The Deadly Assassin (TV story)

Synopsis
"Through the millennia, the Time Lords of Gallifrey led a life of peace and ordered calm, protected against all threats from lesser civilisations by their great power. But this was to change. Suddenly and terribly, the Time Lords faced the most dangerous crisis in their long history…"

Plot
Whilst at the controls of the TARDIS, the Doctor has a premonition of the assassination of the Lord President of the Time Lords within the Panopticon on Gallifrey. And the assassin appears to be...the Doctor himself. Shocked, he staggers around the console room and collapses to the floor.

The Doctor arrives on Gallifrey, where he is accused of the assassination of the Time Lord President. Investigating with the aid of Co-ordinator Engin and Castellan Spandrell, he discovers that this is part of a plot hatched by his old adversary the Master.

Having used up all twelve of his regenerations, the Master is now a wizened husk. He is seeking to control the presidency in order to obtain the official regalia, the Sash and Rod of Rassilon, which are really keys to the Eye of Harmony, the source of all the Time Lords' power.

The Doctor links his mind to the Amplified Panatropic Computer Net, containing the accumulated wisdom of the Time Lords, in the hope of tracking the Master down. In the virtual reality of the Matrix, he finds himself in a life-or-death struggle with a hooded opponent. The Doctor proves the stronger and his opponent is revealed as Chancellor Goth, the leading presidential candidate, whom the Master has been using as a puppet. Following his defeat by the Doctor, Goth dies.

The Master meanwhile seizes the Sash and Rod of Rassilon and starts to access the Eye of Harmony, located beneath the floor of the Panopticon meeting hall, in the hope of drawing off enough energy to enable himself to regenerate. The Doctor manages to stop him before Gallifrey is destroyed, and the Master falls down one of the fissures that have opened up in the floor.

The Doctor then departs in the TARDIS, unaware that the Master has survived his fall and escaped to fight another day.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Tom Baker
 * The Master - Peter Pratt
 * Cardinal Borusa - Angus MacKay
 * Castellan Spandrell - George Pravda
 * Chancellor Goth - Bernard Horsfall
 * Commander Hilred - Derek Seaton
 * Commentator Runcible - Hugh Walters
 * Co-ordinator Engin - Erik Chitty
 * Gold Usher - Maurice Quick
 * Solis - Peter Mayock
 * The President - Llewellyn Rees
 * Time Lord - John Dawson
 * Time Lord - Michael Bilton
 * Computer Voice - Helen Blatch

Crew

 * Assistant Floor Manager - Linda Graeme
 * Costumes - James Acheson, Joan Ellacott
 * Designer - Roger Murray-Leach
 * Fight Arranger - Terry Walsh
 * Film Cameraman - Fred Hamilton
 * Film Editor - Ian McKendrick
 * Incidental Music - Dudley Simpson
 * Make-Up - Jean Williams
 * Producer - Philip Hinchcliffe
 * Production Assistant - Nicholas John
 * Production Unit Manager - Chris D'Oyly-John
 * Script Editor - Robert Holmes
 * Special Sounds - Dick Mills
 * Studio Lighting - Brian Clemett
 * Studio Sound - Clive Gifford
 * Theme Arrangement - Delia Derbyshire
 * Title Music - Ron Grainer
 * Visual Effects - Len Hutton, Peter Day

Gallifrey

 * The Doctor arrives on Presidential Resignation Day.
 * The Doctor invokes Article 17 of the Constitution.
 * References are made to The Book of the Old Time and the Old Times.
 * Shobogans are hooligans on Gallifrey.

Gallifreyan artefacts

 * The APC Net is part of (or possibly separate from) The Matrix.
 * The Eye of Harmony sits below the Citadel on Gallifrey, Rassilon was one of the creators of it.

Gallifreyan Chapters

 * Prydonians, the 'notoriously devious' sect to whom the Doctor belongs, colour-coded scarlet and orange.
 * Arcalians, who wear green.
 * Patrexes, who wear heliotrope

Story Notes

 * Bernard Horsfall previously played Guilliver in The Mind Robber, one of the Time Lords in The War Games and a Thal Taron in Planet of the Daleks.
 * Roger Murray-Leach reused his symbol from Revenge of the Cybermen as the Seal of Rassilon.
 * Mary Whitehouse complained particularly about the end of Part 3, with the Doctor being drowned, so much so the BBC edited their master tape (the episode was preserved albeit in lower quality in international copies).
 * The story had a working title of The Dangerous Assassin.
 * The title is a tautology - an assassin is, by definition, deadly. This redundancy was used in the spoof The Curse of Fatal Death.
 * This is the first TV story to feature the Doctor without a companion, and the only one to occur during the 1963-89 original series. The 1996 telefilm and revival series would feature the Doctor on occasion collaborating with "one-off" companions (such as Donna Noble in The Runaway Bride), and in Midnight, the Doctor has an adventure by himself, away from his companion. As of the 2008 episode The Next Doctor, the Doctor is travelling alone, but is expected to continue working with one-off companions. All that said, The Deadly Assassin remains unique as the only televised Doctor Who adventure to date in which there is no companion or companion-surrogate at all.
 * This story features an exclusively male cast.
 * This is the first story set entirely on Gallifrey.
 * This is the only story where every character is of the same race (Gallifreyan).
 * This story featured the first use of narration, by Tom Baker which began at the beginning of the first episode;
 * Through the millennia, the Time Lords of Gallifrey led a life of peace and ordered calm, protected against all threats from lesser civilisations by their great power. But this was to change. Suddenly, and terribly, the Time Lords faced the most dangerous crisis in their long history...

Ratings

 * Part 1 - 11.8 million viewers
 * Part 2 - 12.1 million viewers
 * Part 3 - 13.0 million viewers
 * Part 4 - 11.8 million viewers

Myths
to be added

Filming Locations

 * Betchworth Quarry, Pebblehill Road, Betchworth, Surrey
 * Wycombe Air Park, Clay Lane, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire
 * Royal Alexander and Albert School, Rocky Lane, Merstham, Surrey
 * BBC Television Centre (TC3 and TC8), Shepherd's Bush, London

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

 * If the Time Lords summoned the Doctor back to Gallifrey, why does no one know who he is? They didn't. The Master and Goth did.


 * Why don't the Time Lords who the Master kills regenerate? The Staser weapons used by the Time Lords are designed to inhibit regeneration.


 * Surely the high-ranking Time Lords are already aware of the Master since the high-council have both warned the Doctor regarding (See Terror of the Autons), and sent the Doctor after (See Colony in Space) him in previous stories. In fact Borusa should know him personally since he must have encountered him while teaching the Doctor, with whom he was also at school. (The Master's biographical data had been purged, he was in control of the Matrix, and he had the Chancellor working on his side. Removing most official records of his existence would not have been difficult. Some individual members of the High Council may or may not have known of him, but it's doubtful that the Castellan would have questioned all of them in the time allotted.)


 * The technology on Gallifrey seems somewhat low-tech for such a powerful race. The capitol has comparable surveillance, security and forensic facilities to Earth in the 1970's. (The Time Lord's policy of isolationism has led to some forms of technological stagnation. Even the Doctor remarks, when discussing the APC, that it would be disregarded as "junk" in some parts of the universe.)


 * It is not explained how the Master discovered the truth about the real uses of the Rod and Sash of Rassilon, etc. when no-one else seems to know. (He did have access to the forgotten depths of the Matrix records when he was stealing the plans for the doomsday weapon. See DW: Colony in Space).


 * How could all the power of the Time Lords devolve from the Eye of Harmony, and none of them be aware of it? When the Doctor said that, he didn't mean that Gallifrey is still powered by the Eye, only that it had been the initial source of power the first Time Lords had used and had since been forgotten.


 * Considering Runcible was only stabbed, and with no extra wound to indicate being stabbed in both hearts, shouldn't he have regenerated? (The Master clearly did not want Runcible left alive, so obviously killed him in such a way that regeneration would not have been an option. He may have inhibited regeneration using something like a staser, or Runcible may simply not have been able to regenerate.)

Continuity

 * DW: The Keeper of Traken, Logopolis, and Castrovalva follow the Master's continuing quest for a new body, whilst The Five Doctors continues on this idea, as does the 1996 telefilm.
 * PDA: Last of the Gaderene and EDA: Legacy of the Daleks explain how the Master became how he appears. However, in terms of televised adventures, there is no indication that the Master seen here is necessarily the same incarnation of the Master as last seen portrayed by Roger Delgado in DW: Frontier in Space.
 * Goth's brother Rath appears in NA: Blood Harvest.
 * Engin reappears in EDA: The Eight Doctors.
 * DW: The Sound of Drums recalls some artistic elements of this story, particuarly the Time Lord collars introduced in this story as well as the Seal of Rassilon.
 * This story features the first voice over at the beginning of the episode, the second occurrence is DW: Doctor Who: The TV Movie.
 * This story establishes that Time Lords do use proper names on their homeworld (previous uses have either been aliases, or of ambiguous origin such as Morbius; and rank-and-file Time Lords seen stories like DW: The War Games and The Three Doctors had gone unnamed).
 * Also established in this story is the fact that Time Lords are allotted twelve regenerations and thirteen lives, which becomes a major plot element hereafter, referenced in stories such as DW: Mawdryn Undead and the 1996 TV movie. It also serves as the first on-screen contradiction of the "mystery Doctors" allegedly seen in DW: The Brain of Morbius.

Timeline
For the Doctor:
 * This story occurs after: DW: The Hand of Fear
 * This story occurs before: TN: Ghost Ship

For the Master:
 * This story occurs after: EDA: Legacy of the Daleks
 * This story occurs before: DW: The Keeper of Traken

DVD and Video Releases
VHS
 * It was released in episodic format in the UK in October 1991. It was also re-released &amp; remastered for the W H Smith exclusive Time Lord Collection in 2002 with a better quality freeze frame cliffhanger for Episode 3.
 * This story was released in the US March 1989 in edited omnibus format.

DVD
 * The DVD was released on 11th May 2009 in the UK.
 * Special Features include;


 * Commentary by Tom Baker, Bernard Horsfall and Philip Hinchcliffe
 * The Matrix Revisited Cast, crew and critics look back at the making of this story, featuring director David Maloney, designer Roger Murray-Leach and the founder of the National Viewers and Listeners Association, Mary Whitehouse
 * The Gallifreyan Candidate A look at Richard Condon’s novel The Manchurian Candidate, a major influence on the plot of The Deadly Assassin
 * The Frighten Factor What exactly is Doctor Who's "Frighten Factor"? A diverse panel of experts try to answer the question
 * Radio Times Billings Listings for this story presented in a PDF file [DVD-ROM – PC/Mac]
 * Photo Gallery
 * Coming Soon Trailer
 * Production Information Subtitles
 * Easter Egg

Notes:
 * Editing for DVD release completed by Doctor Who Restoration Team.

Novelisation

 * Main article: Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin


 * Novelised as Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin by Terrance Dicks in 1977.