Terror of the Autons by: Robert Holmes and directed by: Barry Letts

 

Terror of the Autons stars Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, Katy Manning as Jo Grant, Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and Roger Delgado as the Master with Richard Franklin as Captain Yates and John Levene as Sergeant Benton.  It was written by: Robert Holmes and directed by: Barry Letts with Terrance Dicks as Script Editor and Barry Letts as Producer.  It was originally broadcast on Saturdays from 2 to 23 January 1971 on BBC1.

 

While people know about the great Doctor Who hiatus of 1985 and the Wilderness Years from 1989 to 2005, there is often a neglect of the first and second times the show nearly faced cancellation in 1966 and 1969.  Patrick Troughton, having taken over from William Hartnell, had two years under his belt and ratings that actually increased and saved the show from cancellation in 1966/1967, but near the end of his run a similar drop off in viewership, if not a worse one.  The War Games, while now regarded as a classic, had some of the lowest viewership ratings of the entire series run, only beaten by portions of Sylvester McCoy’s run as the Doctor.  Of course, viewership is no indicator of quality and the seventh season was cut in half to allow more production time and Derrick Sherwin as producer, having taken over with The War Games.  Sherwin would leave after producing Spearhead from Space and ushering in Jon Pertwee’s era and Doctor Who in color, with Barry Letts replacing him mid-season.  Letts then had little control in story selection, but Sherwin’s choices proved popular giving the show an eighth season, saving it from what could have been an ending.  A budgetary increase was also negotiated by Letts.

 

The budgetary increase as well as the determination from Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks to make their mark on the show brought in a series of changes for Season Eight.  First Caroline John was not asked to return, due to the slight issue of the companion role of being the audience surrogate not quite working as well as Liz Shaw, in Letts and Dicks’ minds, was unable to ask the right questions that the children in the audience would be asking.  Instead they devised the character of Josephine “Jo” Grant as a reflection of the culture at the time, a character who was clearly trained to be working with UNIT, but not in a science background.  The role would be taken by Katy Manning who showed up to the audition late, got lost, forgot her glasses, and impressed the production team and Jon Pertwee.  There was also another UNIT character, Captain Mike Yates, introduced at the start of the season, but most importantly a recurring villain in the form of a Moriarty for the Doctor’s Sherlock Holmes.  The Master, despite much fan speculation, was not envisioned as a replacement for the War Chief as a villain, but an original character meant to be the Doctor’s opposite.  To originate the role Roger Caesar Marius Bernard de Delgado Torres Castillo Roberto (or Roger Delgado if you will) was cast and immediately shined with the rest of the cast, and was given a contract to appear in each of the five serials making up Season Eight.  The season opens with serial EEE which was contracted out to Robert Holmes with The Spray of Death, intended to be a sequel to Spearhead from Space bringing the Autons who would team up with the Master.  As the actual spray of death wouldn’t happen until the last episode, it was retitled Terror of the Autons.

 

Terror of the Autons is one of those stories that engages in a shift and builds upon Holmes’ initial idea of shop window dummies coming to life.  Instead of simply being out on the streets, this story has people bringing Autons into their homes as plastic daffodils and an ugly troll doll coming to life and killing someone.  There is also the image of a policeman’s face being ripped off to reveal an Auton and a telephone wire wrapping itself around the Doctor both as cliffhangers.  Holmes excels at giving this sort of imagery that would help with the reputation of sending children behind the sofa.  Having even the Doctor being in genuine danger helps sell things between them, but interestingly the script follows Conan Doyle’s The Final Problem where Holmes and Moriarty don’t actually meet until the final confrontation, bar one phone call.  This means that Delgado actually excels with his own villainous presence, shrinking people, hypnotizing Jo into attempting to blow up UNIT, suffocating people with a chair, and betraying the Nestenes at the last moment.

 

The other important aspect of Terror of the Autons is selling the relationship between the Doctor, Jo Grant, and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.  Jo’s introductory scene already oozes with charm, as Jo ruins one of the Doctor’s experiments while the Doctor can’t bring himself to tell her to fire, her charm really getting into the Doctor and the audience.  She proves useful in investigating plastics factories and asking several of the questions that the audience would be thinking.  While she isn’t a scientist like Liz or Zoe, she is a character who oozes charm and capability.   She’s not hyper intelligent but she means well and understands when she has to do things.  She also saves the Doctor at several points and integrates herself right into the UNIT team while the Brigadier is also a delight and really makes UNIT part of a story.  The Brigadier is also given quite a nice background part, even if he doesn’t have a whole lot to do story wise after Season Seven gave him so much.  This is also one of those stories where the ending does sadly let down a lot of the plot, the Master quickly changes his allegiance and the face-off built up throughout the episode is a let down because of that.  Interestingly, Barry Letts directed this story really well, even getting a lot of CSO integration, although there are some points where actual sets would have serviced better.

 

Overall, Terror of the Autons is actually a stone cold classic opener to Jon Pertwee’s second season.  It introduces a new villain for the Doctor, a new companion, and brings back a recurring alien and continues to prove Robert Holmes’ writing ability (prior to this his only good story was Spearhead from Space), even if the final act has a few issues and some of the CSO effects haven’t aged well (though the Blu-ray replacement CGI effects are a must).  9/10.