The Dead Planet

Doctor Who (1963), The Daleks

We're on another planet!

That doesn't feel like that big a deal these days, when Doctor Who does stories on other planets left and right, but this was the first time. The show had investigated a mysterious situation in modern times (well, modern at the time of broadcast, anyway.) It had encountered cavemen and likely helped to ensure the survival of the human race by making sure the secret of fire was not lost. The show had delivered on the "time" part of adventures in time and space.

Now it's time for the "space" part of it.

Summary

After its narrow escape from caveman times, the TARDIS appears in a strange jungle. Tired and exhausted, the travelers leave the console room to get cleaned up, not noticing that the radiation counter has started to register in the danger zone.

Upon leaving the TARDIS, they discover that the jungle is petrified into stone. They also find the body of an alien creature, confirming that they are not on Earth and the Doctor states that he believes the planet is "totally dead." They also glimpse a futuristic looking city in the distance and the Doctor and Ian argue about whether or not they should go and investigate it.

Returning to the TARDIS, Susan has a frightening encounter in the jungle, feeling a hand touch her shoulder. Once back at the ship, the Doctor insists that it was only her imagination but a tapping from the exterior confirms her claim that there is something outside.

The Doctor still insists on going to explore the city but is argued down by the others so he arranges for it appear as though one of the ship's fluid links has broken and that they need to refill it with mercury, something that can likely only be found in the city.

Upon setting out the next morning, they find a box of glass vials left outside the ship. Leaving it in the TARDIS they head down to the city, all feeling very tired and unwell by the time they reach it. They split up to look for mercury, not noticing that they are being observed by cameras. Barbara is maneuvered through the city by closing doors and elevators until she is confronted by something that causes her to scream...

Crew Credits

Writer: Terry Nation

Director: Christopher Barry

Story Editor: David Whitaker

Producer: Verity Lambert

Overview

There is an argument to be made that this is the beginning of the most important serial in Doctor Who. It introduces the series' most enduring and popular antagonists and, in doing so, ensured that the show would become the long-running legend that it is today. Without this story, Doctor who wouldn't exist, certainly not as we know it today and probably not as anything but a short-run series from the '60s.

Don't get me wrong, there are other candidates for that "most important serial" spot and we'll reach those in time but I think it's worth noting just how much this serial affected the show's future.

One of the ways the show has changed over time is in the nature of how tight its ongoing narrative is. The makers of the books, comics and audio dramas have made extensive use of the gaps between the various serials to insert new adventures (sometimes, I think, to the point of ridiculousness, but if people continue to enjoy them, who am I to complain?)

This early on, though, there was often an unbroken, continuous narrative, even between serials. Such is the case here. We pick up right where The Firemaker ended, giving us a recap of the radiation-meter's warning. While there are certainly advantages to both styles, I do think this continuous approach works well for these early stories because it firmly places us in Ian and Barbara's shoes, giving us their perspective without interruption.

Over the years, Doctor Who will use several different approaches to open a story. In the newer series there's a need to establish things fairly quickly but back in these early serials, there was more room to slowly reveal things. Some stories introduce things from the perspective of those who inhabit whatever world in which the TARDIS has arrived. The previous serial largely adopted this approach, both in its initial episode where we followed things from Ian and Barbara's point of view, and then in the cavemen story when we shifted quickly to the viewpoints of the members of the tribe.

This story goes the opposite route. Here we see things almost exclusively from the perspectives of the travelers themselves. I've always had a fondness for this approach, as it allows the audience to discover the way this new world works simultaneously with the main characters, learning as they do. We don't know anything the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan don't. (Although it's worth noting that we do shift between the viewpoints of the four main characters several times, which means we have a more rounded view of the situation than any one of them. For instance, we know that the Doctor faked the malfunction of the fluid link, something Ian, Barbara and Susan do not.)

Such an approach rarely lasts beyond the first episode as it's difficult (and usually not desirable) to maintain it throughout the whole serial. Later episodes flesh out the context behind the things we only glimpsed or saw without explanation in the first but I will admit that I tend to really enjoy such first episodes. It gives me a feeling like I'm exploring this new situation in the same way the Doctor and his companions are.

It's also an approach Terry Nation, the author of this serial, uses a lot.

Nation often gets a bad rap, I think. Yes, he has themes and tropes that he returns to an awful lot, sometimes to the point of being predictable. He likes his deserted, foreboding locations, his mysterious potentially menacing figure observing the regulars who turns out to be an ally. He likes to have one of them dramatically emerge from something at the end of the episode. He likes his ruthless, fascist villains, his mutant creatures, his radiation and his germ warfare. He also likes invisible monsters, though that won't come up in this particular story.

But regardless of whether Nation returns to these tropes or not, they are effective. When I watch the first episode of a Terry Nation-penned episode, I am immediately invested in the world he's slowly revealing and whether the main characters can navigate it safely.

Nation's also not above playing a bit loose with the tropes he likes. For instance, in the opening episode of Blake's 7, he flips his "mysterious observer" thing around a bit by first revealing him to be an ally but them flipping that around again and having him be an enemy after all.

Further, whether flipped or played straight, the tropes Nation likes to return to make his worlds feel dangerous. There's always a feeling of hidden menace in his stories as well as a pervading grimness and fear. Back when discussing the first episode, I mentioned that Doctor Who is often about the feeling that there is something beyond the normal. In a Terry Nation story, there is virtually always the feeling that the "something" is actively hostile and potentially deadly. Nation's writing sensibilities are clearly influenced by Britain's WWII history with fascism as well as imagery from the Cold War Soviet Union. As we explore his stories we'll learn Nation's version of the Whoniverse is a very unsafe place and one in which violent death is frequent. It's a somewhat cynical approach and not one I'd want the show to adopt all the time but I do think it's one worth periodically revisiting.

Characters

Quite apart from Nation's tendency to repeat tropes (the relevance of which is limited in this episode, his first for Doctor Who, anyway) there's the fact that this is early enough in Doctor Who that Nation's approach to the characters helps to define them going forward. Perhaps the best example of this is the way he has each of them react as they explore this "dead" planet.

For the Doctor, we see the introduction of what might be the Doctor's single most enduring trait, his curiosity. Sure, we had little hints of it in the previous serial but this is when it becomes clear that it's the driving force of the Doctor's personality. At this point in his life the safety of himself and his granddaughter may well be a powerful motivation but even that is trumped by the Doctor's desire to explore, to know, to see and experience what he doesn't understand.

Nowhere is this more exemplified than when the Doctor tricks everyone into believing the fluid link is broken so that he can explore the city. We see that, given the choice between indulging his curiosity and safeguarding the security of those who travel with him, the Doctor will not just choose the former, but will manipulate everyone to go along with his choice.

In a wider sense, this was a necessary step for the show to take. When the question of curiosity vs. security is raised...well, unless curiosity wins out there wasn't really going to be a show, was there? If the TARDIS crew turns and leaves at the first hint of danger they're not going to get involved with anything or, at most, they're going to just be engaged in the same attempts to escape to the TARDIS that dominated the previous serial. But those creating and watching the show surely wanted more than that. We don't just want brief glimpses of other worlds and times as the regulars try to escape them. We want to see them swept up into what's happening in these locales, not just watching events but affecting them. We want more than just observers. Like the Doctor himself, we want the law of non-interference broken...

So really, it's kind of inevitable that the Doctor's curiosity wins out over everyone else's desire for security. The Doctor's almost an instrument of the narrative in that sense, driving the story forward, providing motivation for why the regulars are not doing the "smart" thing and just leaving while they're safe. I, for one, am very glad he did so.

Why does he do so, though? I just expounded on the story-reasons for it, but I mean, as a character, why does the Doctor opt for indulging his curiosity when everyone else wants to leave?

Part of it is just the curiosity itself. The Doctor seems to have an insatiable desire to explore and expand his knowledge. It's interesting to note that he is actually prepared to leave until Susan sees the city in the distance. He's seen and explored the jungle, coming to some rudimentary conclusions about the reasons for its petrified state but there's really nothing more to experience there. But as soon as he sees the city? Well, that's a whole new thing to investigate. It represents potential insight into the culture that built it and their technology.

Plus, everyone else wants to leave.

I do think that last bit is something of a motivation during this early story. Despite his own partial responsibility for their presence, the Doctor is bothered by the very idea that Ian and Barbara get a say in what he does or where he goes at all. He spent a good portion of the past few episodes having endless arguments with Ian about who was in charge and that struggle is still going on. If the two teachers were not present, I have little doubt he could have convinced Susan to travel down to the city easily but now, with them in the mix, she's taking their side, challenging his authority. And he won't have that.

In fairness, it does seem as though the Doctor legitimately thinks there is no danger. He's quite confident in his belief that the planet is "dead" and, even when the tapping on the TARDIS proves that Susan was right about something in the jungle, he has no reason to believe that it's something hostile or dangerous. The Doctor's desire to keep himself and his granddaughter safe was very prominent in the previous serial, enough so that I find it hard to believe he'd endanger them if he felt there was a real threat to their safety.

How he goes about getting his way is interesting in terms of the Doctor's character development. He doesn't convince them nor does he nakedly insist upon his decision-making authority. No, he tricks them. What's interesting about this is that it's not really that far off from the kinds of tricks or manipulations that he'll be using countless times in the future. It's just that usually those tricks are aimed at the stories' antagonists. In this one, they're aimed at his companions. Indeed, at this point there's still an argument to be made that the Doctor is the antagonist of the story. If nothing else, he's certainly the one who gets everyone else into trouble.

The Doctor wants to be the one making the decision and he takes action to make sure he can be. Once that action is taken, though, it's sort of funny how unapologetic he is about the situation. He insists on taking a large amount of food for their trip, making it clear that he intends on a full exploration of the city, all but ignoring Ian's insistence that they just find mercury and leave. Ian's attempts to reassert some sort of authority over the trip are basically laughed off. Plus, of course, there's the big, blatant grin on his face as Ian realizes they'll have to go to the city in the first place. The Doctor may be faking why they have to make the trip but he clearly has no desire to pretend it bothers him to go.

That said, the Doctor is willing to be civil as long as things are going his way. He even reaches out to Barbara to ask her help making up with Susan. The scene where he admits that the age gap between himself and his granddaughter sometimes makes things difficult might well be the most vulnerable moment we've had from the Doctor so far and, as usual, Hartnell really sells it.

All of that said, the Doctor's machinations in this episode make it hard to argue against Barbara's assertion that maybe the Doctor "deserves something to happen to him."

Poor Barbara. She just wants to go home. It's hard to blame her either. While there is a tendency for Doctor Who fandom to condemn the less adventurous companions it's worth noting how realistic a reaction it would be for someone to just want this all to be over. It's not as if Barbara's trip to caveman times was some fun, triumphant adventure. It was really nothing but terror. Wanting to just return to her normal life after that doesn't seem unreasonable at all.

It's no wonder, then, that she seeks a bit of comfort from Ian in this episode, admitting to him that she's a "very unwilling adventurer" in comparison to Ian who seems to be taking all this more in stride. At first blush, this would seem to be a bit of a reversal of their positions from a few episodes ago when she seemed to be able to accept their situation much easier than Ian but I don't think it's really incompatible. Part and parcel of her greater willingness to accept their situation is her having to face the fact this is her reality now. The TARDIS not immediately bringing them back to 1963 is the final bit of evidence that her life, as she knew it, is effectively over, replaced by this new, far more dangerous one. Her last hope has been dashed.

Luckily Ian offers a bit of hope in that regard. Again, he seems less bothered by the situation, reacting to everything in a more practical manner but, as with Barbara, this is consistent with his earlier attitude. He's more willing to look at this as a temporary situation, something they can get through and be done with as long as they rely on each other. I can't help thinking that, when he asks Barbara to "really believe" that they'll make it back to their lives, he's asking her to hold out that hope for both of them. He wants to be there for her, to be someone she can rely on but he needs to rely on her too. (Being a a guy, in the '60s, though, it's hardly surprising that he can't say that outright.)

And Ian does need her help because he's still engaged in his struggle for leadership and authority with the Doctor. I would actually say that Ian probably even thinks he's winning that contest, citing things like getting the Doctor to back off from his first attempt to go and explore the city. But Ian's not actually winning. He's rather pointedly losing, really. The Doctor has changed the field on which they're playing, turning it from a contest of wills to one of tricks and cleverness without Ian realizing the switch has been made.

The reasons for their struggle are fairly clear. Presented with that same question of curiosity vs. security, Ian definitely chooses the latter. Ian's not entirely without curiosity or interest in his surroundings, mind you, but keeping everyone safe is far more important to him. The best example of this is when he and Susan are examining the petrified flower. He genuinely seems to think it's beautiful and clearly wants to help Susan preserve it but one scream from Barbara and it's left his mind entirely. He doesn't just hand it over to Susan. He crushes it in the process and doesn't even notice. As soon as safety becomes a concern, it's out of his mind entirely. With that mindset, it's no wonder he's opposed to visiting the city. Though, as I mentioned above, that decision is really out of his hands...

Alas, poor Susan and her flower. She obviously likes it and is very upset when it gets crushed. Then her second attempt at preserving one is interrupted by her being stalked by the figure in the forest. She's not very lucky where petrified flowers are concerned but they obviously struck her as very beautiful considering she's trying to sketch one in the TARDIS later (and she even gets interrupted trying to do that!)

Carole Ann Ford has mentioned that she had the idea that Susan had a bit of a crush on Ian and that works fairly well for how upset she seems when he destroys the flower, especially since he did so for the express purpose of running to the aid of another woman.

That said, such motivations aside, Susan's fixation on the flower speaks a bit to how differently she approaches exploring the planet from her grandfather. She's not only expressing a general curiosity but actively looking for something she finds pleasant and beautiful. The Doctor is curious about this world apparently without regard for whether it's a good or bad one. Susan is looking to find reasons why this might be a pleasant world. It's not clearly defined and will take a while to fully develop but between this and her desire to stay in 1963 from the first episode, it's clear that, while the Doctor would cheerfully keep wandering the universe forever, Susan wants to eventually find a place she likes enough to stay there. It's likely why she felt the need to go to the Coal Hill School in the first place. The Doctor is comfortable being the perpetual outsider but Susan wants to belong.

We also get Susan going into hysterics again in this episode. Again, this is somewhat understandable. She was touched by someone in the dark, someone she couldn't see and then her grandfather didn't believe her. Still, this is two stories in a row where she's launched into hysterics and it's not going to be the last. I desperately wish she'd been allowed to develop out of that particular character trait. Barbara is going to get a lot more brave and adventurous before long. Why couldn't Susan be allowed to do the same?

We do see a little bit of what is going to be one of Susan's modest character threads in this episode, as she attempts to assert her independence from her grandfather's control. She insists on her story about being touched on the shoulder in the jungle despite her grandfather's attempts to argue against it (and, of course, we saw the hand, so we know she's right.) When Barbara brings up the Doctor's reliance on "scientific facts" Carole Ann Ford does a very obvious eyeroll that makes it clear this is far from the first time he's ignored her instincts or observations.

Even when Susan eventually relents in that argument it's pretty clear that she's doing so for the sake of keeping the peace with her grandfather rather than actually thinking he was right. "I'm sorry I was so silly just now," isn't saying he's right, just giving an inch to end the fight. This is backed up very quickly by how clearly validated she feels when the tapping from the outside of the TARDIS confirms her side of things.

She also chafes against her grandfather's control in another way, by siding with Ian and Barbara against him, first when they don't want to immediately explore the city and then when they want to leave the planet entirely. Indeed, I suspect it was Susan siding with them that prompted the Doctor to try the fluid link trick at all. They're not just arguing with him. They're turning his granddaughter against him!

Return of the Atmosphere!

Back in my post on An Unearthly Child, I talked about how important the concept of "atmosphere" was to my experience of Doctor Who. I also defined atmosphere, in the context of Doctor Who, as the feeling of there being something hidden behind the "normal" facade of the world. Given that definition, it might seem a bit bizarre that I would single this episode out as one that feels, to me, like it's dripping with atmosphere. After all, how "normal" can an alien world with a petrified jungle, a dead metal creature and a mysterious city be?

But, to expand on that post's definition, atmosphere in Doctor Who doesn't require a perfect base level of "normal" to operate from. It just needs that feeling that what we're seeing is only a surface and that, once scratched, there's something more wonderous and terrifying underneath. The Dead Planet certainly presents that situation.

Even before we get to the visuals, the music in this episode creates a feeling of eeriness. Tristram Cary, who created the incidental music for the episode, fills it with slightly off-kilter chords, notes that emphasize how odd and strange everything is. Cary's music will be reused several times throughout the series to good effect. I particularly liked the music during the period where Susan gets scared while in the forest. (Though I do think the actual camera shot of the hand reaching out to touch her shoulder is a bit clunky.)

Susan's plight is a good example of the way the atmosphere works in this story. This is an alien world and the characters are trying to explore it. As its entirely new to them (and the audience) they don't just have to learn what's strange about it but also have to try and figure out the "normal" of this world. The jungle is petrified. Is that the way it's supposed to be or did something unusual happen to make it that way? The dead creature is made of metal but may always have been so even when it was alive. That was its "normal."

This exploration is generally pretty peaceful, a learning experience, but there's always the feeling that there's something just outside the perception of the characters (and thus the audience) that might make exploring this planet more dangerous. Susan is followed and touched. There's a tapping on the TARDIS door from outside. A box of vials is found outside the TARDIS. Cameras follow Barbara through the city. There's a distinct feeling that the peaceful observations the TARDIS crew are making are in danger of being invaded by something more dangerous.

The characters aren't unaware of this feeling either. Barbara is on edge throughout the entire episode, screaming when she sees the metal creature and immediately refusing to investigate the city. Ian backs her up. I mentioned above that Ian is valuing the security of the party above other things but it's worth noting that security is only a concern when there's reason to believe there might be danger. Like Barbara, he clearly has the feeling that there's something hovering, just outside their view, that means them harm. Susan, of course, has an actual encounter with something, if only a brief one. But, even before the hand reaches out to touch her, we see Susan react in fear just because she's realized she's now alone in the dark jungle. Like the two schoolteachers, Susan has that feeling that there's something out there, something that might mean her harm.

About the only one who doesn't share this feeling is the Doctor. But then, as mentioned above, the Doctor's curiosity is driving his thinking as it will for...well, forever, really.

The atmosphere reaches a bit of a crescendo once the city is discovered. The incidental music continues to impress and, once they actually reach it, there's a wonderful "echo" effect to the sound design that, coupled with the little shots of the cameras on the walls, makes it clear that whatever's been hovering on the edge of their perception is about to make itself known. (Yes, I'm aware that what was observing them in the jungle and what's stalking them in the city are actually two different things. But I'm talking about the general atmospheric feeling, not the plot details.)

Once we're in the city, the party, is no longer just being observed, it's being actively stalked. As we follow Barbara through the city, we see the cameras, doors and elevators being used to "herd" her to a specific location. Jacqueline Hill emphasizes this by playing Barbara's growing panic as it becomes increasingly clear that she's being maneuvered against her will, reaching a climax with that scream.

Links to the Past/Future

Obviously, the planet they're on and its inhabitants, which we'll meet in more detail in the next episode, represent a massive link to the future of the show, but that isn't entirely clear upon first viewing. At this point, this is no more "important" an adventure than the one they just finished with the cavemen. It's only in retrospect that it becomes important (in a mere "reason the show still exists" kind of way.)

In a smaller sense, we do get some smaller links to the story's past and future in the brief discussion about how the TARDIS is programmed. To hear Susan describe it, the TARDIS is completely controllable. It just requires very specific information about its current location to fix a destination. This fits with what the Doctor said at the end of the previous episode.

Given what we know about the TARDIS' abilities in the future, this idea is somewhat suspect. We've frequently seen the Doctor, in later seasons, manage to program the TARDIS to go to specific locations without knowing all the data about where it currently resides. He simply enters coordinates in and they're on their way.

But that's the Doctor later, after centuries of experience, after countless travels and attempts to figure out how the TARDIS works. It comes gradually (he's almost never going to be able to get it to go anywhere he wants during the black & white era) and, even then, it's still often going to end up somewhere he didn't plan. Nevertheless, we know now that the kind of precise data Susan and the Doctor maintain is necessary for purposeful travel at this point...well, isn't actually necessary.

So where does that leave us in terms of their statement? Are they lying? Are they telling the truth in that they believe it to be true? Is it part of the Doctor's bluff and bluster that he's managed to convince Susan is true? I suspect a bit of a combo, particularly of those last two. When Susan describes the "big bank of computers" in the TARDIS taking over and sending the ship to a prearranged destination, she says it as if it's something she's seen happen so the idea that they're outright lying seems unlikely to me. Plus, while I can see the Doctor lying in order to maintain the illusion that he knows what he's doing, I don't see any reason for Susan to lie about it.

Given what we know later, I'd suggest that perhaps this "feed a bunch of data about your current location in order to fix a destination" thing is some sort of backup method of TARDIS navigation that can be used upon if the coordinate system malfunctions. It's just that, at this point, it's the only method the Doctor knows.

It's also yet another early hint that the Doctor stole the TARDIS: He doesn't even know how to steer it properly. He has to use the fallback approach.

Little Things

-Despite clearly indicating danger right in the beginning of the episode, the TARDIS's radiation meter obviously doesn't keep functioning later, once the the travelers return to the console room. (Either that or they're blind. It's got a pretty obvious flashing light.) This unreliability was nicely foreshadowed back in The Cave of Skulls when the Doctor opted to carry a portable Geiger counter because he didn't trust the reading from the TARDIS.

-I like the shot of the wind on Ian's hair, emphasizing that it's blowing but the tree branches aren't moving.

-The idea of a creature with metallic skin, held together by an inner magnetic field, that may have attracted its victims toward it with magnetism is actually pretty neat. It kind of amazes me that we never saw one of these things "in action" in later stories (though one may have shown up in a book/audio/comic I'm unaware of.) I get why it isn't emphasized in this particular story, considering the real monsters of the piece, but it seems like the kind of thing that would be worth a later look-in.

-Terry Nation likes to play with the Doctor not only being wrong but making a big production of being right only to have that bubble burst. His pronouncement that "the planet is dead" is followed immediately by Susan discovering the city. He insists Susan can't possibly have encountered anything living in the forest, only for the tapping on the outside of the TARDIS to prove him wrong right away. And, of course, he's ultimately wrong about the city being safe. As in the previous serial, Hartnell chooses to deliver his lines with the same level of conviction when the Doctor's wrong and when he's right and, as before, I think this is the right acting call.

-I absolutely love the city. It's gorgeous. It looks like something off the cover of a '50s pulp sci fi magazine. In fact, I love the set design of this story entirely. The jungle, despite only being a studio set, looks labyrinthine and appropriately weird. And once we're in the city, there are many subtle hints that it's designed for...a different life form than humans. The hallways are all just a bit too short for adult humans and the rounded door controls look like they're shaped for something a bit plunger like...

-The food machine sequence is interesting. In a certain sense, it's necessary to show that the TARDIS is a place that can be lived in, rather than just being transportation. This was hinted at by the fact that the Doctor and Susan had apparently been living in it on Earth but this scene, and Susan's line about showing Barbara where she can sleep, drive home the point that the TARDIS can provide the basic necessities of life for them. The food machine also stresses, for Ian and Barbara, the "alien"-ness of it all. They can eat and, indeed, the method of eating is advanced and impressive, but it's not "normal." It's likely healthier, though. You can have the taste of bacon and eggs (and presumably anything else you might want) without all the health detriments that come with such a meal like fat and cholesterol. I want one.

I also find myself wondering if Terry Nation thought the series would end up spending more time within the TARDIS than it actually does. It's very early days and Doctor Who's still figuring out its format. The idea that Who might end up having regular Star Trek-like stories in which the plot centered around the regulars within the TARDIS, rather than where the TARDIS takes them, might have seemed more on the table, necessitating a bit more explanation of what "normal" was in terms of TARDIS-life. As it turns out, there'd really only be a handful of such episodes over the decades but, as I said, this was early days.

-Security minded as he is, Ian is clearly not very genre-savvy at this point. He splits the party! That's just asking for trouble.

-The episode contains a couple clever bits of foreshadowing that the party is starting to come down with what we'll later learn is radiation sickness. Even apart from the opening shot of the radiation meter, there's Barbara's mention that she's coming down with a headache, specifically coupled with the statement that she doesn't usually get those. As they reach the city later, everyone is pointedly acting tired and fatigued, even the Doctor who, while still curious, is obviously exhausted. In addition to having actual dialogue about not feeling will, the actors make a bit of a point to huff and puff and make it clear that even conversation is becoming tiring for them. William Russell does a particularly good job with this, giving the impression that Ian is having to really push himself to keep talking because he's so tired.

-When the Doctor engages in his bluff with the fluid link, we get our first mention of the TARDIS' fault locator. Such a device makes it clear how complex the TARDIS is, that such a mechanism needs to exist to trace any fault in the system. It's not simple enough that the Doctor (or a more competent TARDIS pilot) could just open up the console and see the problem. In addition to serving the plot of this serial, the introduction of the fault locator also serves to foreshadow the next serial, as the radiation meter did this one.

-The case of vials that they find upon exiting the TARDIS toward the end of the episode is clearly meant to be important but it's also not so for this episode's plot. It's a hint of what's to come.

Cliffhanger

I've enjoyed the cliffhangers of the series thus far, but this is the first one that I feel falls into "classic cliffhanger" territory for me. The increasing tension of Barbara being herded through the city. Her rising fear as she comes to realize what's going on, especially once she becomes trapped in the elevator. And, of course, her final scream as it closes in on her.

Rumor has it that the only reason we don't see "it" in that final shot is that the they hadn't finished physical creation of the prop yet. If that rumor is true, then I think it's a bit of a happy accident. Don't get me wrong. I love the design of what's to come but that final shot of just its sucker limb approaching Barbara, is absolutely iconic.

At the end of that cliffhanger, I need to know What Happens Next...

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