Season 3, Episode 3 | 12 parts | First broadcast: 13 November 1965 – 29 January 1966 | Writer: Terry Nation and Dennis Spooner | Director: Douglas Camfield
Cast
- William Hartnell as the Doctor
- Peter Purves as Steven Taylor
- Adrienne Hill as Katarina
- Jean Marsh as Sara Kingdom
- Nicholas Courtney as Bret Vyon
- Peter Butterworth as the Monk
Summary
Some months after a Dalek scout ship was detected in the prologue episode “Mission to the Unknown,” the TARDIS arrives on the planet Kembel just as the Daleks unveil the Master Plan: an alliance with representatives of the Solar System’s governments to build the ultimate weapon, the Time Destructor. Across twelve sprawling episodes and locations spanning Ancient Egypt to a 1960s British seaside resort, the Doctor and his companions fight a desperate, costly guerrilla campaign to stop the Daleks before the Time Destructor is unleashed on the galaxy.
Interesting Facts
- At twelve episodes, this remains the longest single Doctor Who story ever produced, a record only later matched in scale by Season 23’s “The Trial of a Time Lord.”
- Companion Katarina is killed partway through the story, becoming the first regular companion to die on screen, followed later in the same serial by the death of Sara Kingdom.
- The seventh episode, “The Feast of Steven,” broke the fourth wall with a special Christmas Day segment in which the Doctor wished viewers a happy Christmas directly.
- Only a handful of this serial’s twelve episodes survive in the BBC archive; most exist only as reconstructions from audio and photographs.
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