Season 1, Episode 8 | 6 parts | First broadcast: 8 August – 12 September 1964 | Writer: Dennis Spooner | Director: Henric Hirsch
Cast
- William Hartnell as the Doctor
- Carole Ann Ford as Susan Foreman
- William Russell as Ian Chesterton
- Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright
Summary
The TARDIS arrives outside Paris in 1794, in the final, bloody days of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. Ian, Barbara, and Susan are separated from the Doctor and swept up among the Revolution’s prisoners, while the Doctor, posing as a regional official, works his way toward the heart of Robespierre’s regime to engineer their escape before the guillotine claims them.
Interesting Facts
- This closing serial of Season 1 is the last purely historical story until “Black Orchid” in 1982, and one of only a handful in the show’s history with no science-fiction element at all.
- Two of its six episodes, “The Tyrant of France” and “A Bargain of Necessity,” remain missing from the BBC archive and exist only in reconstructed animated or telesnap form.
- Director Henric Hirsch collapsed from exhaustion during production of one episode, requiring floor manager Douglas Camfield to direct part of it uncredited.
- The historical figure Napoleon Bonaparte makes a brief cameo appearance near the story’s end.
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