Colony in Space (TV story)

Synopsis
The Time Lords discover that the Master has stolen their secret file on the Doomsday Weapon and decide to send the Doctor to retrieve it for them.

The TARDIS takes the Doctor and Jo to the desolate planet Uxarieus in the year 2472. There they become involved in a dispute between some beleaguered colonists and the crew of an Interplanetary Mining Corporation (IMC) spaceship over the ownership rights to the planet. The Doctor learns that the indigenous Primitives and their High Priests worship a large machine tended by a creature called the Guardian.

The Master meanwhile arrives in the guise of an Adjudicator sent from Earth to decide the fate of the planet. He forces the Doctor to take him to the Primitives' underground city, where they learn that the machine is in fact the Doomsday Weapon, capable of destroying entire planets. Its radiation emissions have brought about the decline of the Guardian's race and are also responsible for the crop failures that the colonists have been experiencing.

The Doctor persuades the Guardian to destroy the Weapon rather than let it fall into the Master's hands. The two Time Lords get clear just in time as the machine explodes, and the Master then escapes in his TARDIS. The colonists, meanwhile, attack the IMC men and force them to surrender.

Plot
to be added

Cast

 * The Doctor - Jon Pertwee
 * Jo Grant - Katy Manning
 * The Master - Roger Delgado
 * David Winton - Nicholas Pennell
 * John Robert Ashe - John Ringham
 * Eric Leeson - David Webb
 * Jane Leeson - Sheila Grant
 * Norton - Roy Skelton
 * Mary Ashe - Helen Worth
 * Martin - John Line
 * Mrs. Martin - Mitzi Webster
 * Primitive and Voice - Pat Gorman
 * Robot - John Scott Martin
 * Time Lord - Peter Forbes-Robertson
 * Time Lord - John Baker
 * Time Lord - Graham Leaman
 * Caldwell - Bernard Kay
 * Captain Dent - Morris Perry
 * Morgan - Tony Caunter
 * Holden - John Herrington
 * Allen - Stanley McGeagh
 * Long - Pat Gorman
 * Alec Leeson - John Tordoff
 * Guardian - Norman Atkyns
 * Alien Priest - Roy Heymann
 * Colonist - Pat Gorman
 * Rogers - Terry Walsh
 * Extra - Brian Gilmar
 * Extra - Valentino Musseti

Crew

 * Assistant Floor Manager - Graeme Harper
 * Costumes - Michael Burdle
 * Designer - Tim Gleeson
 * Film Cameraman - Peter Hall
 * Film Editor - William Symon
 * Incidental Music - Dudley Simpson
 * Make-Up - Jan Harrison
 * Producer - Barry Letts
 * Production Assistant - Nicholas John
 * Script Editor - Terrance Dicks
 * Special Sounds - Brian Hodgson
 * Studio Lighting - Ralph Walton
 * Studio Sound - David Hughes, Tony Millier
 * Theme Arrangement - Delia Derbyshire
 * Title Music - Ron Grainer
 * Visual Effects - Bernard Wilkie

Organizations

 * IMC has a mining contract for Uxarieus.

Planets

 * The Doctor recognises the planet Uxarieus.
 * Earth during this period is home to 100 billion people, and is polluted, with a repressive government. In a discussion between the Doctor and the Master, it is revealed that the Earth's sun will explode about 10,000,000,000 years from the point of this story.  As the Master is specifically referring  to the moment the Sun explodes, this figure may or may not be in conflict with other episodes' statements about the Solar System's future. In particular, one might wonder how this figure compares to the one given in The End of the World and The Ark''.

Story Notes

 * David Tennant was born the day after the original broadcast of Episode 2.

Ratings

 * Episode 1 - 7.6 million viewers
 * Episode 2 - 8.5 million viewers
 * Episode 3 - 9.5 million viewers
 * Episode 4 - 8.1 million viewers
 * Episode 5 - 8.8 million viewers
 * Episode 6 - 8.7 million viewers

Myths

 * The main action of this story takes place on the planet Exarius. (The name given to the planet in Malcolm Hulke's script for Episode One is Uxarieus.)

Filming Locations

 * Old Baal Clay Pit, Carclaze, Cornwall
 * BBC Television Centre (Studio 3 & 4), Shepherd's Bush, London

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors
.
 * The manner of TARDIS dematerialization and rematerialization is quite different to how it had been depicted during the 1960s. Both TARDISes in this story "pop" in and out of frame, rather than fading in and out.  Given that TARDISes would return to "fading" after this serial, the depiction here can be seen as an error.

Continuity

 * This is the first time since DW: The War Games that the TARDIS traveled to another planet.
 * From the Brigadier's perspective, the Doctor and Jo were only away from UNIT headquarters for a matter of seconds. It is thus the only televised example of Rose Tyler's admonition to her mother in World War Three that the TARDIS is "a time machine. I could go traveling around suns and planets and all the way out to the end of the universe, and by the time I get back, ten seconds would've passed.  Just ten seconds."
 * This story gives us a glimpse of Time Lords on Gallifrey. Time Lords are again depicted as wearing black and white robes, as they were in The War Games.
 * The Doctor and Jo gain entry to the Master's TARDIS using the key the Doctor obtained in Terror of the Autons. However, the Doctor appears not to have the key at the conclusion of this story.
 * This is the first time Jo Grant sees the interior of the Doctor's TARDIS.  Much of the first half of episode one revolves around Jo's adjustment to her new status as a time/space traveller.  Though having been the Doctor's companion for some time, she reveals that she never really believed that the Doctor could travel in time and space until this story.  Thus, this story has many features of the traditional "first story" for a new companion.
 * Although The Daemons followed this story in broadcast order, in many ways Day of the Daleks provides real continuity with Colony. Indeed, it is not until Day, the Season 9 opener, that we find out that the Doctor's TARDIS has not, in fact, been fixed.  Because the Doctor was more interested in tinkering with Bessie at the top of Daemons, viewers had to wait across the season break to discover that Colony was just a one-off ride in the TARDIS.
 * The Adjudicators are expanded upon in NA: Lucifer Rising and Original Sin.

DVD, Video and Other Releases
Video Releases

Released as Doctor Who: Colony in Space

Released:


 * UK November 2001 (As part of the Master box set which also contains The Time Monster)
 * Australia December 2001 (As part of the Master box set which also contains The Time Monster)
 * US January 2003 (The only place it is available separately)

Target Novelisations

 * This story was novelised as Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon in 1974 by Malcolm Hulke.