The Deadly Assassin

088 – The Deadly Assassin
Doctor Who serial
The Lord President in the sights of the deadly assassin
Cast
Doctor Tom Baker (Fourth Doctor)
Others Peter Pratt — The Master Angus MacKay — Borusa Bernard Horsfall — Chancellor Goth Erik Chitty — Co-Ordinator Engin George Pravda — Castellan Spandrell Derek Seaton — Commander Hildred Maurice Quick — Gold Usher Hugh Walters — Runcible Llewellyn Rees — The President John Dawson, Michael Bilton — Time Lords Peter Mayock — Solis Helen Blatch — Voice
Production
Writer	Robert Holmes
Director	David Maloney
Script editor	Robert Holmes (uncredited)
Producer	Philip Hinchcliffe
Executive producer(s)	None
Production code	4P
Series	Season 14
Length	4 episodes, 25 minutes each
Originally broadcast	30 October–20 November 1976
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by → The Hand of Fear The Face of Evil

The Deadly Assassin is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 30 October to 20 November 1976. It is known for being the only story of the classic series run to feature the Doctor without a companion, with Sarah Jane Smith departing in the previous story and Leela joining in the next story.

Synopsis

The Doctor answers a summons and finally returns to his homeworld, Gallifrey, seat of the Time Lords. However, when the President of the High Council is assassinated, he becomes the prime suspect, while an old enemy lurks in the shadows, pulling the strings.

Plot

The Fourth Doctor has arrived on Gallifrey after receiving a mysterious summons from the Time Lords. Along the way, he has a precognitive vision about the President of the Time Lords being murdered.

As soon as the TARDIS materialises within the Citadel, it is surrounded by the Chancellry Guard. Their leader, Commander Hildred, reports to Castellan Spandrell. Both note that the TARDIS is a Type 40 time capsule, which is no longer in service. Since the arrival is unauthorised, the soldiers are ordered to impound the TARDIS and arrest the occupant. The Doctor overhears this, and realises that the Time Lords did not summon him.

Spandrell goes to see Coordinator Engin in the Archives Section, leaving Hildred in charge. Hildred and his troops enter the TARDIS, but the Doctor manages to sneak out and make his way to a service lift that leads to the main tower. A soldier is present, and threatens to place the Doctor under arrest. However, the soldier is quickly killed by a phantom-like figure who disappears before the Doctor can identify him. The Doctor sends the lift on its way, in an attempt to fool the soldiers into thinking he has gone into the tower. All of this has been observed by the Doctor's old adversary, the Master, who is wearing a black hood that conceals his features. "Predictable as ever, Doctor," he mutters, before returning to the shadows.

Chancellor Goth arrives outside the TARDIS to see the situation for himself. Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor is watching a news broadcast by a reporter he recognises as Runcible (whom the Doctor nicknames "the Fatuous"), a classmate from his days at the Academy. It is revealed that the President is set to retire, and he is to name a successor. Runcible is talking to Cardinal Borusa, one of the Doctor's former teachers. Runcible asks Borusa who the Presidential successor will be, but Borusa brushes him off.

The TARDIS is transducted to the museum within the Capitol, and the Doctor takes the opportunity to borrow a set of traditional Gallifreyan robes in order to maintain anonymity. At the same time, several floors beneath the archive tower, the Master, severely emaciated, confers with an unseen accomplice. He says that the trap has been set, and they must make sure the Doctor dies quickly.

At the Panopticon, a Gallifreyan quasi-ceremonial chamber, the disguised Doctor briefly converses with Runcible before the outgoing President appears. The Doctor scans the area and notes a camera stationed on an unguarded catwalk. He also spots a sniper rifle next to the camera. The Doctor fights his way to the catwalk, warning that the President is about to be killed. Unbeknownst to the Doctor, the assassin is actually among the delegates. He pulls out a pistol when the Doctor reaches the camera level and shoots the President dead. The crowd sees the Doctor on the catwalk firing the sniper rifle - in an attempt to stop the assassin - and assume he is the killer.

Under interrogation, including torture, the Doctor maintains his innocence and that he has been 'framed'. Eventually, Spandrell starts to believe him and orders Engin to assist him in an independent investigation. Meanwhile, Goth and Borusa debate the Doctor's impending trial. Goth notes that the election for a new President will occur in 48 hours, and he is eager to see the Doctor executed before then, since it is customary for Presidents to pardon all political prisoners on assuming office. On the other hand, Goth also wishes to ensure that proper standards of jurisprudence are maintained. The Doctor surprises everyone by invoking Article 17: he will run for President, which guarantees liberty for those running for office during the course of an election. The Master and his assassin are not pleased with this turn of events.

The Doctor returns to the scene of the crime with Spandrell. They discover that the sight on the sniper rifle was distorted, making it virtually impossible for this weapon to have killed the President. They decide to check the recorded proceedings of the event, conveniently still stored in the camera. The Master, hastening to extract the record himself, kills Runcible's technician using his TCE (Tissue Compression Eliminator). Runcible attempts to take the tape from the camera to the archives for review, but he is killed by a spear to the back.

The Doctor realises that the Master sent the Doctor the premonition of the assassination through the Matrix, a vast electronic neural network which can turn thought patterns into virtual reality. He decides to enter the Matrix as a means of tracking the Master. Engin warns him that if he dies in the virtual world, he will die in the real world as well.

The Doctor enters the Matrix and finds himself in a forbidding landscape of crumbling white cliffs and sparse vegetation. The disembodied laughter of some unknown presence echoes off the canyon walls. The Doctor is then engaged in a series of surreal nightmare episodes. First he nearly walks into the open jaws of a hungry crocodile, which simply disappears into thin air. He is then attacked by a masked samurai warrior and falls from a cliff into unconsciousness. He revives upon an outdoor operating table with a masked surgeon standing over him. The surgeon tries to inject him with a substance from an extremely large hypodermic needle. The Doctor pushes the surgeon away and runs off to find himself in the midst of a World War I battle. Shell and machine gun fire is heard and gas canisters explode all around. A soldier and his horse stumble out of the smoke wearing gas masks. The Doctor runs bewildered until he comes upon a train track, the rail of which closes upon one of his boots and traps him. A group of three masked men appear and one attempts to run him down with a mine train.

The train disappears before hitting the Doctor and he works his foot free. The Doctor realizes that his surroundings are but an illusion and tries to deny their existence, but passes out from the strain. Recovering consciousness, he becomes aware of the two large black eyes of his unknown adversary in the side of a cliff, telling him that he is the creator of this world and that there is no escape. The Doctor, dehydrated and thirsty, hears the sound of running water, but when he attempts to dig into the ground to locate its source he is greeted by a red-nosed clown peering through a window, laughing manically. He is then strafed by machine gun fire by a masked pilot in a biplane, eventually receiving a bullet wound in the leg. The Doctor tries to deny the existence of the wound, and it disappears. However, the disembodied voice of the assassin reminds him that this is his reality, and his rules, and the wound reappears. The Doctor declares that he will then fight the assassin in his reality.

In the real world, Engin tells Spandrell that the Doctor’s adversary is using a lot of energy to maintain the virtual environment, so the Doctor can defeat him if he provides an adequate distraction.

Inside the Matrix, the dry, barren virtual environment merges into a thick, sticky jungle, and the assassin soon appears dressed as a big-game hunter, a mesh veil obscuring his face. The assassin concludes that the Doctor will need water, and, leaving his backpack behind him, goes off to contaminate the local supply with poison from a small bottle. The Doctor finds the assassin's backpack and takes a grenade and some twine, setting up a makeshift booby trap. The assassin returns and trips it, setting off an explosion, which wounds him in the abdomen.

Fearing that his protégé might lose, the Master sends a hypnotised guard to kill the Doctor's physical form.

Back inside the Matrix, the Doctor continues to be hunted through the virtual jungle. Coming to the pool of water, he finds dead floating fish and an empty bottle and realises that the water has been poisoned. He finds a small amount of uncontaminated water and drinks it through a reed, then uses the reed and some thorns off of a nearby tree to make a blowgun, dipping the ends of the darts into the remnants of the poison from the bottle. The Doctor climbs up into a tree and shoots the assassin in the leg with a dart. The assassin fires his rifle and hits the Doctor in the arm, causing him to fall out of the tree. Ripping his trouser leg open to reveal a potentially fatal wound, the assassin injects himself with an antidote while the Doctor again escapes.

In the real world, the hypnotised guard makes his way to the Matrix chamber, but Spandrell manages to shoot him before he can sabotage the Matrix link.

Back in the Matrix, the Doctor has made it to a gas-filled marsh, where the assassin reveals his true identity: Chancellor Goth. Goth tries to shoot the Doctor but ignites the marsh gas, setting himself on fire. Goth falls into the water to extinguish the spreading flames. The Doctor comes out of hiding to confront him, but is caught by surprise by Goth and tackled. Intense hand-to-hand combat ensues, with Goth seeming to gain the upper hand. He attempts to drown the Doctor.

However, the strain of fighting and keeping up the virtual reality overcomes Goth. The Doctor breaks free and hits Goth over the head with a small tree branch. The Master, realising that Goth has been effectively defeated, decides to hedge his bets and tries to trap the Doctor in the Matrix by overloading the neuron fields, even though this will kill Goth. Engin manages to get the Doctor out of the Matrix, but Goth is fatally burnt. The Master then injects himself with a hypodermic needle.

The Doctor and Spandrell, accompanied by soldiers, manage to make their way to the chamber where the Master and Goth were accessing the Matrix. They find the Master slumped in a chair without a pulse and Goth dying. Goth reveals that he found the Master, near death, on Tersurus. The Master was nearing the end of his final regeneration. Goth went along with his schemes mainly for power: he knew the President had no intention of naming him as a successor, but if a new election was held, Goth would be the front-runner. Before he dies, Goth warns that the Master has a doomsday plan.

When Spandrell relates the story to Borusa, the Cardinal orders that a cover story ('we must adjust the truth') be created to maintain confidence in the Time Lords and their leadership. The official story will be that the Master arrived in secret to assassinate the President, and Goth heroically tracked him down and killed him but perished in the attempt. The charge against the Doctor will be dropped on condition that he leave Gallifrey.

Attempting to piece together what the Master and Goth were planning, the Doctor inquires as to what becoming the President entails. He is told that the President has access to the symbols of office: the Sash and Great Key of Rassilon. As Engin plays the records of the Old Time, which describes how Rassilon found the Eye of Harmony within the "black void", the Doctor realises these objects are not merely ceremonial. The Doctor inspects the hypodermic needle, and realises that it contained a neural inhibitor, which mimics a death-like state but does not cause death itself. The Master is still alive.

The Doctor, Spandrell, and Engin arrive at the morgue to find that the Master has revived and killed Hildred. Armed with Hildred’s staser pistol, the Master seizes the Sash from the President's corpse and traps the three in the morgue. The Doctor explains what he has deduced: that the Eye is actually the nucleus of a black hole, an inexhaustible energy source that Rassilon captured to power Gallifrey; the Sash and Key are its control devices. The Doctor deduces that the Master was planning to steal this energy to gain a new cycle of regenerations; however, if the Eye is disrupted, Gallifrey will be destroyed and a hundred other worlds will be consumed in a chain reaction.

Inside the Panopticon, the Master makes his way to the obelisk containing the Eye. He unhooks the coils that connect it to Gallifrey, and is prepared to access the energy. The Doctor makes his way to the Panopticon via a service shaft. The Citadel begins to quake, and cracks appear in the floor. The Doctor and the Master fight, until the Master loses his footing and falls into a chasm. The Doctor reconnects the coils and saves Gallifrey, although half the city is in ruins and many lives have been lost.

The Doctor is now free to return to his TARDIS. He bids farewell to Borusa, Spandrell, and Engin, but also warns that the Master may not be dead. He had harvested some energy from the obelisk before he was stopped, and may have been able to channel it. As the Doctor’s TARDIS dematerialises, Spandrell and Engin witness the Master sneak into his own TARDIS – disguised as a grandfather clock – and make his escape.

Continuity

• Robert Holmes said of The Deadly Assassin that it was difficult to write a script without anyone for the Doctor to share his thoughts and plans with, the usual role of the companion.
• The planet Tersurus, where Goth says he found the Master, is seen in the 1999 charity spoof Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death. Marc Platt's Virgin New Adventures novels Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible and Lungbarrow, suggest that the planet is a remnant of the ancient Gallifreyan empire and that the population once provided a servant class to Gallifreyans and early Time Lords. How the Master arrived there in an emaciated state is described in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Legacy of the Daleks by John Peel, which features the Master having an out-of-sequence encounter with the Eighth Doctor and Susan on Earth in the aftermath of The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
• The character of Borusa reappears in The Invasion of Time, Arc of Infinity and The Five Doctors. In each subsequent story, the character is played by a different actor, Borusa having regenerated. He has also been promoted in each interim: a cardinal here, Chancellor, President, and Lord High President in the later serials, respectively.
• Earth is referred to as Sol 3; this name is again used in The Invasion of Time and "Last of the Time Lords".^[1] The Factfile for that episode on the official BBC Doctor Who website, compiled by fan Rob Francis, refers to the term as Earth's Gallifreyan name.^[1] It is used as such again in "Voyage of the Damned".
• The Doctor's trial and subsequent exile to Earth by the Time Lords in The War Games and the lifting of that sentence in the The Three Doctors are mentioned.
• The Fifth Doctor is later imprisoned in the Matrix by Omega in Arc of Infinity and the Sixth Doctor fights a similar virtual battle with The Valeyard in the final episodes of The Trial of a Time Lord.
• This is the first story to state that there is a limitation to the number of times that a Time Lord can regenerate, and that this number is twelve.
• This story establishes the Matrix or APC net. The Invasion of Time establishes that the President has full control of the Matrix. Omega is able to take control of it in Arc of Infinity, and the stealing of secret information from the Matrix sets in motion the events of The Trial of a Time Lord.
• The source of the Time Lords' power and that of the TARDIS is the Eye of Harmony, the nucleus of a black hole that lies beneath the Citadel on Gallifrey. The Eye, or a link to it, is seen inside the TARDIS in the 1996 television movie.
• This story introduces Rassilon who, along with Omega (introduced in The Three Doctors), would become the central figure in Time Lord mythology. When Rassilon is first mentioned, the Doctor inquires who he is, as if unfamiliar with the name.
• One of the artefacts that controls the Eye of Harmony is the Great Key of Rassilon, a large ebonite rod. There are two other Keys of Rassilon mentioned later in the series. One, also known as the Great Key, whose location is known only to the Chancellor, resembles an ordinary key and is a vital component of the demat gun (The Invasion of Time). The other, simply called the Key of Rassilon, gives access to the Matrix (The Ultimate Foe).
• Spandrell casually mentions the Celestial Intervention Agency and it is implied that they had a hand in commuting the Doctor's exile in The Three Doctors. The CIA feature prominently in spin-off novels and audios plays.^{[citation needed]}

Production

Serial details by episode

Episode	Broadcast date	Run time	Viewership (in millions)
"Part One"	30 October 1976 (1976-10-30)	21:13	11.8
"Part Two"	6 November 1976 (1976-11-06)	24:44	12.1
"Part Three"	13 November 1976 (1976-11-13)	24:24	13
"Part Four"	20 November 1976 (1976-11-20)	24:23	11.8
[2][3][4]

• Working titles for this story included The Dangerous Assassin (which Holmes changed to "deadly" because he thought it "didn't sound right"). The final title is a tautology: a successful assassin must, by definition, be deadly. However, since Time Lords can in general survive death, and the assassin's victims do not, he is perhaps "deadly" in that sense. According to the text commentary on the DVD, Holmes argued that the title was not a tautology, stating that there were plenty of incompetent assassins.

Cast notes

• Bernard Horsfall guest stars as Chancellor Goth. He had previously appeared as an unnamed Time Lord (credited as 'Time Lord 1') in the serial The War Games prompting some speculation that they were the same character. Other parts played by Horsfall in Doctor Who were Gulliver in The Mind Robber and Taron in Planet of the Daleks, all of which were directed by David Maloney.
• Angus MacKay later played the Headmaster in Mawdryn Undead. George Pravda previously played Denes in The Enemy of the World and Jaeger in The Mutants. Hugh Walters previously played William Shakespeare in The Chase and later appeared as Vogel in Revelation of the Daleks.

Outside references

• The story was largely inspired by the film and book The Manchurian Candidate.^{[citation needed]}
• The serial begins with Tom Baker doing a voiceover introduction referring to Time Lords in the third person, over a text crawl similar to that seen in the opening of Star Wars (although The Deadly Assassin predates the premiere of Star Wars by six months).

In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in October 1977, entitled Doctor Who and The Deadly Assassin.

Doctor Who book
Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	19
Writer	Terrance Dicks
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Mike Little
ISBN	0-426-11965-7
Release date	20 October 1977
Preceded by	'
Followed by	'

Broadcast

The cliffhanger to Episode 3 — where Goth holds the Doctor's head underwater in an attempt to drown him — came in for heavy criticism, particularly from television decency campaigner Mary Whitehouse. She often cited it in interviews as one of the most frightening scenes in Doctor Who, her reasoning being that children would not know if the Doctor survived until the following week and that they would have this strong image in their minds during all that time. After the episode's initial broadcast, the master tape of the episode was edited to remove the original ending. However, off-air U-matic recordings of the original broadcast exist with the ending intact, and have been used to restore the ending on the VHS and subsequent DVD release.

VHS and DVD release

• This story was released on VHS in March 1989 in edited omnibus format in the US only.
• It was released on VHS in episodic format in the UK in October 1991. It was also re-released & remastered for the W H Smith exclusive Time Lord Collection in 2002 with a better quality freeze frame cliffhanger for Episode 3.
• The story was released on 11 May 2009 on Region 2 DVD.

See also

• Simulated reality

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "Doctor Who - Fact File - "The Last of the Time Lords"". http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/episodes/2007/facts/fact_313.shtml. Retrieved 2007-07-01. 
2. ^ Shaun Lyon et al. (2007-03-31). "The Deadly Assassin". Outpost Gallifrey. Archived from the original on 2008-07-31. http://web.archive.org/web/20080731005915/http://www.gallifreyone.com/episode.php?id=4p. Retrieved 2008-08-30. 
3. ^ "The Deadly Assassin". Doctor Who Reference Guide. http://www.drwhoguide.com/who_4p.htm. Retrieved 2008-08-30. 
4. ^ Sullivan, Shannon (2007-08-07). "The Deadly Assassin". A Brief History of Time Travel. http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/4p.html. Retrieved 2008-08-30. 

External links

• The Deadly Assassin at BBC Online
• The Deadly Assassin at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
• The Deadly Assassin at the Doctor Who Reference Guide

Reviews

• The Deadly Assassin reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• The Deadly Assassin reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide

Target novelisation

• Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide
• On Target — Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin