Season 5, Episode 4 | 6 parts | First broadcast: 23 December 1967 – 27 January 1968 | Writer: David Whitaker | Director: Barry Letts
Cast
- Patrick Troughton as the Doctor and Salamander
- Frazer Hines as Jamie McCrimmon
- Deborah Watling as Victoria Waterfield
- Colin Douglas as Giles Kent
Summary
Arriving on an Australian beach in the near future, the Doctor discovers he bears an uncanny resemblance to Salamander, a charismatic scientist-turned-politician secretly engineering natural disasters around the world to manipulate governments and seize global power. Enlisted by Salamander’s enemies, the Doctor goes undercover impersonating his double to infiltrate Salamander’s operation and expose the conspiracy.
Interesting Facts
- This serial gave Patrick Troughton a rare dual role, playing both the Doctor and the villainous Salamander, the first time a lead actor had done so since William Hartnell in Season 3’s The Massacre.
- It was the first Doctor Who story directed by Barry Letts, who would go on to produce the series throughout the Third Doctor era.
- The serial is one of only two complete Second Doctor stories surviving in the BBC archive, recovered from a Nigerian television station in 2013.
- Unusually for the era, it is set in a near-future, globally political thriller mode rather than following the show’s more typical science-fiction or historical format.
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