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The Claws of Axos is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from March 13 to April 3, 1971.
The Axons land on Earth, desperately in need of fuel. They propose to exchange the miracle substance they call Axonite for some much needed energy. Axonite is a "thinking" molecule that can replicate any substance... or so they claim. As it turns out, the ship is a single organism called Axos whose purpose is to feed itself by draining all energy through the Axonite (which is just a part of itself), including the energy of every life form on Earth. The deception about the Axonite's beneficial properties was to facilitate the distribution of Axonite across the globe.
Meanwhile, the Master, who was captured by Axos and used his knowledge of Earth as a bargaining chip for his life and freedom, escapes Axos and makes his way to the Doctor's TARDIS — his own having been seized by Axos. He plans to repair it to escape from Earth.
Axos itself becomes interested in the Doctor's knowledge of time travel. It now plans to broaden its feeding base by travelling through time as well as space. The Doctor, realising this, plans to trick Axos into linking up its drive unit to his TARDIS so that he can send Axos into a perpetual time loop. After tricking the Master into completing the repairs on his TARDIS, the Doctor does just that. This results in every part of Axos dematerialising from Earth, including the Axon automatons and the Axonite.
At the end, with the Master having escaped in his own TARDIS during the confusion aboard Axos, the Doctor returns to Earth, but not of his own volition. Apparently, the Time Lords have programmed the TARDIS to always return to Earth, like some "galactic yo-yo".
[edit] Cast notes
[edit] Continuity
[edit] Production
- Working titles for this story included Doctor Who and the Gift, The Friendly Invasion, The Axons, and The Vampire from Space. The last title was used through the production of the first two episodes, and was only changed by the time filming began on the third. The DVD release contains unused footage and cuts from the story that are packaged with the original title sequence – naming the story as The Vampire from Space. The serial was envisaged to be a six-parter, but the concept of the storyline changed as development progressed[1].
- During the location shooting of the scenes with the tramp, an overnight snow storm necessitated the creation of a line of dialogue in the programme to explain that the variations of weather from shot to shot in these scenes (filmed on various days but supposedly taking place within minutes of each other) are "freak weather conditions" as a result of Axos' arrival.[2]
- A common myth about this story is that the colour-separation overlay (CSO) backgrounds were accidentally omitted in some of the car interior scenes, leaving the blue screen behind the characters. In reality, the blue is supposed to represent the sky. The differing shades of blue compared to the location exterior footage is the result of the shots' separate origins.
- For reasons unexplained, the opening titles for this serial use the Second Doctor's version of the Doctor Who theme music as opposed to the Third Doctor's, as do The Mind of Evil and Terror of the Autons. After this serial however, the theme reverts to the Jon Pertwee standard.
[edit] Outside references
- The Lovely Invasion, an episode of the BBC Radio 4 series Nebulous, parodies this story: the world falls in love with the Lovely, a naked alien trio offering to "Lovelify" the Earth until they are nuked by Professor Nebulous.
- In David Tennant's video diaries included on the 2006 series boxset, during the filming of "Rise of the Cybermen", Nicholas Briggs says to the viewer that a "Claws of Axos" style rewrite almost had to be done on the episode due to the unexpected snowstorm that was happening.
[edit] In print
A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in April 1977.
[edit] Broadcast, VHS, and DVD releases
- Episodes two and three's PAL1 master copies in the UK were destroyed, but in 1985, the episodes turned up in Canada, in NTSC form.
- The story was released on VHS in May 1992. The quality was poor, as the episodes two and three had not been formatted back from NTSC into PAL.
- This story was released on DVD in the United Kingdom on April 25, 2005 and was released in North America on November 8, 2005. The picture quality of the central two episodes had been markedly enhanced through the use of the 'Reverse Standards Conversion' procedure (see also Inferno).
[edit] References
- ^ Pixley, Andrew, "In Production, Season 7: Instant Karma," pp. 13-14, "In Production, Season 8: Something Old, Something New," pp. 23-24, & "The Claws of Axos Archive Update," p. 29, Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition, #2 [The Complete Third Doctor], 5 September 2002, Panini Comics.
- ^ Briggs, Nick, "The Nick of Time," Doctor Who Magazine, #227, 5 July 1995, Marvel Comics UK Ltd., p. 40 (interview with Nicholas Courtney)
[edit] External links
[edit] Reviews
[edit] Target novelisation
