Who. This was due to the fact that, unusually, the season had broken for five Saturdays at the end of 1976.
Technobabble
The TARDIS displays nexial discontinuity. Xoanon produced psi-tri projections.
Goofs
Leela can't pronounce Calib's name on film ('Callib') but can in the studio ('Kaye lib')
She kills a Tesh guard, who throws his gun down the corridor. In the next shot, she picks it up from beside him.
Why do the invisible energy 'creatures' leave footprints?
Fashion Victim
Neeva wears a cricket glove on his head.
Cast & Crew
Cast
The Doctor - Tom Baker
Leela - Louise Jameson
Acolyte - Peter Baldock
Andor - Victor Lucas
Calib - Leslie Schofield
Gentek - Michael Elles
Guard - Tom Kelly
Guard - Brett Forrest
Jabel - Leon Eagles
Lugo - Lloyd McGuire
Neeva - David Garfield
Sole - Colin Thomas
Tomas - Brendan Price
Xoanon - Rob Edwards
Xoanon - Pamela Salem
Xoanon - Anthony Frieze
Xoanon - Roy Herrick
Crew
Director - Pennant Roberts
The Face of Evil