The Deadly Assassin (TV story)

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Synopsis

Plot

"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…"

Whilst at the controls of the TARDIS, the Doctor has a premonition of the assassination of the 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, 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.

File:Vlcsnap-72841.jpg
Castellan Spandrell (George Pravda)

Cast

Crew

References

Gallifrey

Gallifreyan artefacts

Gallifreyan Chapters

  • Prydonians the 'notoriously devious' sect to whom the Doctor belongs, colour coded scarlet and orange).
  • Arcalians wear green.
  • Patrexes 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 only TV story to feature the Doctor without a companion, however DW: Midnight features the Doctor for the majority of the story, only featuring the companion at the beginning and end of the story.
  • 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 of Goth did

Continuity

DVD and Video Releases

VHS

  • It was released in episodic format in the UK in October 1991. It was also re-released & 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.
  • In the later part of 2009 but as of January 2009 no date has been specified.

Novelisation

Deadly Assassin novel.jpg
Main article: Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin

External Links

Template:Season 14

v • e
The Master stories
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According to one account, the Master had the appearance of Roger Delgado while on Gallifrey. According to another, he had Anthony Ainley's likeness. According to another one, the one with James Dreyfus's appearance was the incarnation who ran away from Gallifrey.

Divided Loyalties, A Brief History of Time Lords and The Legions of Death feature, or otherwise acknowledge, the War Chief, but in the process contradicted the notion put forward by other stories that he was an incarnation of the Master.

One account suggests that the incarnation portrayed by Roger Delgado may be the same as the one portrayed by Peter Pratt while some others distinguish them.

According to one account, the incarnation portrayed by Gordon Tipple is the one portrayed by Anthony Ainley, while some others state that the Ainley one was already lost by then.

While fighting to extend his life at the end of his regeneration cycle, many bodies were possessed by the Beevers incarnation, but all kept somehow reverting to his real being until he finally regenerated into the MacQueen one. Hence, these sections cannot be strictly chronological
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