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105 – City of Death
Doctor Who serial

The face of Scaroth. Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC.
Cast
Doctor Tom Baker (Fourth Doctor)
Companion Lalla Ward (Romana II)
Production
Writer "David Agnew" (David Fisher, Douglas Adams and Graham Williams)
Director Michael Hayes
Script editor Douglas Adams
Producer Graham Williams
Executive producer(s) None
Production code 5H
Series Season 17
Length 4 episodes, 25 mins each
Originally broadcast September 29–October 20, 1979
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by →
Destiny of the Daleks The Creature from the Pit
IMDb profile

City of Death is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from September 29 to October 20, 1979. The Doctor is the central character in the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who, and also features in Thomas Stewart "Tom" Baker (born 20 January 1934 is an English Actor. The Fourth Doctor is the name given to the fourth incarnation of the Fictional character known as the Doctor seen on screen in the long-running History of the Doctor Who companion When Doctor Who was created the dramatic structure of the programme's cast was rather different from the hero-and-sidekick Lalla Ward (born Sarah Ward 28 June 1951) also known as The Honourable Sarah Ward, is an English actress author and illustrator Romana, short for Romanadvoratrelundar, is a Fictional character in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor David Agnew is a Pseudonym that was traditionally used on BBC television drama programmes in the 1970s where a writer's name could not be used for contractual David Fisher is a writer for television He was born in 1929 He wrote the scripts for four serials of Doctor Who. Douglas Noël Adams (11 March 1952 &ndash 11 May 2001 was an English author comic Radio dramatist Graham Williams was a British Television producer and Script editor, whose best known work was on the BBC Science fiction Television Douglas Noël Adams (11 March 1952 &ndash 11 May 2001 was an English author comic Radio dramatist Graham Williams was a British Television producer and Script editor, whose best known work was on the BBC Science fiction Television This is a list of Doctor Who television serials and episodes. Events 522 BC - Darius I of Persia kills the Magian usurper Gaumâta securing his hold as king of the Persian Empire. Events 1740 - Maria Theresa takes the throne of Austria. France, Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony Year 1979 ( MCMLXXIX) was a Common year starting on Monday (link displays the 1979 Gregorian calendar) Destiny of the Daleks is a serial in the British Science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast The Creature from the Pit is a serial in the British Science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast This is a list of Doctor Who television serials and episodes. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located Science fiction first appeared on Television during the Golden age of science fiction, first in Britain (UK and then in the United States Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. Events 522 BC - Darius I of Persia kills the Magian usurper Gaumâta securing his hold as king of the Persian Empire. Events 1740 - Maria Theresa takes the throne of Austria. France, Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony Year 1979 ( MCMLXXIX) was a Common year starting on Monday (link displays the 1979 Gregorian calendar) The story is set in Paris, and was the first Doctor Who serial to feature footage filmed on location outside the United Kingdom. Paris (ˈpærɨs in English; in French) is the Capital of France and the country's largest city The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located [1] It is generally regarded by fans as one of the best Doctor Who serials to date, frequently reaching the top five stories in polls.

Contents

Synopsis

While taking in the sights of Paris, the Doctor and Romana sense that someone is tampering with time. Paris (ˈpærɨs in English; in French) is the Capital of France and the country's largest city The Doctor is the central character in the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who, and also features in Romana, short for Romanadvoratrelundar, is a Fictional character in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who is the mysterious Count Scarlioni? Why does he seem to have counterparts scattered through time? And just how many copies of the Mona Lisa did Leonardo da Vinci paint?

Plot

Roughly 400 million years ago, a spaceship explodes on lift-off. This is a list of villains from the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Mona Lisa (also known as La Gioconda) is a 16th century portrait painted in oil on a Poplar panel by Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci ( April 15 1452 – May 2 1519 was an Italian Polymath, having been a scientist Mathematician, Engineer Its crew are the last survivors of the Jagaroth race. This is a list of monsters and aliens from the long-running BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who.

Paris, 1979. Paris (ˈpærɨs in English; in French) is the Capital of France and the country's largest city At a Gothic Paris chateau, Professor Kerensky complains of lack of funds for his experiments. His employer, Count Carlos Scarlioni, grants him a million francs; the Professor insists that he will eventually need far more. Origins The franc was originally a French Gold coin of 387 g minted in 1360 on the occasion of the release of King John II ("the good", held by the The Count and his butler, Hermann, discuss the sale of rare artifacts.

Meanwhile, at a Paris café, Romana twice frustrates a sketch artist, resulting from déjà vu; the Fourth Doctor realizes they have stumbled on a time distortion. The Fourth Doctor is the name given to the fourth incarnation of the Fictional character known as the Doctor seen on screen in the long-running When Romana shows a lack of enthusiasm for the artist's discarded sketch, the Doctor invites her to the Louvre, to see the Mona Lisa: one of the great works of the universe. The Louvre Museum (Musée du Louvre located in Paris is the world's most visited art museum a historic monument and a national museum of France Mona Lisa (also known as La Gioconda) is a 16th century portrait painted in oil on a Poplar panel by

At the museum, the Doctor witnesses another time slip; he collapses, colliding with a rich lady. He is helped to a bench by a large man in a coat — Duggan. The Doctor and Romana retreat, followed by Duggan. The rich lady nods to another man to follow as well. Meanwhile, Scarlioni asks Kerensky to vastly increase the scope of the experiment.

The Doctor produces a bracelet the rich woman was wearing, a "micromeson scanner" used to monitor the Louvre alarms. Duggan marches the two Time Lords into the café at gunpoint before telling them that masterpieces thought lost for centuries have been surfacing all over, and passing every scientific test.

Back at the chateau, the rich lady — Scarlioni's wife — explains the events in the museum. Back at the café, the Doctor is held at gunpoint again; he responds by placing the bracelet over the barrel of one of the thugs' guns. The thugs return the bracelet to the Count. Alone before a mirror, Scarlioni removes his human face, revealing himself to viewers as a one-eyed green creature.

Scarlioni's henchmen bring the trio in for questioning; the Doctor is charming but unhelpful. The Count orders them locked in the basement. The Doctor prods Hermann about the chateau's history, and spies Kerensky's machinery. Duggan shows frustration at their missed opportunities for escape; the Doctor pulls out his sonic screwdriver. Romana observes that, judging by a geometrical discrepancy, there must be a hidden room nearby. Though intrigued, the Doctor chooses to examine the lab first.

Kerensky enters; Romana and Duggan hide. The Doctor charms Kerensky into demonstrating his work, aging an egg into a mature chicken in a matter of seconds. An egg is a round or oval body laid by the female of many animals consisting of an Ovum surrounded by layers of Membranes and an outer casing which acts to nourish The Doctor is horrified. He warns the Professor of the dangers of time manipulation. As they squabble, the chicken turns to bones. The Doctor explains that rather than manipulating their own space-time continuum, Kerensky has created a separate, incompatible pocket universe. SpaceTime is a patent-pending three dimensional graphical user interface that allows end users to search their content such as Google Google Images Yahoo! YouTube eBay Amazon and RSS The Doctor reverses the polarity of the machinery and the chicken regresses into an egg. As the Doctor sees Scaroth's face in the time field, Duggan knocks out the Professor. The Doctor berates Duggan.

Meanwhile Scarlioni uses a holographic recreation of part of the Louvre to demonstrate his plan to steal the Mona Lisa. He uses his sonic knife to cut through the glass, and then disrupts the air around the laser beams with a device he invented. He gives the Countess her bracelet back, saying she must wear it always.

The Doctor and Duggan break through a brick wall and find six Mona Lisas, all apparently genuine; the Doctor recognises the pigment and the brushwork of Leonardo. Duggan knows of seven people that would be willing to pay for the Mona Lisa for their private collection, but not if it were still hanging in the Louvre. They would each have to think they were buying the stolen one.

The Count appears behind them, gun in hand, and asks why Kerensky is unconscious. Duggan tosses a lantern at the Count's gun and punches him out. A lantern is a Portable Lighting device used to illuminate broad areas The Doctor asks Romana to look after Duggan, retrieves the TARDIS and takes it to Florence, Italy in 1505. The TARDIS ( T ime A nd R elative D imension(s I n S pace is a time machine and Spacecraft in the Florence ( Italian: Firenze Florentia and Fiorenza) is the Capital City of the Italian region of Tuscany Italy (Italia officially the Italian Republic, (Repubblica Italiana is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest There a guard tells the Doctor that Leonardo is engaged on important work for Captain Tancredi. A moment later Tancredi arrives. His face is that of Scarlioni but with longer hair.

Romana and Duggan break into the Louvre, but the Mona Lisa has already disappeared. Meanwhile, the professor has found the secret room, the other copies of the painting, and the unconscious Count. As the Count stirs, he talks in his slumber - we see that this is the same conversation he is conducting with the Doctor more than four centuries earlier.

Tancredi wants to know how the Doctor came to be in Renaissance Italy. The Doctor claims that he randomly pops around through time and space, but Tancredi is not fooled. He introduces himself as Scaroth, the last of the Jagaroth, and also their saviour. The Doctor has heard of the Jagaroth: they destroyed themselves in a war some 400 million years ago. Scaroth explains that a few escaped to the young planet Earth in a dilapidated spacecraft. The ship disintegrated upon takeoff and Scaroth was fractured, with splinters of himself scattered across time and space. He then asks about the mysterious blue box. The Doctor is uninformative, so Scaroth goes to collects the instruments of torture.

The Doctor tells the guard that Tancredi is mad, to no avail; then he uses a camera from his pocket to distract the guard before knocking him out. A camera is a device used to capture images either as still Photographs or as sequences of moving images ( Movies or Videos. On the canvases for the extra six paintings of the Mona Lisa, the Doctor writes, "THIS IS A FAKE" in felt tip pen, and dashes off a note to Leonardo to paint over the writing. As he is about to leave, Tancredi returns with the thumbscrews. The thumbscrew, or pilliwinks, is a Torture instrument which was used in Medieval Europe.

Kerensky awakens the Count, and asks who he is, and who the Jagaroth are: the Count was mumbling about them. Kerensky wonders whether it's the Jagaroth who need all the chickens. Scaroth, who hears the voices of his other selves, tells Kerensky he is working for more than the human race. When he shows Kerensky the end product of his labours, the professor is astonished: the plan will increase the very effect that Kerensky was trying to eliminate. The Count tells the professor to continue the work or he will die.

The thumbscrews are on the Doctor's hand and the Doctor winces - the guard's hands are cold. He reveals that he is a Time Lord. The Time Lords are a fictional race and civilization in the British Science fiction television series Doctor Who, of which the series' Tancredi asks about the girl and the Doctor stalls for time, asking how Tancredi communicates with his other selves across time.

The Countess gleefully talks to her husband about their their monumental theft of the Mona Lisa. The Count is unimpressed; he brags about the building of the pyramids, mapping the heavens, inventing the wheel and fire, and bringing up a whole race from nothing to save his own: he just wants a single life and to spare the lives of his people. A pyramid is a Building where the upper surfaces are triangular and converge on one point He hears a voice and he asks his bemused spouse to leave him. Once she has gone, he communicates briefly with his 1505 self. Taking advantage of the distraction, the Doctor escapes into the TARDIS. All the splinters of Scaroth appear and converse; there seem to be 12 of him. Before the TARDIS dematerialises, the Doctor hears Scaroth proclaim that the centuries dividing him will be undone.

Romana and Duggan are captured again, and Scarlioni threatens to destroy Paris unless Romana examines Kerensky's equipment. Upon doing so, she tells Duggan that the Count can indeed destroy Paris by blasting the capital into an unstabilised time field. Scarlioni sends Kerensky into the middle of the field cones, and turns on the machine. Kerensky ages until only a skeleton is left. The Count says that the unstable time field has destroyed the professor, and the whole of Paris is next unless Romana tells him how to stabilise the time field. Romana pretends not to care about the welfare of humans or Paris, but gives in when Scarlioni threatens to have Hermann kill Duggan. Scaroth orders that Duggan be locked up while Romana builds a field interphase stabiliser.

The Countess shows the Doctor the original manuscript for Hamlet, missing for centuries. Hamlet is a Tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601 Knowing how the Count acquired such an artifact, he tells the Countess that she doesn't know her husband as well as she thinks. Berating the Countess for her willful blindness, he tells her that a green, one-eyed chap is ransacking the treasures of the art world in order to save his species, the Jagoroth. Hermann arrives and takes the Time Lord down to meet his master, leaving the Countess to ponder. In her hidden book cabinet, she takes out an ancient Egyptian scroll, on which is depicted a one-eyed, green creature exactly as the Doctor described. Egyptian is an Afro-Asiatic language most closely related to the Berber, Semitic, Somali and Beja languages

Once in the lab, the Doctor is angry with Romana for cooperating, but Romana insists all is fine - Scarlioni only wants to go back in time to reunite himself. Scarlioni goes to say goodbye to his wife, asking his butler to kill the trio any way he likes.

The Countess aims a gun at Scarlioni and demands to know what she married. He reveals his true visage, and thanks his wife for wearing the bracelet. He activates it and it kills her instantly. Soon, he says, she will never have existed.

Having realised the enormity of Scaroth's plans, Romana is truly sorry. He tried to put the whole Earth into the time bubble by 400 million years, but only succeeded for a few seconds, which caused those time slips. Now that he has the device she constructed, the field will be stabilised. The Doctor scolds Romana, who reveals that she has rigged it so that he will only be in the past for two minutes. The Doctor says that Scaroth needs only one minute - if the Jagoroth is no longer splintered, the whole of human history will be up-ended.

The Time Lords and Duggan escape the lab, only to confronted by the monstrous Scaroth, training a gun upon them. He knows of the limitations Romana has placed upon his machine, but it makes no difference; he will still be able to prevent his spaceship from exploding, thus saving his race and remaining unsplintered. He vanishes, and the machine explodes. The trio dash through Paris to retrieve the TARDIS. In the gallery where it is parked, two art critics are analysing the artistry of a police box being placed in such surroundings. When the Doctor, Romana and Duggan enter the TARDIS and it dematerialises, the critics proclaim it to be "exquisite".

The Doctor lands the TARDIS on a barren plain, and soon spots the Jagaroth spaceship. Romana observes that the ship's thrust motors are disabled and that the aliens will try to take off on warp drive. The Doctor points out the primordial slime from which all life on Earth will develop, currently an inert slurry. He realises that the explosion which annihilated the Jagaroth and caused Scarlioni to splinter also caused the birth of all life on Earth.

Scaroth calls to his brothers to stop the take off. The Doctor tells him that he can't change history, but Scaroth disagrees. Duggan punches Scaroth and knocks him out. Scaroth's two minutes are up and he vanishes. The others rush back into the TARDIS. The Jagaroth ship explodes on take off, releasing a huge amount of radiation and heat that ignites the primordial soup.

Back at the chateau, Hermann watches, aghast, as a monstrous, one-eyed creature appears in the time field. Refusing to believe this creature is his master, he hurls an object at the machinery, destroying the equipment, setting the chateau on fire and blasting the Count to oblivion.

Back on the Eiffel Tower, the three friends discuss the fact that the only Mona Lisa to survive the fire has "THIS IS A FAKE" written on the canvas. When Duggan claims that this will ruin the painting, as authorities will X-ray the picture, the Doctor says it would serve them right - if they have to X-ray it to see if it's worth anything, they may as well paint via computer. Digital art most commonly refers to Art created on a Computer in Digital form The Doctor and Romana leave for their next adventure. The Creature from the Pit is a serial in the British Science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast

Cast

Cast notes

Continuity

Production

Outside references

In print

This is one of five Doctor Who serials that were never novelised by Target Books as they were unable to come to an agreement with Douglas Adams that would have allowed him or another writer to adapt the script. Target Books was a British Publishing Imprint, established in 1973 by Universal-Tandem Publishing Co Ltd, a paperback publishing company Douglas Noël Adams (11 March 1952 &ndash 11 May 2001 was an English author comic Radio dramatist A fan group in New Zealand did publish an unofficial novelisation of the story [1].

Broadcast, VHS and DVD releases

References

  1. ^ a b c d Doctor Who: City of Death, Disc Two, Special Features: Paris in the Springtime [DVD]. DVD (also known as " Digital Versatile Disc " or " Digital Video Disc " - see Etymology)is BBC Worldwide.
  2. ^ Doctor Who: City of Death, Disc One, Part One, Production Notes/Information Text [DVD subtitles]. Subtitles are textual versions of the dialog in films and television programs usually displayed at the bottom of the screen BBC Worldwide.
  3. ^ a b Doctor Who: City of Death, Disc One, Part Three, Production Notes/Information Text [DVD subtitles]. Subtitles are textual versions of the dialog in films and television programs usually displayed at the bottom of the screen BBC Worldwide.
  4. ^ Doctor Who: City of Death, Disc One, Part Two, Production Notes/Information Text [DVD subtitles]. Subtitles are textual versions of the dialog in films and television programs usually displayed at the bottom of the screen BBC Worldwide.
  5. ^ Doctor Who: City of Death, Disc One, Part Four, Production Notes/Information Text [DVD subtitles]. Subtitles are textual versions of the dialog in films and television programs usually displayed at the bottom of the screen BBC Worldwide.

External links

Reviews

Fan novelisation

Outpost Gallifrey was a popular fan Website for the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Outpost Gallifrey was a popular fan Website for the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who.
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