The Macra Terror

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034 – The Macra Terror
Doctor Who serial

The Controller is taken by the Macra.
Cast
Doctor Patrick Troughton (Second Doctor)
Companions Anneke Wills (Polly)
Michael Craze (Ben Jackson)
Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon)
Production
Writer Ian Stuart Black
Director John Davies
Script editor Gerry Davis
Producer Innes Lloyd
Executive producer(s) None
Production code JJ
Series Season 4
Length 4 episodes, 25 mins each
Episode(s) missing All episodes
Originally broadcast March 11–April 1, 1967
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by →
The Moonbase The Faceless Ones
IMDb profile

The Macra Terror is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from March 11 to April 1, 1967. It focuses on the Second Doctor, Ben, Polly and Jamie unravelling a mystery in a holiday camp on a human colony planet in the future, and introduces the alien race known as the Macra.

Contents

[edit] Plot

The Doctor, Ben, Polly and Jamie, concerned about an image they've seen on the TARDIS scanner of a man being attacked by a giant claw, arrive on an unnamed planet in Earth's colonial future. They are greeted by Medok, a half-crazed colonist, who is promptly arrested by Ola, the Chief of Police. The travellers return with Ola to the colony, which appears to be a holiday camp in the midst of a festival. The Doctor remains sceptical of life at the camp itself, unnerved by the seemingly fake nature of the society, and unconvinced by the promises of the Colony Pilot and the well-wishes of the mysterious Colony Controller, who appears on a television screen to welcome the new guests to the colony.

Medok is paraded before the colonists as an example of deviation for losing his joy. He tries to warn the colonists of horrible creatures which infest the colony at night with their hideous claws. The Doctor frees him from the cell in which he has been placed, but Medok runs away from the Doctor, who is charged by the Pilot and Ola with abetting a criminal. He is released on condition that he and his friends do some hard labour in the nearby mine, where a gas is extracted which is poisonous to humans yet is supposedly vital to them.

The Doctor slips away and finds Medok, who explains that the colony is infested with giant insects which appear at night. When others have seen them they have been hospitalised and brainwashed, but Medok has managed to escape this fate. The night curfew begins and the other time-travellers retire to their rest quarters. The Doctor and Medok use the opportunity to investigate, and find the giant crab-like Macra roaming the colony.

The pair are soon captured and brought before the Pilot, but the Doctor is released when Medok claims the Doctor was only trying to get Medok to turn himself in. Later, the Pilot is told by the Controller to hypnotize the four new arrivals so that they begin to think like the others in the colony. Polly and Jamie resist the adaptation process, but Ben succumbs, becoming an enthusiastic worker for the colony’s mines. He summons Ola, who arrests the Doctor for tampering with the hypnosis equipment.

When Polly does some investigating she is captured by the Macra, but her screams of peril are strong enough to break Ben’s conditioning and he rescues her. When they are reunited with the Doctor and Jamie their story is enough to persuade the Pilot that the four are a dangerous influence in the Colony and must be controlled. He calls on Control to restore order but when the screen is illuminated it is not the handsome young Controller who speaks, but an aged and terrified old man who is dragged away by a giant claw.

The Pilot is briefly disturbed but regains his composure and has the time travellers arrested once more – though Ben’s reconditioning has reasserted itself and he is allowed to go free.

The Doctor, Polly and Jamie are sentenced to work as hard labour on the Danger Gang in the most treacherous part of the mine. Medok has also been confined to this area, his hospitalised processing having failed. He warns that the mortality rate is high in this part of the mine. The Doctor is left topside while the others venture into the deeper workings of the mine. Jamie and Medok manage to escape, but the latter is soon seized by a Macra claw and dragged away to his death. Jamie comes face to face with a giant Macra which seems to be sleeping until there is a burst of the deadly gas, which rejuvenates the creature. Other Macra soon appear, and the creatures advance on Jamie.

Back on the surface the Doctor uses his guile to sow seeds of doubt regarding the truth of the planet in the minds of the colonists and of Ben, whose conditioning is weakening. The Doctor has worked out the gas flow seems to be the key to the situation and cleverly reverses the gas flow from the mine control area. Polly has reached the surface, and the Doctor calculates that he can buy Jamie time to escape from the mine as well. The improved oxygen flow weakens the Macra, enabling Jamie to evade them and escape.

The Doctor and Polly invade the control area and find it over-run with Macra. The Doctor realizes that the deadly gas is vital to the Macra and that the entire colony is a front to enable gas production to take place, with the human colonists brainwashed into serving the Macra while believing they are obeying Control.

Security chief Ola demands that the travelers be punished for disobeying Control, but the Doctor persuades the Pilot to accompany him to the Control centre. The Pilot sees the Macra for himself, and his conditioning is broken. In a last gamble the voice of Control has Ola place the Doctor, the Pilot, Polly and Jamie in an area of the mine where a mixture of combustible gasses will shortly explode. Ben, who has finally broken his conditioning, frees them, and some manipulation of the gas pipes sends the combustible mixture to the Control Centre. When the gas explodes, the Macra are all killed. As the colony becomes a happy holiday camp one more, the time travellers make their exit.

[edit] Cast

  • Dr. Who — Patrick Troughton
  • Polly — Anneke Wills
  • Ben — Michael Craze
  • Jamie — Frazer Hines
  • Pilot — Peter Jeffrey
  • Barney — Graham Armitage
  • Questa — Ian Fairbairn
  • Sunaa — Jane Enshawe
  • Chicki — Sandra Bryant & Karol Keyes
  • Drum Majorette — Maureen Lane
  • Medok — Terence Lodge
  • Ola — Gertan Klauber
  • Controller — Graham Leaman
  • Alvis — Anthony Gardner
  • Control Voice — Denis Goacher
  • Broadcast & Propaganda Voice — Richard Beale
  • Macra Operator — Robert Jewell
  • Official — John Harvey
  • Guards — John Caesar, Steve Emerson & Danny Rae
  • Cheerleaders — Ralph Carrigan, Roger Jerome & Terry Wright

[edit] Cast note

  • After playing the part of Chicki in the first episode, Sandra Bryant asked to be released from her contract so that she could accept another job. Karol Keyes took over the part for the final episode.[1]

[edit] Production

  • Working titles for this story included The Spidermen, The Insect-Men and The Macras.[2]
  • Anneke Wills wore hair extensions for the first few scenes of the serial, because she was sporting a new, shorter hairstyle. A haircut for her character was written into the story, as part of Polly's refreshment regimen at the Colony.[3]
  • This story introduced the first new opening title sequence since the series began. The new sequence was created by original titles designer Bernard Lodge and engineer Ben Palmer on 9 December 1966. For the first time, the face of the lead actor, Patrick Troughton, was incorporated into the "howl-around" patterns.[4] The tradition of incorporating the face of the current Doctor in the title sequence continued throughout the remainder of the series' original run.[3]
  • All episodes of The Macra Terror are missing from the BBC archives.[5]

[edit] Broadcast and release

Doctor Who book
Book cover
The Macra Terror
Series Target novelisations
Release number 123
Writer Ian Stuart Black
Publisher Target Books
Cover artist Tony Masero
ISBN 0 491 03227 7
Release date July 1987 (Hardback)

10th December 1987 (Paperback)
Preceded by The Massacre
Followed by The Rescue
  • A novelisation of this serial, written by Ian Stuart Black, was published by Target Books in July 1987.
  • The complete audio of The Macra Terror was released in 1992 on audio cassette by the BBC featuring narration by Colin Baker.
  • The 1992 narration was re-used with a remastered soundtrack for a 2000 CD release.
  • Surviving clips of the story were released on DVD in November of 2004 as part of the Lost in Time collection.

[edit] Continuity

  • The Macra made a further television appearance 40 years later in the Tenth Doctor episode "Gridlock", first broadcast in 2007. Seemingly, billions of years of evolution had reduced them to nothing more than vicious predators. They were able to survive on the gas fumes of the exhausts from the cars of the New New York Motorway, in the capital of New Earth, the colony which humans live on following the Earth's eventual death.[6]

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Howe, Walker, p. 167
  2. ^ Howe, Walker, p. 167
  3. ^ a b Sullivan, Shannon Patrick (2005-05-07). A Brief History of Time (Travel):The Macra Terror. Retrieved on 2007-11-18.
  4. ^ Walker, Howe, p 167
  5. ^ Walker, Howe, p. 714
  6. ^ "Gridlock". Writer Russell T. Davies, Director Richard Clark, Producer Phil Collinson. Doctor Who. BBC. BBC One, Cardiff. 2007-04-14.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

[edit] Reviews

[edit] Target novelisation

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Doctor Who season 4 serials