Carnival of Monsters
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| 066 – Carnival of Monsters | |
|---|---|
| Doctor Who serial | |
 Major Daly trying to best a Drashig with a tommy gun. |
|
| Cast | |
| Doctor | Jon Pertwee (Third Doctor) |
| Companion | Katy Manning (Jo Grant) |
| Production | |
| Writer | Robert Holmes |
| Director | Barry Letts |
| Script editor | Terrance Dicks |
| Producer | Barry Letts |
| Executive producer(s) | None |
| Production code | PPP |
| Series | Season 10 |
| Length | 4 episodes, 25 mins each |
| Originally broadcast | January 27–February 17, 1973 |
| Chronology | |
| ← Preceded by | Followed by → |
| The Three Doctors | Frontier in Space |
Carnival of Monsters is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from January 27 to February 17, 1973.
It was also the title of a 1999 BBC documentary looking at some of the adversaries that the Doctor had faced in the programme.
Contents |
[edit] Synopsis
The Doctor and Jo arrive on the SS Bernice, a cargo ship which disappeared without trace in 1926. However, it becomes apparent that they are being watched…
[edit] Plot
The TARDIS misses Metebelis Three and seems to materialise on a cargo ship in the Indian Ocean, but the Third Doctor and Jo soon realise that the ship’s occupants keep repeating their actions as if somehow controlled. The Doctor also sees that they are on the SS Bernice, on the very day that it suddenly disappeared without a trace.
The pair soon find a way out of the ship through a hatch made of an alloy alien to the S.S. Bernice that is ignored by the crew and passengers, but plainly visible to them both. Sonic screwdriver in hand, the Doctor opens the hatch and he and Jo venture into the circuitry of some sort of giant machine. They make their way to a marshy area that they think is the outside, but soon discover that they are still inside the machine and are chased by the Drashigs, huge swamp-dwelling carnivores, back into the circuitry.
It is here, where they stop to rest, that the Doctor realises that they are inside a Miniscope, a machine that keeps miniaturised groups of creatures in miniaturised versions of their natural environments. He says that he persuaded the Time Lords to ban these and deduces that they must have materialised in its compression field.
The Drashigs break through from the marsh and the Doctor and Jo are forced to return to the ship. They become separated in the confusion as the crew defend against the Drashigs, and the Doctor manages to find a way to the real outside.
While they remain inside the Miniscope, it arrives with its owners, travelling showman Vorg and his assistant Shirna, on Inter Minor. They are refused an entrance visa, as the entrance tribunal believes they are spies, and they are therefore allotted space on the next shuttle home.
Vorg finds the TARDIS inside the Miniscope, which is accidentally left out of the compression field for too long and thus returns to normal size. Meanwhile, two tribunal members plot to let the Drashigs escape from the machine and allow them to wreak havoc, forcing the President of the planet to resign.
The Doctor emerges from the Miniscope and is restored to his normal size. He tells Vorg that his machine is illegal, and attaches part of the TARDIS to it so that he can return to get Jo. After he goes back into the Scope, which is now overheating due to the Drashigs' damage, the device he attached is shot by a tribunal member and ceases to function, leaving the Doctor stranded. He finds Jo, but they collapse on the floor as the heat gets too much for them.
Two Drashigs escape, but Vorg manages to kill them by fixing the eradicator, sabotaged by the mutinous tribunal members. He then fixes the Doctor’s device, pushing the Phase Two switch which brings the Doctor and Jo back, just in time, and also returning all of the Scope’s other occupants to their rightful space-time positions.
As the penniless Vorg tries to get enough credit bars to return home by using the old three-magum-pods-and-a-yarrow-seed trick, the two travellers depart in the TARDIS.
[edit] Cast
- Doctor Who — Jon Pertwee
- Jo Grant — Katy Manning
- Kalik — Michael Wisher
- Orum — Terence Lodge
- Pletrac — Peter Halliday
- Vorg — Leslie Dwyer
- Shirna — Cheryl Hall
- Major Daly — Tenniel Evans
- Claire Daly — Jenny McCracken
- Lt John Andrews — Ian Marter
- Captain — Andrew Staines
[edit] Cast notes
- Vorg and Shirna were played by Leslie Dwyer and Cheryl Hall respectively, both of whom found greater fame in separate BBC sitcoms: Hall as Shirley in Citizen Smith, and Dwyer as Mr Partridge, the child hating Punch and Judy Man in Hi-De-Hi.
- Ian Marter later played the Fourth Doctor companion, Harry Sullivan.
- Tenniel Evans was a long time co-star of Jon Pertwee in The Navy Lark.
[edit] Continuity
- In the previous serial (The Three Doctors), the Time Lords lifted the Doctor's long-standing Earth exile. Although for the previous two seasons the Doctor was often sent around the cosmos on Time Lord business, this adventure constitutes the first time since 1969's The War Games that the Doctor has been truly free to wander.
- Some of the aliens on display in Vorg's miniscope include: Drashigs, Ogrons and Cybermen. This is only one of two times that the Cybermen appear during the Third Doctor's era (a hallucination of one appears in The Mind of Evil).
[edit] Production
- Working titles for this story included Peepshow.
- This story was recorded as part of the production block for the previous season but deliberately held over for Season Ten: this was to enable Barry Letts to direct the production, since his role as producer would have made it difficult to do so at the start of a production block (as he had found out with Terror of the Autons).
- The titles for Carnival of Monsters were prepared, like Frontier in Space with a new arrangement of the theme music performed by Paddy Kingsland on a synthesizer. Known as the "Delaware" arrangement (the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was based on Delaware Road), it proved unpopular with BBC executives, so the original Delia Derbyshire theme was restored, and only appears on an uncorrected version of episode two that was shipped to Australia in error. This edit, which also featured a few extra scenes, was used in the 1995 VHS release. (The full version of the theme has been included as an extra on the DVD release of the story.)
- RFA Robert Dundas was the ship used in this episode which was decommissioned and scrapped very shortly after filming. Production was halted when the ship's antique brass compass was stolen. It was later returned by Jon Pertwee...who had taken it in hopes of saving it from the scrappers. The compass however did not need saving as it was auctioned off shortly thereafter with other items from the ship1.
[edit] Outside references
- Believing the Doctor to be a showman like himself, Vorg attempts to speak to the Doctor in Polari, a cant common in theatrical and gay subculture in Britain of the 1950s and 1960s, and popularised in the BBC Radio programme Round the Horne. The Doctor appears unable to understand Vorg, despite his usual ability with languages and the TARDIS's translation capabilities.
[edit] In print
| Doctor Who book | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters | |
| Series | Target novelisations |
| Release number | 8 |
| Writer | Terrance Dicks |
| Publisher | Target Books |
| Cover artist | Chris Achilleos |
| ISBN | 0 491 02114 3 |
| Release date | 20 January 1977 |
| Preceded by | Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars |
| Followed by | Doctor Who and the Seeds of Doom |
A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in January 1977.
[edit] Broadcast, VHS and DVD releases
- When the serial was repeated on BBC2 for The Five Faces of Doctor Who in 1981 Barry Letts (then the series' Executive Producer) requested that the last few moments be edited to remove a shot where actor Peter Halliday's baldcap had slipped.
- This was released on VHS in 1995.
- This story was released on DVD in the United Kingdom on June 15, 2002, using the originally transmitted versions of episodes 2 and 4. Extras included the additional scenes from the early edit of episode 2.
[edit] External links
- Carnival of Monsters at bbc.co.uk
- Carnival of Monsters at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
- Carnival of Monsters at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
- Carnival of Monsters at the Internet Movie Database - 1999 documentary
[edit] Reviews
- Carnival of Monsters reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
- Carnival of Monsters reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide
[edit] Target novelisation
- Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide
- On Target — Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters
[edit] References
1. A Brief History of Time (Travel)
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