City of Death (TV story)

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While taking in the sights of Paris in 1979, the Doctor and Romana sense that someone is tampering with time. Who is the mysterious Count Scarlioni? Why does he seem to have counterparts scattered through time? And just how many copies of the Mona Lisa did Leonardo da Vinci paint?

For a detailed synopsis, see City of Death Synopsis.

Cast

Fourth Doctor: Tom Baker
Romana II: Lalla Ward
Scaroth / Count Scarlioni / Captain Tancredi: Julian Glover
Countess Scarlioni: Catherine Schell
Fyodor Nikolai Kerensky: David Graham
Hermann: Kevin Flood
Duggan: Tom Chadbon
Soldier: Peter Halliday
Art Lovers: Eleanor Bron, John Cleese
Louvre Guide: Pamela Stirling

Crew

Story Notes

The story is set in Paris, and was the first Doctor Who serial to feature footage filmed on location in a foreign country.
The title is possibly a play-on-words of Cité de l'amour (City of Love, as Paris is often known), and Cité de la morte (City of Death), the pronunciation of which is very similar.
Working titles for this story included Curse of the Sephiroth and A Gamble with Time.
The script is credited to "David Agnew", a department pseudonym used when members of the production team had to write the script rather than a contracted scriptwriter. In this case, the original scriptwriter for A Gamble with Time, David Fisher, was undergoing a divorce and was unable to complete the serial. As a result, Graham Williams and Douglas Adams rewrote it under the Agnew by-line.

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The Doctor and Romana II admire the Mona Lisa.

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Eleanor Bron and John Cleese admire the exquisite aesthetics of the TARDIS.

The story originally involved the Countess using Scarlioni's bracelet to rig the roulette wheels at casinos in Paris and Monte Carlo in order to fund her husband's time experiments. However, Graham Williams ordered that this subplot be removed, to avoid children getting any wrong ideas of gambling.
"David Agnew" had written once before for the series, in The Invasion of Time, where the pseudonym was used to hide the identities of Graham Williams and then-script editor Anthony Read.
Due to Adams's influence, the script has his distinctive brand of humour and dialogue. Adams reused part of the story's plot for Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (see also Shada).
Adams appears in an uncredited cameo as a man having a drink in a bar.
K9 does not appear in this story, but no explanation is given for its absence.
Romana mentions a great art gallery of the galaxy named the Braxiatel Collection. The owner of this collection, a Time Lord named Irving Braxiatel, first appears in the spin-off novel Theatre of War by Justin Richards and thereafter in the Bernice Summerfield novels and audios, as well as the Gallifrey audio series.
Due to the ongoing ITV strike, all episodes of this serial, along with the previous Destiny of the Daleks, received very high ratings. This reached a peak with Episode 4, which got 16.1 million viewers, making it the highest rated Doctor Who episode ever. It is also very highly rated on fan polls, often cited as the best Doctor Who serial with which to introduce non-fans to the series.
Features guest appearances by Julian Glover and David Graham, and cameo appearances by Eleanor Bron and John Cleese. Bron and Cleese both attempted to have their performances credited to pseudonyms, but the Radio Times declined.
This is one of five Doctor Who serials that were never novelised by Target Books as they were unable to come to an agreement with Douglas Adams that would have allowed him or another writer to adapt the script. A fan group in New Zealand did publish an unofficial novelisation of the story [1]. A significant portion of the plot was also used as the basis for Adams’ own novel, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.

Continuity

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The face of Scaroth appears on an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic scroll.

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The Jagaroth ship.

The Doctor's TARDIS is still equipped with a randomiser, which sets co-ordinates for materialization randomly. The device was installed in order to throw the Black Guardian off of the trail of Romana and the Doctor in case the being desired revenge over the Key to Time incident in The Armageddon Factor. The Doctor is, however, still able to steer the TARDIS as usual if he chooses, as is shown by his short trip to the year 1505 and back to 1979.