Production Code: 5C
First Transmitted
1 - 28/10/1978 18:25
2 - 04/11/1978 18:20
3 - 11/11/1978 18:20
4 - 18/11/1978 18:20
Plot
The Doctor, Romana and K9 are led by the tracer to the Nine Travellers, a circle of standing stones on Boscombe Moor in present-day England, but the third segment is nowhere to be found. They meet elderly archaeologist Professor Emilia Rumford and her assistant Vivien Fay, who are surveying the site, and learn that the circle appears to have had a variable number of stones over the years.
The Doctor encounters a group of Druids led by a man named de Vries and narrowly avoids becoming their latest sacrifice. De Vries is later killed by one of the stones from the circle - an Ogri, a life form that lives on blood. Miss Fay is the latest guise of the Cailleach, a being worshipped by the Druids, who has been on Earth for four thousand years. She transports Romana to a spaceship suspended in hyperspace at the same coordinates as the stone circle.
The Doctor follows and accidentally releases two justice machines called Megara, which sentence him to death for breaking the seal on their compartment. When they attempt to carry out their sentence, however, he tricks them into knocking Miss Fay unconscious. Reading her mind, they learn that she is really Cessair of Diplos - the alien criminal they were originally sent to try. Having established her guilt, they transform her into an additional stone in the circle, but not before the Doctor has grabbed her necklace - the Seal of Diplos, alias the third segment of the Key to Time.
Episode Endings
Romana, led by the sound of the Doctor's voice calling her, arrives at the edge of a cliff. Backing away as an unseen presence, apparently the Doctor, advances menacingly toward her, she falls over the edge of the cliff.
Miss Fay shoves Romana roughly into the middle of the stone circle and aims a long staff at her. The staff emits pulses of energy and Romana vanishes.
Miss Fay, now with silver skin and wearing long, flowing robes, arrives on the spaceship accompanied by two Ogri. She triumphantly tells the Doctor and Romana that they are trapped in hyperspace forever. The spaceship hovers in the void of hyperspace.
As Romana looks on, the Doctor uses the tracer to convert Miss Fay's necklace into the third segment. He then attempts to fit the segments together, but finds to his embarrassment that he is unable to do so.
Roots
Arthurian myths.
Ravens (Ovid onwards).
Hound of the Baskervilles (missing portrait).
Celtic/British mythology (Gog and Magog).
Einstein's special theory of relativity.
There are brief mentions of Tacitus and John Aubrey, and an oblique reference to Polonius in Hamlet.
Dialogue Triumphs
Vivien Fay : [Speaking of Professor Rumford's ownership of a police truncheon] "Last year, when she was lecturing in New York, she took it with her in case she got mugged."
Romana : "And did she get mugged?"
Vivien Fay : "No, she got arrested for carrying an offensive weapon."
Professor Rumford : "But I still don't understand about hyperspace."
The Doctor : "Well, who does?"
K9 : "I do."
The Doctor : "Shut up, K9!"
Professor Rumford : "Are you from outer space?"
The Doctor : "No. I'm more from what you'd call inner time."
Double Entendre
Romana : "What's it say?"
The Doctor : "I don't know, I can't read the script."
Continuity
The Doctor explains to Romana that it was the White Guardian, rather than the President of the Time Lords, who sent them on their mission. The third segment has powers of transmutation, transformation and the establishing of hyperspacial and temporal coordinates.
4000 years previously Cessair of Diplos, accused of murder and having stolen the Great Seal, evaded the Megara justice machines and left the [police/prison] ship in hyperspace (hyperspace, according to Romana, is a 'theoretical absurdity').
It is not indicated if Cessair directly contributed to the construction of the stone circle, which dates from a similar period, but over the ensuing centuries she adopted a number of different guises to ensure that she retained control of that part of Boscombe Moor.
Diplos is a G-class planet in the Tau Ceti system. Cessair was aided by Ogri, from the planet Ogros (this contravened article 7954 of the Galactic Charter). Ogros is covered with amino acid swamps, and is also in Tau Ceti. The Ogri are silicon based life forms (cf. The Hand of Fear) deficient in globulin, a protein found in blood plasma. Cessair is allergic to citric acid.
The Doctor mentions a Galactic Federation that appointed a justice machine, which, finding the Federation to be in contempt of court, blew up the entire galaxy.
Location
The stone circle known as the Nine Travellers, Boscombe Moor, near Boscawen, Damnonium (i.e. Cornwall), [1970s].
Links
There seems to be a Wirrn (The Ark in Space) and a (weird) Kraal android skeleton (The Android Invasion) in the ship in hyperspace.
Untelevised
The Doctor has met Einstein.
Trivia
There is the implication that Cessair of Diplos is an agent of the Black Guardian. Aside from the evidence of a warning given by the White Guardian at the beginning of Part One, there is also the fact that Cessair knows what the segment of the Key is and tells the Doctor in the closing stages of Part Four that if he lets the Megara turn her into stone, he will never find what he is looking for.
Technobabble
Type 40 TARDISes are fitted with molecular stabilisers: after an attack by an Ogri K9's circuits are regenerated by connecting this stabiliser to his circuit frequency modulator. Mending the hyperspace 'gun', amongst other things, involves linking the alpha circuit to the sine interphase.
Goofs
How does de Vries control the ravens, and what is their function?
At the start of the story there are three Ogri. One falls off a cliff, but later there are still three.
If Cessair has escaped from the prison ship, why does she stay on Earth? What's her plan?
Cast & Crew
Cast
The Doctor - Tom Baker
Romana - Mary Tamm
Voice of K9 - John Leeson
Camper - James Murray
Camper - Shirin Taylor
De Vries - Nicholas McArdle
Martha - Elaine Ives-Cameron
Megara Voice - Gerald Cross
Megara Voice - David McAlister
Professor Rumford - Beatrix Lehmann
Vivien Fay - Susan Engel
Crew
Director - Darrol Blake
The Stones of Blood