The Awakening (TV story)

"Doctor, the Malus!"

- Tegan

Synopsis
The Doctor, Tegan, and Turlough arrive in Little Hodcombe, where the townspeople's' re-enactments of English Civil War battles are causing a dormant entity, the Malus, to re-awaken.

Part One:
On July 13, 1643, two forces came to the village of Little Hodcombe during the English Civil War and destroyed each other. As the story begins, a group of Roundheads are riding horses in the village of Little Hodcombe, with little regard to the villagers around them. Only it is not 1643, it is 1984.

A schoolteacher, Jane Hampden, is convinced that her fellow villagers, led by the town’s leader, Sir George Hutchinson, have taken their reenactment of a series of war games too far. Hutchinson attempts to assure her that the games are a harmless event which are merely to celebrate the English Civil War. When Hampden asks him to stop the games, Hutchinson ignores her.

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor promises to take his companion, Tegan, to 1984 so she could spend some time with her grandfather, Andrew Verney. The Doctor sets the coordinates to Little Hodcombe, where Verney resides. However, the TARDIS experiences some turbulence and arrives in what appears to be a structurally unstable church. The Doctor, Tegan and Turlough, while watching on the scanner, see a man in 17th Century clothing, fleeing from the church and the Doctor dashes out to help him. However, the man has now vanished. Tegan is convinced that they have landed in the wrong time zone. However, Turlough tells her that he had checked the TARDIS coordinates and they were in 1984. As the Time Lord and his companions continue pursue the man, smoke starts to billow from a crack in the wall.

Eventually, the three travellers are captured by Captain Joseph Willow and taken to Sir George Hutchinson. The Doctor and his companions are first brought before Hampden and Colonel Ben Woolsey, who apologizes for the poor treatment that they received. Hutchinson arrives and explains to the Doctor that the town is celebrating the anniversary of the Battle of Little Hodcombe and then he urges him to join the celebration. Tegan then explains that they have come to this village to see her grandfather, Andrew Verney. She is informed that her grandfather is missing, and runs outside the room, upset. The Doctor follows but loses her. Tegan, still upset, is crying when someone steals her purse. She tries to get it back and she runs into a barn where she finds the ghost of an old man.

The Doctor returns to the church and meets a 17th Century peasant, Will Chandler, who emerges from a wall. He has been hidden in a priest hole and believes the year to be 1643. Turlough eventually rescues Tegan from the barn and they return to the TARDIS, where they see a sparkly projection on one of the walls. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Will investigate the church. Tegan and Turlough leave the TARDIS and they are re-captured. Turlough is locked in a building with Verney. Willow forces Tegan to change into a 17th century costume. He informs her that she is to become the Queen of the May.

The Doctor and Will continue to investigate. Eventually they find a secret passage back to Ben Woolsey’s living room under a slab marked with a picture of a creature that Will identifies as the Malus. Coming the other way through the passage, the Doctor and Will meet up with Hampden, who found the passage’s other end by accident after being locked in Colonel Wolsey's office. They avoid Hutchinson, who has followed Jane down the passage, and the Doctor finds a small ball of metal. The Doctor identifies the metal as “tinclavic,” a metal “mined by the Terileptils on the planet Raaga for the almost exclusive use of the people of Hakol,” a planet in the “star system Rifta,” where “psychic energy is a force to be harnessed.” Returning to the church, the Doctor and Hampden are astonished when a massive alien face pushes its way through the crack on the wall...

Part Two:
The creature roars and starts spewing smoke. They manage to escape from the psychic projection of a cavalier, and head back to the house via the tunnel. The Doctor realises that the Malus in the church was discovered by Verney and Hutchinson. The latter tried to exploit the creature, but instead, the creature began to use him by organizing the war games. He deduces that the psychic energy released by the war games has fed the Malus. The Doctor and Jane again try to persuade Hutchinson to stop the games, as the final battle will be for real. He refuses and orders Woolsey to kill the Doctor. However, once Hutchinson leaves, Woolsey joins forces with the Doctor.

The Queen of the May is taken in a horse-drawn cart towards the village green, where she is to be burned. When the cart arrives, Hutchinson suddenly noticed that the Queen is not Tegan, but a straw dummy that has been put in her place by Woolsey. Hutchinson becomes angry and he orders his men to kill Woolsey and the others. Will appears in the nick of time and uses a flame torch to cause a distraction which allows the Doctor, Hampden, Woolsey and Tegan to escape and get back to the TARDIS. The Doctor locks the signal conversion unit on the frequency of the psychic energy feeding the Malus, hoping to be able to direct it. Willow and a trooper try in vain to break their way into the TARDIS, and Turlough and Verney knock them unconscious with lumps of masonry. The Doctor succeeds in blocking the energy, and the projection of the Malus in the TARDIS dies. The real Malus, in an act of desperation, attempts to drain as much psychic energy from the villagers as possible. He creates a corporeal projection of three roundheads who try to kill the Doctor, Woolsey, Tegan, Turlough, Hampden, Verney and Will. However, the dazed and confused trooper stumbles from the TARDIS and into the main church area, becomes surrounded by the roundheads, and they decapitate him, then vanish.

Hutchinson arrives and holds them all at gunpoint. When the Doctor tries to talk Hutchinson out of the thrall of the Malus, Willow attacks the group. In the scuffle, Will pushes Hutchinson into the mouth of the Malus, destroying the Malus's medium. Realizing it has failed, the Malus prepares to destroy itself and everything around it. Subsequently the church begins to collapse and the Doctor leads the others, including Willow, into the safety of the TARDIS.

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor's companions are surprised to see Will still among them. The Doctor explains that he must have been wrong in his assumption that Will was a psychic projection. He then says that the Malus must have created a temporal rift which allowed Will to slip into the future. The Time Lord then says that he will take Will back to 1643. Tegan objects and ask the Doctor to allow her some time to visit her grandfather. The Doctor is initially disgruntled but he is persuaded to stay in Little Hodcombe for a while for a rest.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Peter Davison
 * Tegan - Janet Fielding
 * Turlough - Mark Strickson
 * Jane Hampden - Polly James
 * Sir George Hutchinson - Denis Lill
 * Colonel Wolsey - Glyn Houston
 * Joseph Willow - Jack Galloway
 * Will Chandler - Keith Jayne
 * Trooper - Christopher Saul
 * Andrew Verney - Frederick Hall

Crew

 * Assistant Floor Manager - Marcus D F White
 * Costumes - Jackie Southern
 * Designer - Barry Newbury
 * Film Cameraman - Paul Wheeler
 * Film Editor - M A C Adams
 * Incidental Music - Peter Howell
 * Make-Up - Ann Ailes
 * Producer - John Nathan-Turner
 * Production Assistant - Rosemary Parsons
 * Production Associate - June Collins
 * Script Editor - Eric Saward
 * Special Sounds - Dick Mills
 * Studio Lighting - Peter Catlett
 * Studio Sound - Martin Ridout
 * Theme Arrangement - Peter Howell
 * Title Music - Ron Grainer
 * Visual Effects - Tony Harding

Story Notes

 * This story had the working titles of; War Game, Poltergeist.
 * A scene involving the Doctor's robotic companion, Kamelion, was filmed for this serial but cut before transmission. It would have been the character's first appearance since The King's Demons; ultimately the character would not appear again until Planet of Fire.
 * Will Chandler was considered to be a new companion, but Eric Saward and John Nathan-Turner felt viewers might become tired of him.

Ratings

 * Part One - 7.9 million viewers
 * Part Two - 6.6 million viewers

Myths
to be added

Filming Locations

 * Tarrant Monkton, Dorset
 * Shapwick, Dorset
 * Martin, Hampshire
 * Damer's Farm, Martin Cross, Hampshire
 * St Bartholomew's Church, Shapwick, Dorset
 * Bishops Court Farm, Dorset
 * Martin Down, Martin, Hampshire
 * BBC Television Centre (TC6), Shepherd's Bush, London

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

 * As Tegan notes, the Doctor seems to forget the reason that they went to the town in the first place.
 * Why did the Malus not finish the job it was sent to do back during the real civil war? Why did it become dorment if it had the power to heighten aggressive behaviour and perpetuate the conflict?
 * The entrance to the underground passageway in the church, operates by simply pressing the face of the Malus down. Surely not the best method of concealment for a secret door in the form of a floor slab? Anyone might step on it!

Continuity

 * The Malus, and its companion probe craft hinted at in the dialogue of the story, are reintroduced later in PDA: The Hollow Men and Last of the Gaderene.

Timeline

 * This story occurs after RT: Birth of a Renegade
 * This story occurs before PDA: The King of Terror

DVD and Video Releases
Released on video in episodic format along side Frontios, not yet released on DVD.
 * Editing completed by Doctor Who Restoration Team.

Novelisation

 * Main article: The Awakening (novelisation)


 * Novelised by Eric Pringle in 1985.