Season 10, Episode 2 | 4 parts | First broadcast: 27 January – 17 February 1973 | Writer: Robert Holmes | Director: Barry Letts
Cast
- Jon Pertwee as the Doctor
- Katy Manning as Jo Grant
- Cheryl Hall as Shirna
- Michael Wisher as Kalik
Summary
The TARDIS materialises inside a miniaturised time-and-space “scope” device, a portable travelling entertainment used by an itinerant showman to display captured creatures and unwitting humans to a paying alien audience. As the Doctor and Jo attempt to escape the scope’s shifting environments, from a 1920s ocean liner to a jungle full of predators, they become entangled in political intrigue among the device’s alien operators back on their home world.
Interesting Facts
- This is one of Doctor Who’s most self-referential stories, structured as satire of the series’ own format and the ethics of entertainment through captivity.
- The story alternates between the miniature “scope” world and a full-scale alien society outside it, an unusually ambitious dual narrative structure.
- It marked Robert Holmes’s return to the series after several years away, beginning a run of scripts that would define much of 1970s Doctor Who.
- The tyrannosaurus-like Drashig creatures created for the jungle sequences became one of the more memorable monster designs of the era despite limited screen time.
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