Doctor Who “Remembrance of the Daleks” (1988), title card [Doctor Who Collectors’ Wiki]
Remembrance of the Daleks
Background
Remembrance of the Daleks was the first serial of season 25 of Doctor Who. The story’s setting brought the Doctor back to 76 Totter’s Lane in the year 1963, where the series began in An Unearthly Child.
Radio Times
19:35 – Doctor Who
“Remembrance of the Daleks” Part 2
Second part of a four-part adventure by Ben Aaronovitch
Starring Sylvester McCoy
London, 1963: the Doctor wants to bury the past – before it buries him…
K9 was the designation given to a series of intelligent, dog-like robots who served as companions of Professor Marius, the Fourth Doctor, Leela, Romana, and Sarah Jane Smith.
K9 Mark I, II, III, and IV addressed whoever was directing them as “Master” or “Mistress” depending upon gender, and used the formal “affirmative” and “negative” rather than “yes” and “no”. They were programmed to be both loyal and logical, with a penchant for taking orders literally, almost to a fault. Their striped collars mirrored the Fourth Doctor’s trademark scarf.
K9 had a personality very consistent across the models with some contact with the Doctor. He was polite and formal, with pedantry bordering on condescension. Though he often displayed feelings such as sorrow and self-regard, he often stated that he had not been programmed to have emotions.
He did not use contractions such as “you’ve” for “you have” and addressed others by titles such as “Master”, “Mistress”, “Doctor-Master” (to refer to the Doctor) or “Young Master” (Adric). Though he did not seem to resent his subordinate status, he sided with the Doctor’s companions over the Doctor and showed a dark side, regarding other artificial intelligences with contempt.
With his great intelligence, he had a tendency to bore people with facts and did not stop immediately when asked, as he did to Leela on Pluto. When being told that he would have to stay behind in the TARDIS, K9 often argued, giving the Doctor reasons why he should go such as “he would be a good dog.” K9 always wanted to assist the Doctor.
K9 Mark I
Professor Frederick Marius, who invented the first K9 in the year 5000 while working on the asteroid K4067, described him as “my best friend and constant companion.” Marius had a dog on Earth, but weight requirements did not allow him to bring his real dog into space, so he built K9. Marius used his own medical computer, a state-of-the-art intraresponsive brain app, protective anti-radiation cladding, probes, a laser scalpel, a vision and voice box and two scanning antennas.
The Professor offered K9 to the Fourth Doctor as the same weight requirements made him unable to take Mark I back to Earth. After adventures with Leela and the Doctor, Mark I decided to stay on Gallifrey with his “mistress”.
Appearances
The Invisible Enemy (from Part 2)
Image of the Fendahl
The Sun Makers
Underworld
The Invasion of Time
K9 Mark II
The Doctor obtained or constructed at least one backup model of K9. Immediately after leaving Mark I behind with Leela, he unpacked K9 Mark II. This version of K9 accompanied the Doctor and his new companion on their quest to locate the segments of the Key to Time.
This K9 exhibited the ability to sense and warn others of danger. He was also more mobile than his predecessor.
K9 travelled to E-Space with the Fourth Doctor and Romana II, where they met Adric. Damaged by the time winds, K9 Mark II could not cross back into N-Space with the Doctor. He decided to stay behind at the Gateway with Romana II to help her free the remaining Tharils from slavery.
Appearances
The Invasion of Time (Part 6, boxed)
The Ribos Operation
The Pirate Planet
The Stones of Blood
The Androids of Tara
The Armageddon Factor
Destiny of the Daleks
The Creature from the Pit
Nightmare of Eden
The Horns of Nimon
The Leisure Hive
Meglos
Full Circle
State of Decay
Warriors’ Gate
K9 Mark III
A third model, K9 Mark III (again either obtained or constructed by the Doctor), was shipped in 1978 to Sarah Jane Smith at the home she had shared with her Aunt Lavinia in South Croydon during her companionship of the Third and Fourth Doctors (A Girl’s Best Friend).
After several adventures, K9 Mark III slowly began breaking down and eventually ended up deactivated in a cardboard box in Sarah’s attic. When the Tenth Doctor met Sarah Jane, he reactivated K9 and made temporary repairs. However Mark III ended up sacrificing himself whilst fighting strange, bat-like creatures.
As a heartbroken Sarah Jane watched the Tenth Doctor depart, the TARDIS dematerialised to reveal Mark IV. K9 said the Doctor rebuilt him with “new omniflexible hyperlink capabilities”.
Doctor Who “Remembrance of the Daleks” (1988), title card [Doctor Who Collectors’ Wiki]
Remembrance of the Daleks
Background
Remembrance of the Daleks was the first serial of season 25 of Doctor Who. The story’s setting brought the Doctor back to 76 Totter’s Lane in the year 1963, where the series began in An Unearthly Child.
Remembrance was the final televised appearance of the Daleks and Davros until the BBC Wales revival, although both would frequently recur in other media. It continued a narrative of chronological confrontations between the Doctor and Davros that had begun in Genesis of the Daleks, and included Destiny, Resurrection, and Revelation of the Daleks. It also concluded the Dalek Civil War story arc, which had previously spanned throughout Resurrection and Revelation.
At the time of broadcast, it unambiguously showed the onscreen destruction of the Dalek homeworld, Skaro. This act was largely forgotten by future Doctor Who writers; it was shown in the Doctor Who TV movie and in various BBC Wales episodes. Writer John Peel proposed a story called War of the Daleks, where Skaro would later be saved from destruction during the planned 27th season of the series.
Peel later adapted the unmade episode into an Eighth Doctor Adventures novel which showed that the planet destroyed at the end of Remembrance was Antalin, a decoy passed off as the real Skaro.
Synopsis
Scene from “Remembrance of the Daleks” (1988) [TARDIS Data Core]London, 1963: The Doctor returns to the place where it all began — alongside his latest companion, Ace, with unfinished business.
Not for the first time, unusual events are unfolding at Coal Hill School. At 76 Totter’s Lane, the Doctor discovers that his oldest foes — the Daleks — are on the trail of stolen Time Lord technology that he left on Earth long ago. The Daleks are planning to perfect their own time-travel capability, in order to unleash themselves across the whole of time and space.
The Doctor, with the help of the local military, must stop his oldest enemies from stealing Gallifreyan secrets, but the lines between allies and enemies are tested to the limit, and the Doctor and Ace must trust no-one in order to survive.
As two opposing Dalek factions meet in an explosive confrontation, the fate of the whole cosmos hangs in the balance…
Radio Times
19:35 – Doctor Who
“Remembrance of the Daleks” Part 1
Starring Sylvester McCoy
A four-part adventure by Ben Aaronovitch.
London, 25 years ago: The Doctor has returned to conclude some unfinished business. Unfortunately, some old acquaintances are waiting for him. Ace doesn’t like the music in 1963. Wait until she meets the old acquaintances.
The Pirate Planet was the second serial in season 16 of Doctor Who. It was the second story in the Key to Time arc. The Pirate Planet was the only transmitted story for which Douglas Adams received sole on-screen credit.
The Doctor and Romana I learn the second segment of the Key to Time is on the planet Calufrax. Yet they arrive on a planet called Zanak, which has been hollowed out and fitted with hyperspace engines, allowing its insane, half-robot Captain to materialise it around smaller planets and plunder their resources.
Douglas Adams reserved the novelisation rights to his television stories for himself, saying that he would like to novelise The Pirate Planet and City of Death when he had “run out of things to do”, and didn’t want another author writing them. However, he never got around to writing them before his death in 2001. It was the latest serial of the “classic” era to be novelised, only receiving this treatment in January 2017.
The Dr Who Annual 1979 was the 13th Doctor Who annual published by World Distributors, released in September 1978. The hardback cost £1.50 and featured the Fourth Doctor and Leela.
It contained some text stories, a couple of comic strips, and some features and puzzles.
The Ultimate Foe was a novelisation, written by Pip & Jane Baker, based on the 1986 television story The Ultimate Foe.
Snatched out of time and space and brought before the Time Lords on Gallifrey, the Sixth Doctor is on trial for his life.
While the Doctor asserts that the evidence of the Matrix, the repository of all Time Lord knowledge, has been tampered with, the mysterious and vengeful prosecuting council, the Valeyard, is confident that the Doctor will be sentenced to death.
In a dramatic intervention the Valeyard’s true identity is revealed but he escapes from the courtroom into the Matrix, and it is into this nightmare world that the Doctor must follow – to face his ultimate foe …
The Mind Robber (1968) [Doctor Who Collectors Wiki]The Mind Robber was the second serial of season 6 of Doctor Who. It was the only televised story to feature the Land of Fiction.
Hamish Wilson played Jamie in episodes two and three when Frazer Hines contracted chicken pox.
To escape from the volcanic eruption on Dulkis, the Second Doctor uses an emergency unit. It moves the TARDIS out of normal time and space. The travellers find themselves in an endless void where they are menaced by white robots.
Having regained the safety of the TARDIS, they believe they have escaped — until the ship explodes. They find themselves in a land of fiction, where they are hunted by life-size clockwork soldiers and encounter characters like Rapunzel, the Karkus, and Swift’s Lemuel Gulliver.
This domain is presided over by a man known only as the Master — a prolific English writer from 1926 — who in turn is controlled by a Master Brain computer. The Master is desperate to escape and wants the Doctor to take his place, while the Master Brain plans to take over the Earth.
The Doctor engages the Master in a battle of wills using fictional characters. Zoe and Jamie overload the Master Brain. In the confusion, the White Robots destroy the computer, freeing the Master.
The serial was novelised as The Mind Robber, written by Peter Ling.
