The Krotons: Episode Three

EPISODE: The Krotons: Episode Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 230
STORY NUMBER: 047 TRANSMITTED: Saturday 11 January 1969
FIVE FACES OF DOCTOR WHO REPEAT: Wednesday 11 November 1981
WRITER: Robert Holmes
DIRECTOR: David Maloney
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Peter Bryant
RATINGS: 7.5 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The Krotons

"You have no value. You will be dispersed!"

The Krotons cut the power to the machine interrogating Jamie. They track the Doctor & Zoe to the Tardis. Eelek, the council deputy, goes to see Beta hoping to recruit him help them fight the Krotons. He tells Beta that the Doctor & Zoe then Jamie have gone into the Krotons' machine. Eelek tells him not to obey council chief Selris but to obey him instead. One of the two Krotons is dispatched from their ship, the Dynatrope, to fetch the Doctor & Zoe. Jamie is interrogated about the Tardis, but it decides that he has no value. Selris tells Thara that the Doctor, Zoe & Jamie have all have gone into machine. Thara tells him Eelek has taken over as council leader and is going to try to overthrow the Krotons. The Kroton explains to Jamie that the Dynatrope needs high brains for it's power transfer. It tells him that they do not die, merely exhaust and revert to their base compounds. The Doctor emerges from the Tardis having analysed the liquid he took from the Krotons' ship and deduced that it's based on Tellurium. Outside the Tardis the Doctor is looking for sulphurous rocks when the Kroton finds them demanding that they return to the Dynatrope. Back at the Krotons' ship Jamie seizes the Krotons' weapon and attacks the remaining Kroton with it, which causes the other Kroton to loose contact with the Dynatrope which is directing it. Hearing what has happened, the Doctor realises that the Krotons can't see in bright light. Once communication is regained the Kroton attacks the Tardis with it's gas weapon leaving no trace of the Doctor's ship then returns to the Dynatrope reversing it's course. A short while later the Tardis materialises a short way up a hill. The Doctor says he has set the Hostile Action Displacement System. At the Gond city Eelek plans the Gonds' attack on the Krotons. Inside the Dynatrope the Krotons' decide that the high brains must be recaptured before they exhaust time in 3 hours time. The Doctor & Zoe return to the city and learn from Vana and Thara what is happening. The Gonds start to attack the machine's supports. The Doctor gets Beta to process his collected sulphur using instructions he has left. An alert sounds in the Krotons' ship, the Dynatrope is now out of balance. The Doctor goes to stop the Gonds but their work has undermined the cities foundations which starts to collapse burying the Doctor under rubble.

A nice little episode that made an impact on me the first time I saw it with the sequence where the Kroton attacks the Tardis

ZOE: Oh Doctor, the Tardis!
DOCTOR: Yes.
ZOE: Well, now what shall we do?
DOCTOR: Well, there's nothing we can do till that wretched Kroton moves away.

It causes you for a brief moment to think that the Tardis has actually been destroyed by the Kroton before it rematerialises on a nearby cliff ledge!

ZOE: Look, it's all right again!
DOCTOR: Yes, what a stupid place to land. You can tell that the Captain is not at the helm, can't you?
ZOE: You knew it would vanish like that, didn't you?
DOCTOR: Well it only does that, you see, if I remember to set the HADS.
ZOE: The what?
DOCTOR: The HADS. The Hostile Action Displacement System. If the Tardis is attacked, it automatically dematerialises. Now, I think it's safe for us to move now.
ZOE: Oh, to move where?
DOCTOR: Well, er, we've got to tell the Gonds that we're all right, haven't we? And Jamie'll be worried. Come along, now. Carefully.

We also find out why The Krotons have been taking the Gonds brightest & best:

JAMIE: Zoe and the Doctor, what are you going to do with them?
KROTON: They are needed for the Dynatrope.
JAMIE: Dynatrope? That's this machine, then?
KROTON: One six eight vector four.
JAMIE: Well, why does it need them? And why have you been killing the Gonds?
KROTON: The Dynatrope needs high brains for transfer power. The Gonds have no high brains.
JAMIE: Aye, and that makes it all right to kill them, does it?
KROTON: That is procedure. Radius one six three vector four.

They're using the intelligent being to somehow power their spaceship!

This serial introduces us to the acting talents of Philip Madoc.

He'd already been in Daleks - Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., the second Doctor Who film, as Brockley and one of my earliest Doctor Who memories is of him being exterminated in the shed.

In this story he plays the treacherous Eelek, deputy leader of the council.

BETA: Selris should be here. He's still the council leader, or am I mistaken.
AXUS: You are mistaken.
EELEK: Selris is old. In time of war we need a strong leader.
AXUS: And Eelek has taken command.
BETA: So at last you've achieved your ambition, eh?
EELEK: Yes, and I have the support of the whole council.
BETA: It must be quite a change for you to feel popular.
EELEK: And there is a limit to what I will take from you.
BETA: I'm wondering just how popular you'll be when hundreds of our people have been killed. Do you want a repetition of the massacre we suffered when the Krotons first came here?
EELEK: Today we have slings and fireballs. Weapons that will destroy the strongest building to rubble
BETA: Have you ever looked at the wasteland? Nothing grows there even to this day. It smells of death. Compared with their kind of weapons, I tell you we still only have clubs and stones.

After this story he'll be back as two of the most memorable Doctor Who villains. First he's the War Lord in two stories time in The War Games which is also directed by David Maloney, taking charge of his second story here, and then as Doctor Solon in The Brain of Morbius before appearing as the less villainous Fenner in Power of Kroll.

He's been in loads of television including UFO as Straker's ex wife's new partner in A Question Of Priorities and the first episode of Space: 1999, Breakaway, as Koenig's predecessor Commander Gorski. I recently saw him in Midsomer Murdersplaying Barnaby's former (Welsh) DCI in The Axeman Cometh, a barking episode involving a rock group. But not half as barking as Country Matters is! Those are just the ones off the top of my head: checking IMDB also found me an Out of This World, as George Mathias in Target Generation, five roles in The Avengers, another UFO as Captain Steven in Destruction, The Sweeney as Det. Supt. Pettiford in Golden Fleece, Porridge as Williams in Disturbing the Peace and Survivors as Max Kershaw in The Chosen.

He's got a talent for playing German officers and in this role he can be seen in one of the most repeated clips on television. He plays the commanding officer of the U-Boat crew captured by the Walmington-on-Sea home guard in the Dad's Army episode "The Deadly Attachment".

U-Boat Captain: I am making notes, Captain, and your name will go on the list; and when we win the war you will be brought to account.
Mainwaring: You can write what you like, You're not going to win the war!
U-Boat Captain: Oh yes we are.
Mainwaring: Oh no you're not.
U-Boat Captain: Oh yes we are!
Pike: Whistle while you work, Hitler is a twerp, he's half-barmy, so's his army, whistle while you work!
U-Boat Captain: Your name will also go on the list! What is it?
Mainwaring: Don't tell him Pike!

A special feature about Philip Madoc's career can be found on the Power of Kroll disc in the Key To Time DVD boxset. He died on 5th March 2012.

Richard Ireson plays Eelek's henchman Axus. He'd been in The Mind Robber as a Soldier. You can hear him in Star Cops voicing Mike in Conversations with the Dead.

James Cairncross plays Beta, described as the controller of science in the first episode. He'd previously appeared as Lemaitre in The Reign of Terror.

Beta is involved in a horrendous continuity mix up towards the end of this episode when it appears that Beta is in his lab working on the sulphur and under the city undermining the Dynatrope at the same time!