Season 13, Episode 4 | 4 parts | First broadcast: 22 November – 13 December 1975 | Writer: Terry Nation | Director: Barry Letts
Cast
- Tom Baker as the Doctor
- Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith
- Milton Johns as Guy Crayford
- Martin Friend as Chedaki
Summary
Returning to the sleepy English village of Devesham, the Doctor and Sarah Jane find it eerily deserted, its inhabitants behaving like lifeless automatons, and soon discover the entire village is an elaborate replica built by the reptilian Kraals as a rehearsal for a full-scale invasion of Earth. At the heart of the plot is Guy Crayford, a supposedly lost astronaut manipulated into believing he owes his survival to the Kraals, whose leader Styggron intends to unleash a lethal virus on the real Earth once the android invasion rehearsal succeeds. The Doctor must convince Crayford of the deception before the Kraals’ duplicate village becomes the blueprint for humanity’s downfall.
Interesting Facts
- The story’s unsettling “replica village” premise, with android doubles standing in for the real population, gives it a distinct science-fiction paranoia quite different from the season’s gothic horror stories.
- It marks one of Sarah Jane Smith’s final regular serials before Elisabeth Sladen’s departure from the series shortly afterward.
- Writer Terry Nation, best known for creating the Daleks, here created the one-off Kraal race instead, who never returned to the series.
- Eagle-eyed viewers noted a visible seam on Sarah Jane’s android duplicate’s forehead in one scene, an effects error that has since become a well-known piece of fan trivia.
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