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| 088 – The Deadly Assassin | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Doctor Who serial | |||
| Cast | |||
Others
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| Production | |||
| Directed by | David Maloney | ||
| Written by | Robert Holmes | ||
| Script editor | Robert Holmes (uncredited) | ||
| Produced by | Philip Hinchcliffe | ||
| Executive producer | None | ||
| Music by | Dudley Simpson | ||
| Production code | 4P | ||
| Series | Season 14 | ||
| Running time | 4 episodes, 25 minutes each | ||
| First broadcast | 30 October 1976 (1976-10-30) | ||
| Last broadcast | 20 November 1976 (1976-11-20) | ||
| Chronology | |||
| |||
| List of episodes (1963–1989) | |||
The Deadly Assassin is the third serial of the14th season of the Britishscience fiction television programmeDoctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts onBBC1 from 30 October to 20 November 1976. It is the first serial in which the Doctor is featured without acompanion, and the only such story for the classic era.
In the serial, the renegadealienTime Lordthe Master (Peter Pratt) seeks to restore his life force by disrupting a power source that would destroy the planetGallifrey along with his archenemy theFourth Doctor (Tom Baker).
The Doctor has a precognitive vision about the President of theTime Lords being assassinated and goes toGallifrey to stop it. At the Panopticon, a Gallifreyan ceremonial chamber, he notes a camera and asniper rifle on a catwalk. The Doctor fights his way to the catwalk, but the assassin is among the delegates and shoots the President dead – the crowd assumes the Doctor is the killer. Under interrogation, he maintains that he has been framed;Castellan Spandrell believes him and orders Engin to assist him in an independent investigation. The Doctor announces that he will run for President, as liberty is guaranteed for those running for office during the course of an election.
He realises that it wasthe Master who had sent him the vision through theMatrix, a vast electronic neural network which can turn thoughts intovirtual reality. Entering the Matrix, the Doctor confronts the assassin who reveals himself as Chancellor Goth; the Master tries to trap the Doctor; Engin gets the Doctor out of the Matrix. They arrive where the two were accessing the Matrix, and find the Master pulse-less and Goth fatally burnt and dying. Goth reveals that he found the Master, nearing the end of his finalregeneration, and went along with him for power. Dying, Goth warns that the Master has a doomsday plan.
The Doctor finds that the President has access to the symbols of office: the Sash and Great Key ofRassilon. As records describe how Rassilon found the Eye of Harmony within the "black void," the Doctor realises that the Eye is actuallya black hole's nucleus, an inexhaustible energy source, and the Sash and Key are its control devices; the Master's plan is to steal this energy to gain a new cycle of regenerations; however, if the Eye is disrupted, Gallifrey will be destroyed.
He also realises that the Master injected himself with a neural inhibitor that mimics a deathlike state. The Doctor, Spandrell, and Engin arrive at the morgue, where the Master seizes the Sash from the President's corpse and traps the three. Inside the Panopticon, the Master makes his way to the Eye and unhooks the coils; the Doctor arrives via a service shaft. Quakes and cracks appear in the floor. The two fight, until the Master loses his footing and falls into a chasm. The Doctor reconnects the coils, saving Gallifrey.
The Doctor bids farewell but warns that the Master may not be dead, as he had already harvested some energy. As the Doctor's TARDIS dematerialises, the Master sneaks into his own TARDIS and escapes.
FollowingElisabeth Sladen's departure,Tom Baker told producerPhilip Hinchcliffe that he wanted to do a story without a companion.[1]Robert Holmes said that it was difficult to write the script forThe Deadly Assassin without anyone for the Doctor to share his thoughts and plans with, which was the usual role of the companion.[citation needed] Working titles for this story includedThe Dangerous Assassin (which Holmes changed to "deadly" because he thought it "didn't sound right"). The final title is atautology: a successful assassin must, by definition, be deadly. However, since Time Lords can in generalsurvive death, and the assassin's victims do not, he is perhaps "deadly" in that sense. According to the text commentary on the DVD, Holmes argued that the title was not a tautology, stating that there were plenty of incompetent assassins.
Bernard Horsfall guest stars as Chancellor Goth. He had previously appeared as an unnamed Time Lord (credited as 'Time Lord 1') in the serialThe War Games (1969);[2] extended media have since stated they are the same character. Other parts played by Horsfall inDoctor Who were Gulliver inThe Mind Robber (1968) and Taron inPlanet of the Daleks (1973), all of which were directed byDavid Maloney.[3]Angus MacKay later played the Headmaster inMawdryn Undead (1983).George Pravda previously played Denes inThe Enemy of the World (1967–68) and Jaeger inThe Mutants (1972).Hugh Walters previously playedWilliam Shakespeare inThe Chase (1965) and later appeared as Vogel inRevelation of the Daleks (1985).
Peter Pratt, who playsthe Master, was previously a leading man with theD'Oyly Carte Opera Company and a radio actor.[4]
| Episode | Title | Run time | Original release date | UK viewers (millions) [5] |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Part One" | 21:13 | 30 October 1976 (1976-10-30) | 11.8 |
| 2 | "Part Two" | 24:44 | 6 November 1976 (1976-11-06) | 12.1 |
| 3 | "Part Three" | 24:24 | 13 November 1976 (1976-11-13) | 13 |
| 4 | "Part Four" | 24:23 | 20 November 1976 (1976-11-20) | 11.8 |
Thecliffhanger to Part Three—where Goth holds the Doctor's headunderwater in an attempt to drown him—came in for heavy criticism, particularly from the "clean-up TV" campaignerMary Whitehouse. She often cited it in interviews as one of the most frightening scenes inDoctor Who, her reasoning being that children would not know if the Doctor survived until the following week and that they would "have this strong image in their minds" during all that time.[6] After the episode's initial broadcast, the BBC apologised to Whitehouse and the master tape was edited to remove the original ending.[7] The edited episode was included when the story was repeated on BBC1 from 4 to 25 August 1977[8] seen by 4.4, 2.6, 3.8 & 3.5 million viewers.[9]
Paul Cornell,Martin Day andKeith Topping wrote of the serial inThe Discontinuity Guide (1995), "The reputation ofThe Deadly Assassin rests with its violence and its revelations about the Doctor's people and their culture. Politically literate and cynical ('We must adjust the truth'), the serial is the definitive text on the Time Lords. The Doctor's journey into the APC net ... is a visual and intellectual tour de force of hallucinatory images."[10] InThe Television Companion (1998),David J. Howe andStephen James Walker reported that at the time of broadcast several viewers took issue with the serial's portrayal of the Time Lords, finding it a contradiction of the small details that had previously been dropped about the Doctor's home planet, but over time its reputation became more positive. The pair themselves called it "a truly remarkable story" and praised the reintroduction of the Master.[11] In 2010, Patrick Mulkern ofRadio Times awarded the serial four stars out of five. He described "the Master's putrid skull and split bangers for fingers" as "the most revolting images presented on teatime TV" but was positive towards its supporting characters, though he did criticise the Matrix sequences for being more earthly rather than alien, despite them being constructed from deceased Time Lords.[12]The A.V. Club reviewer Christopher Bahn praised the plotting and Matrix sequences, calling it "well-crafted all around".[13]
In 2010,Charlie Jane Anders ofio9 listed the cliffhanger to the first episode—in which it appears the Doctor shoots the president—as one of the greatest cliffhangers in the history ofDoctor Who.[14]Den of Geek named the cliffhanger to the third episode as one of the ten bestDoctor Who cliffhangers, praising thefreeze frame.[15] In 2013,Starburst also chose Part Three as one of the "Top TenDoctor Who Cliffhangers".[16] In 2018,Digital Spy described Part Three as "the show's most controversial cliffhanger".[17]
Tat Wood[who?] suggests it is "blindingly obvious" that the story was largely inspired by the film and bookThe Manchurian Candidate.[11]
 | |
| Author | Terrance Dicks |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Mike Little |
| Series | Doctor Who book: Target novelisations |
Release number | 19 |
| Publisher | Target Books |
Publication date | 20 October 1977 |
| ISBN | 0-426-11965-7 |
A novelisation of this serial, written byTerrance Dicks, was published byTarget Books in October 1977, entitledDoctor Who and The Deadly Assassin.
This story was released onVHS in March 1989 in edited omnibus format in the US only. It was released on VHS in episodic format in the UK in October 1991. It was also re-released and remastered for theWHSmith-exclusive Time Lord Collection in 2002 with a better-quality freeze-framecliffhanger for Episode 3.The Deadly Assassin was released on 11 May 2009 onRegion 2DVD. The serial was released in issue 52 of theDoctor Who DVD Files on 29 December 2010.
It was released on Blu-Ray as part of the Time Lord Victorious box set.[18]
Doctor Who episodes | |
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| Season 14 | |
