Revisiting Old Doctor Who: The Terror of the Autons

[Broomstick]

The Terror of the Autons
(I never did like inflatable furniture...)

Here we are again in the Pertwee years, and this time around enjoying the original Master played by Roger Delgado. The Time Lords are “kind” enough to drop in to warn the Doctor that the Master has arrived and will try to kill him, but nothing beyond that, because they are, as we all know, bastards. I think this is also the second outing with the Nestenes/Autons, whom we first saw in Spearhead from Space, the first Pertwee story. The Brigadier and Captain Yates are also here, and it's the first appearance of Jo Grant.

I do like the Master as a villain. In this story he is a mirror image of the Doctor, using wits and intelligence to create trouble as the Doctor uses wit and intelligence to solve problems. Of course, there are a number of gee-whiz gizmos, but their use is not overdone. There's a few bits of actual action, but the plot moves mostly along without gratuitous bells and whistles, just a few explosions and near-detonations.

One of the delights of this episode is the interplay between the Doctor and the Master, a little Xanathos Speed Chess between old friends, ay? For all that the Doctor likes Humans and Earth, he isn't Human himself. The Master is a fellow Time Lord, and his intellectual equal and, as the Doctor says at the end, he's looking forward to encountering him again.

I'm not sure if the creepy killer doll thing is stop motion or a man in a rubber suit or both, depending on scene. I'm inclined to think man in rubber suit and a green screen effect, because the thing changes size oddly in some scenes. And I think I saw a zipper in the back at one point.

Gotta love that ubiquitous BBC quarry. And Third's cape. And my spouse's comments on seeing the opening sequence: “Whoa, what kind of psychedelics are those?” It's 1970 BBC Doctor Who, dear. Oh, yes, that explains a lot... It has been kind of neat to see these in color – up until around 1986 I still had a black and white TV, so for me, watching Doctor Who was black and white all the way into the Davison years.

The subtext of the episode does seem to be that there is something sinister in the ubiquitousness of plastic in the world. Oh, and handguns don't kill people, people Autons kill people. With their handguns.

[mr friendly guy]

Amazingly people were scared of
a) the Doctor peeling the face of the taxi driver
b) police
c) that doll which comes alive to strangle the humans.

Compare to today. What does it require to scare someone now?

I think the extra features mentioned how Terrance Dicks and ?Barry Letts or Robert Holmes came up with the Master. They thought of the Doctor as like Sherlock Holmes, so they needed a Moriarty figure. And the rest is history (unless its not a fixed point in time ).

[Broomstick]

Doesn't Doctor Who have a long history of making people afraid of mundane things? In addition to what you've mentioned, we have:

- store mannequins (Autons, Autons, and more Autons)
- statues of angels (Blink, The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone)
- closets (Night Terrors)
- doll houses (Night Terrors)
- spacesuits (Silence in the Library/Forrest of the Dead, The Impossible Astronaut, Day of the Moon, etc.)
- shadows (Silence in the Library/Forrest of the Dead)
- salt and pepper shakers (Daleks, Daleks, and more Daleks)
- TV sets (The Wire)

And probably many others I don't' recall at the moment.

[Stark]

Just like... Stephen King. Pretty insightful stuff there!

It's almost like stories draw from what the audience can be expected to relate to, or something.

[Broomstick]

Turning the mundane into fearful objects is a specific sub-genre of horror, as opposed to a 12 foot tall drooling mouth-full-of-teeth horror. You are correct that Stephen King made a career of it.

[andrewgpaul]

Doesn't Doctor Who have a long history of making people afraid of mundane things? In addition to what you've mentioned, we have:

- store mannequins (Autons, Autons, and more Autons).

Unless I've been misled, there were concerns that the Autons would also make children unnecessarily afraid of policemen.

[Broomstick]

And clowns. Although lots of us don't like clowns already.

[Patrick Degan]

"Terror Of The Autons" ended up having two effects in the real world: one was that questions in Parliament were actually asked about whether the programme had crossed a line in the depiction of terror and violence during the family hour due to the depiction of plastic daisies spraying out a sheen of vapourised plastic to cover the nose and mouth to suffocate people and of plastic telephone cords strangling people. Secondly, the episode put an end to a very obnoxious soap-company promotion being held at the time which involved clowns handing out little plastic daisies outside the shops and along the motorways.

[Korto]

Secondly, the episode put an end to a very obnoxious soap-company promotion being held at the time which involved clowns handing out little plastic daisies outside the shops and along the motorways.

OK, that's funny.
Were the show producers put up for a civic award?