Carnival of Monsters: Episode Two

EPISODE: Carnival of Monsters: Episode Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 335
STORY NUMBER: 066 TRANSMITTED: Saturday 03 February 1973
FIVE FACES OF DOCTOR WHO REPEAT: Tuesday 17 November 1981
WRITER: Robert Holmes
DIRECTOR: Barry Letts
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 9 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who Revisitations 2: Seeds of Death, Carnival of Monsters & Resurrection of the Daleks
EPISODE FORMAT: 625 video

"We will shortly be seeing the prize of my collection. The Drashigs! They are, without doubt, the most evil, the most vicious and undoubtedly the most frightening form of life in the whole of the universe!"

The giant hand holding the Tardis vanish through the upper deck of the ship. Vorg pulls a small blue Tardis shaped box from the inside of the inner workings of his scope before demonstrating it to the Inter Minor officials. He shows them the Tellurians (the humans on the boat), Ogrons & Drashigs. He explains the creatures are contained in the scope and switches back to the Bernice as the Pleiosaurus arrives. The Doctor & Jo are apprehended again as Vorg increases the violence level in that zone making Andrews challenge the Doctor to a boxing match which the Doctor easily wins allowing them to escape. They open the floorplate just as they are recaptured and Vorg lowers the violence level. Shirna tells a disbelieving Vorg that she hasn't seen the Doctor & Jo before. The Doctor & Jo escape into the inner workings of the scope which fascinate the Doctor. The officials decide that the scope contains illegally imported specimens and decide to destroy it summoning an eradicator. As it is fired the inside of the scope heats up but proves resistant to the weapon. Vorg checks the scope finding the image of a Cyberman within to be fuzzy. Kalik is angry at the eradicator's inability to work and starts plotting against his brother, president Zarb. The Doctor & Jo are trying to escape from an air duct when they are stabbed at by a giant weapon: Vorg has spotted them in the Scope's workings. Kalik, believing Vorg a spy, has the Scope searched by Orum for a transmitter to "waiting Lurman battlefleets". Orum removes the Tardis which grows to it's normal size. The Doctor & Jo get into a different part of the scope where they find themselves in a cave and exit into a marshy realm. Vorg & Shirna spot them where they are attacked by the massive carnivorous Drashigs.

This episode connects the two plot strands: The Doctor & Jo, plus the humans and other specimens are trapped in Vorg's machine. As Doctor Who fans a title like "Carnival of Monsters" makes us expect a cavalcade of the Doctor's past foes: this episode is the closest we get with a guest appearance by the Ogrons, foreshadowing their imminent reappearance in the series.

We also get a brief glimpse of the Cybermen, here making their only real appearance of the Pertwee era. They get mentioned a bit, due to UNIT's thwarting of their Invasion, and appear as a still during the Doctor's flashback in Mind of Evil but this is their only original footage filmed for Pertwee's Doctor. I don't think he disliked them as such, though he did despise the Daleks with a passion, but it's rumoured one of the production team, so either Barry Letts or Terrance Dicks, wasn't their greatest fan.

KALIK: What do you call the creatures here?
VORG: The Drashigs. My little carnivores. Ho, ho, they're great favourites with the children, you know, with their gnashing and snapping and tearing at each other.

The main monsters in the story, the Drashigs, are quite effective with the puppet models built round a real dog skull giving them their effective jawline. As a rampaging monster they do the trick nicely. Their name is an anagram of Dishrags with the sound composited from sound engineer Brian Hodgson's dog and some other noises!

Carnival of Monsters was filmed in two separate locations either side of the Thames. The SS Bernice exterior scenes were recorded on the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Robert Dundas, moored at Chatham dockyards in Kent awaiting break up. Knowing this Pertwee "salvaged" the elaborate ship's compass but had to return it after it's loss was noticed.

Meanwhile the Drashig location scenes are filmed at Tillingham Marshes and the former Cardwells Quarry making Carnival of Monsters one of the only Doctor Who stories to be filmed in Essex.

When this episode was sold to Australia it went out with a new version of the theme tune on it, arranged by Brian Hodgson for the show's tenth anniversary. However all who heard it decided this arrangement was rubbish so they continued to use the existing theme. But somehow the copy Australian television stations were sent of this episode has the newer theme on it. This edit was used for the story's VHS release, and the new theme tune also appears on an earlier edit of Frontier in Space 5, also released on VHS.

You might recognise both of the Lurmans visiting Inter Minor from Sitcoms:

Leslie Dwyer is Vorg who I remember as Mr. Partridge the Punch and Judy man in Hi-De-Hi! who died in 1986 during the production of the series necessitating a reshuffle in the cast. I hadn't realised what an extensive film career he'd had! The only other thing I'd seen him in was The Sweeney episode Trojan Bus where he plays Ted Greenhead.

His assistant Shirna was played by Cheryl Hall shortly to find fame as Shirley, the girlfriend of Wolfie Smith in Citizen Smith. She was later married to her co-star in that show, Robert Lindsay. Later in life she became involved in Labour Party politics and tells a story on the Carnival of Monsters Special Edition DVD commentary of being interviewed by Shaun Ley where she was expecting to be quizzed on the issue she was supporting and he wanted to talk about Carnival of Monsters, having gained an angle that Vorg & Shirna were effectively illegal immigrants. She too appeared in The Sweeney playing Jenny in Contact Breaker.

The Ogron seen inside The Scope is stuntman Rick Lester, who was an Ogron previously in Day of the Daleks and returns in he same role in Frontier in Space. He was previously a stunt driver in The Italian Job, a role he also fills in The Sweeney episodes Chalk and Cheese, Big Brother and Stay Lucky Eh?. In Space: 1999 he was he stunt double for Martin Landau in 6 episodes but that pales before his work on the James Bond films where he's a guard in Dr. No and then performs stunts in From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die, The Man with the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, A View to a Kill and The Living Daylights meaning he worked on the first FIFTEEN films in the series!

The Cyberman is played by Terrance Denville, who had previously worn a Cyberman costume during The Invasion. Before that he'd been a double for Captain Blade in The Faceless Ones and then played a Foot Soldier & Alien Technician in The War Games, a Waxwork visitor/replica in Spearhead from Space, a Technician & UNIT Soldier in The Silurians and a UNIT trooper in The Three Doctors. He returns as a Guard in Frontier in Space, a Spiridon in Planet of the Daleks, an an Exxilon in Death to the Daleks and an Ice Warrior in The Monster of Peladon. He plays a Technician in Moonbase 3 Departure and Arrival, Behemoth and Outsider, appears as a Russian Security Council Member in the Pierce Brosnan James Bond film GoldenEye and appears in the Miranda episode Before I Die as an Old Man.