Survival (Doctor Who)

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159 - Survival
Doctor Sylvester McCoy (Seventh Doctor)
Writer Rona Munro
Director Alan Wareing
Script editor Andrew Cartmel
Producer John Nathan-Turner
Executive producer(s) None
Production code 7P
Series Season 26
Length 3 episodes, 25 mins each
Transmission date November 22–December 6, 1989
Preceded by The Curse of Fenric
Followed by Doctor Who

Survival is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in three weekly parts from November 22 to December 6, 1989. The final story to be transmitted on BBC One as part of the original 26-year run of the series, it marks the final television appearances of Sophie Aldred as companion Ace and Anthony Ainley as the Master.

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The Seventh Doctor brings Ace back to her home town of Perivale. However, her old friends are being kidnapped by a race of alien hunters called the Cheetah People, who were shown the way to Earth by the Doctor's old enemy the Master.

[edit] Plot

The Master under the influence of the Cheetah virus
The Master under the influence of the Cheetah virus

The Seventh Doctor brings Ace back to her home town of Perivale in the suburbs of North West London. The suburb is not as it should be: a mysterious black cat is wandering around, somehow creating a situation in which humans are hunted down and made to disappear to another dimension. Ace becomes worried when most of her old friends seem to have disappeared, but the Doctor is more preoccupied with the behaviour of the strange cat. It becomes apparent the black cat is being controlled by a strange being in the other dimension, viewing the scenes in Perivale through the cat’s eyes and choosing which humans to chase and transport. An unhappy young man called Stuart becomes his next victim. Ace follows soon afterward, hunted down by a Cheetah Person on horseback, which seems to have a hunting affinity with the curious cat. Later the Doctor and a keep-fit instructor called Patterson are chosen and teleported to another world, bathed in an alien sky, where the Doctor finds his nemesis the Master. The renegade is evidently unwell, his eyes and mouth displaying feline characteristics, and is using the black cat (or kitling) to create a dimensional bridge for the Cheetah People to hunt prey on Earth. Quite why he is doing this is unclear, other than he seems keen to keep the Cheetah People occupied somehow. The indigenous population bred the kitlings and had a great civilisation, but they were degenerated into animals by the power of the planet. His own metabolic changes show the same alterations.

Ace has meanwhile made contact with some of her friends, Shreela and Midge, who are hiding in some woods with a young man called Derek. The planet is evidently dangerous as both Stuart and a terrified milkman find out when a Cheetah Person hunts him to the death. Ace and her friends soon find the Doctor and Patterson, and the Time Lord has deduced they are on a very ancient planet which is dying. A Cheetah pack then attacks and during the fight back Midge kills one Cheetah while Ace injures another, called Karra. She begins to form an attachment to Karra and nurses her, tending her injuries, which worries the Doctor greatly. In time Ace’s eyes change and she begins to transform into a Cheetah herself. She abandons the Doctor to go hunting with Karra but he eventually wins her round.

Midge has meanwhile completely fallen to the power of the planet and is turning into an animal. The Master seizes on this and uses Midge to teleport them both back to Earth and away from the dying world. The Doctor persuades Ace to help him get back to Perivale and she does so, also enabling Patterson, Derek and Shreela to flee the strange planet. Patterson denies anything amiss has taken place, falling back on his “survival of the fittest” mantras and his self defence classes. The Doctor and Ace now head around Perivale in search for Midge and the Master. They eventually find them at the youth club, where they have killed Patterson for sport, and Midge too is killed in the Master’s machinations. Karra’s arrival brings comfort to Ace, whose transformation is continuing, but the Master kills Karra too.

The Master transports the Doctor with him back to the Cheetah Planet for a final conflict but the Doctor resists the pull of the planet, turning away from violence, and is transported away from the dying world. However, the Master looks doomed on the planet as it begins to break up. The Doctor has gone back to the TARDIS and Earth, where he finds Ace, whose metamorphosis has reversed, and tells her she will have grown through the experience: the element of the Cheetah Planet, however, will remain within her forever.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Cast notes

[edit] Continuity

  • When the Master next appears in the Fox TV movie, he can be seen sporting cat's eyes on occasion, an apparent allusion to his condition in Survival. Coincidentally, the Steward in the 2005 Ninth Doctor episode, The End of the World had eyes virtually identical to those of characters possessed by the Cheetah People in this story.
  • The gap between Survival and the Doctor Who television movie was filled by British publisher Virgin Publishing, who from 1991 onwards produced a range of novels entitled the New Adventures carrying on the adventures of the Doctor and Ace following the end of Survival.

[edit] Production

  • Working titles for this story included Cat-Flap and Blood Hunt.[1]
  • Survival was one of only three Doctor Who serials to be recorded completely on BBC Outside Broadcast video, instead of the mix of OB and studio video that was more usual during the late 1980s, and the mix of film and video that was usual before them. This was probably possible because Ghost Light, the next story in production, was filmed completely in the studio. The other stories to be recorded solely on OB video were The Sontaran Experiment (1975) and The Curse of Fenric (1989).
  • The battle at the climax of the story was recorded and is set on the site of the ancient hill fort at Horsenden Hill, Perivale.

[edit] End of an era

Having already surmised that episode three of Survival was likely to at least be the last episode of Doctor Who for some time, and possibly the last ever, the programme's producer John Nathan-Turner decided close to transmission that a more suitable conclusion should be given to the final episode[1]. To this end, script editor Andrew Cartmel wrote a short, melancholic closing monologue for actor Sylvester McCoy, which McCoy recorded on November 23, 1989 — by coincidence, the show's twenty-sixth anniversary. "There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream. People made of smoke, and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there’s injustice, and somewhere else the tea's getting cold! Come on, Ace — we’ve got work to do!" This was dubbed over the closing scene as the Doctor and Ace walked off into the distance, apparently to further adventures. The Doctor Who production office at the BBC finally closed down, for the first time since 1963, in August 1990.

Although Survival was the last Doctor Who serial of the original series to be transmitted, it was not the last to have been produced; that was Ghost Light, which had been broadcast some weeks earlier.

This story is the last to feature Anthony Ainley as the Master. Ainley was not asked to return as the Master for the 1996 Doctor Who television movie. Instead, Gordon Tipple was cast as the Master for the prologue and Eric Roberts played the Master for the rest of the movie. Ainley reprised the role of the Master for the 1998 computer game Destiny of the Doctors. He continued to be active in Doctor Who, attending conventions and recording a commentary track for the DVD of the 1981 serial The Keeper of Traken. Ainley died in May 2004.

This story was also the last to entirely feature Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor. McCoy returned briefly to the role in 1996 at the beginning of the American television movie continuation of the series, Doctor Who, to regenerate into the Eighth Doctor. Allegedly, if the series had been renewed, McCoy would have left the role after Season 27, regenerating at the end of the season.[citation needed]

Finally, this story was the last to feature Sophie Aldred as Ace. Aldred would have continued in her role had the series been renewed for Season 27; however, Aldred's contract was set to expire at the middle part of that season.[citation needed] As a result, the character of Ace was set to be written out of the series in an Ice Warrior story called Ice Time (1990) by Marc Platt.[2] According to various interviews with the production team, the new companion would have been a female safecracker whom the Doctor would have taken under his wing, with her gangster father as a recurring character.[citation needed] For details on Doctor Who during the 1990s, see History of Doctor Who.

Doctor Who eventually returned to production as a BBC television series in 2004, produced by BBC Wales. Rose, the first episode of the new series, aired on March 26, 2005. As the new series is being produced as 45-minute episodes, this makes Survival the final serial to date to be produced in 25-minute instalments, which had been the standard for the series (except for a one-season experiment with 45-minute episodes in 1985) since 1963.

[edit] In print

The Target novelisation by Rona Munro
The Target novelisation by Rona Munro

A novelisation of this serial, written by Rona Munro, was published by Target Books in October 1990. Munro becomes only the third woman to write a Doctor Who novelisation. Although this was the final televised story, Target (and its successor, Virgin Books) would continue to publish novelisations based on earlier televised serials until 1993.

[edit] Broadcast and video releases

  • Although there was no public indication that this was to be the final regular instalment of Doctor Who, unlike previous season-ending stories there was no voice-over on the closing credits of the final episode to tell viewers that the programme would return for a new series for the following year.
  • This story will be released on DVD on 16 April 2007, with a litany of special features including documentaries on the story's production, on Ace's character development, and on the end of the series; Ainley's video segments from Destiny of the Doctors; and other archive material. It will also be the first Doctor Who DVD to feature a fan commentary, with contributors Niall Boyce, Erykah Brackenbury, Tim Kittel and Clayton Hickman, and has been described as "warm, witty and entirely lovable." [3]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Survival at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
  2. ^ http://home.earthlink.net/~qstnmark/melted/ice_time.htm
  3. ^ http://www.sci-fi-london.com/cutenews/dvds.php?subaction=showfull&id=1173831156&archive=&start_from=&ucat=3

[edit] External links

[edit] Reviews

[edit] Target novelisation

 v • d • e The Master television stories
Third Doctor: Terror of the Autons • The Mind of Evil • The Claws of Axos • Colony in Space • The Dæmons • The Sea Devils • The Time Monster • Frontier in Space
Fourth Doctor: The Deadly Assassin • The Keeper of Traken • Logopolis
Fifth Doctor: Castrovalva • Time-Flight • The King's Demons • The Five Doctors • Planet of Fire
Sixth Doctor: The Mark of the Rani • The Trial of a Time Lord: The Ultimate Foe
Seventh Doctor: Survival
Eighth Doctor: Doctor Who
Minor appearances: The Caves of Androzani
See also: The Curse of Fatal Death
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