Following on from watching the first three episodes of The
Daleks’ Masterplan, one’s thoughts inevitably turn to the missing fourth part,
‘The Traitors’. Even though we have the episode after it as well (‘Counter
Plot’), quite a lot of it remains a mystery. Here’s a few thoughts on what we
know and don’t know.
Firstly, we have a clip of nearly a minute’s length, from shot 27 (Steven saying “Stop that! Turn the talkback on again!”) to shot 34 (Steven shouting “Katarinaaaaa!”). Although this sequence is given as scenes 3-7 in the camera script, it’s shot as continuous action and all clearly on the same set. What may come as a surprise to viewers of ‘Devil’s Planet’ is that this sequence begins about 3 mins 45s into the episode, rather than straight after the cliffhanger; there’s a whole scene with Kirksen holding Katarina outside the airlock where we left them in ‘Devil’s Planet’, then a fairly pointless scene with the Daleks shooting the breeze in their control room, before we return to the Spar and Bret making the ship lurch and Steven trying to rush Kirksen, causing him to back into the airlock with Katarina and shut the door behind him.
This is all fairly straightforward. There don’t seem to be
any moving stars or planets on screens, as seen in ‘Devil’s Planet’. Then, of
course, we come to the first big mystery; Katarina’s death. About 30 seconds of
film seems to have been shot (55” of film according to the PasB, 43” according
to the camera script, and film runs at about 1.5” per second for 25fps), which
corresponds to how long the eerie ‘Requiem for Katrina’ music runs on the
soundtrack. But, perhaps surprisingly (it surprised me) the shot of Katarina and
Kirksen floating through space doesn’t come immediately after they are ejected
from the airlock, but about a minute later, after the Doctor has given Katarina’s
eulogy (“A SPEECH HERE TO COVER THE CHARACTER OF THE GIRL, AND HER BELIEF THAT
INDEED SHE WOULD BE THE DAUGHTER OF THE GODS. I’LL LEAVE THIS TO YOU AS THE
SPEECH DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU HAVE PREVIOUSLY ESTABLISHED” -Terry Nation,
legendary writer).
Famously (amongst Doctor Who fans) the shot of K and K
floating weightlessly through space was achieved by filming the actors on a trampoline (although Kirksen may have been replaced by the trampoline
instructor; to be honest, nobody would care or notice). From the film script,
we know that four shots were planned (although we can’t be sure they were all
used in the finished episode, of course). There are two shots of Katarina
‘“floating” in space in front of a Back Projection screen, using the trampoline
to get elevation (shoot very fast)’ and two similar shots of Kirksen. The Back
Projection was of ‘moon slides’. The film script says the trampoline would have
black drapes, and for Katarina and Kirksen’s second shots there would also be
two blankets (?) and a wind machine.
This is all well and good but... how did it look? According
to actress Adrienne Hill, the camera was positioned below them, but it couldn’t
shoot through a trampoline mat so I’m guessing it was just from a point
beside the trampoline at floor level. A back projection would be against a
vertical screen on the other side of the trampoline, which would limit the
angle to being less than 45 degrees to the horizontal. So I’m guessing viewers
would have seen K and K caught in mid-air, hair and beard wafting in graceful
slow-motion, an image of the moon behind them (the paperwork
gives no further details) but how it was lit I have no idea. And, indeed, what
the blankets were for.
I mentioned the fairly pointless scene in the Daleks’ control room. There’s another one after the film sequence, this time with Trantis, played by Roy Evans as in ‘Day of Armageddon’ and presumably looking more-or-less the same, with the control room also looking more-or-less the same as in ‘Devil’s Planet’, so no mysteries there. The mix from a close-up of Trantis to the night sky in the next scene probably looked a bit groovy though.
After another brief scene in the Spar, we shift to Mavic
Chen’s office on Earth. There are no photos of this set (indeed, as far as I
can tell, there are no photos from ‘The Traitors’ at all, or from ‘Counter
Plot’ either for that matter but nobody cares about that because the episode exists). We
do, however, have the floor plan for this episode which, as well as providing confirmation that the Dalek control room was the same as in ‘Devil’s
Planet’, gives us an idea of Chen’s office. It seems to have been far
more exotic that the one you might find in one of the episode reconstructions,
with ‘Galt Glass’ shapes surrounding Chen’s crescent-shaped desk. I am a keen
believer in leaving areas open for other researchers to explore and I am happy
for the details of ‘Galt Glass’ to be one of them.
Another thing the reconstructions have probably been getting
wrong is Chen’s screen. As far as I can tell, it wouldn’t have been a
back-projection filling a rear wall, like the one in ‘The Nightmare Begins’.
Instead, what they seem to have done – or planned – is for the back projection
to be reflected by a mirror onto a free-standing screen in front of Chen’s
desk, giving the impression of it being, well, a holographic projection. How
well this was achieved, I wish we knew! What we do know is that the identity
projection was of Nicholas Courtney as Bret Vyon, naked from the waist up. It
consisted of two shots – 45 seconds of Bret revolving slowly on the spot in medium
shot (presumably from the waist up, thus implying full Brigadier nudity) and
then about 155 seconds of a medium close-up of his head and shoulders revolving
slowly. According to Camfield’s film requirements: ‘It is lit to give a
contrasty feeling. The projection is the end product of computerised data. So,
now you know......’
This scene features the return of the lovely Lizan – thanks to ‘The Nightmare Begins’ we know what she looked like – and introduces Karlton, whose gaunt, Putin-esque looks are familiar to us from ‘Counter Plot’.
We then mix from a close-up of Karlton to a ‘computer
pattern’ on a screen in the Spar – again, this may have looked a bit groovy – for
another plot-inching-forward scene with the Doctor, Steven and Bret, before
returning to Chen’s office. In the camera script he operates a futuristic
telephone – ‘a strange receiver-like object’. I can’t see any sign of one in
‘Counter Plot’, so what it looked like is another fascinating mystery (although
it might just be an ordinary receiver-like object like the one Roald checks in
‘The Nightmare Begins’).
Scene 13 finds the Doctor, Bret and Steven in a corridor in
the Experimental Plant, and we can get a vivid sense of how nondescript it was as
it’s the same corridor that we see at the beginning of ‘Counter Plot’. Scene
14, we’re back in Chen’s office, for Sara Kingdom’s introduction, but we know
what she looks like, moving on.
Scene 15 is much more interesting, as it takes place in
Daxtar’s office. We don’t know what it looked like, or what Daxtar looked like.
I mean, we know he looked like the actor Roger Avon, but that’s about all. As
for the office, well, we know it was ‘comfortable in an extremely futuristic
way’, had curved walls, a settee, a desk and a 60” diameter lampshade over a
‘daybed’ but that’s about it. (When the scene begins, the Doctor and Bret are
sitting on the settee rather than the daybed). As to what a daybed actually
might be, I’ll leave that to other researchers.
We then cut back to Chen’s office for another scene, which
is mainly of note because it’s missing from my copy of the camera script (i.e.
the one that came in the Lost TV Episodes box set). Back in Daxtar’s
boudoir-stroke-office and there don’t seem to be any further mysteries; and no
thrilling visual effect for when he is shot, alas. Another fairly pointless
scene in the Dalek control room follows, and then we’re back in Daxtar’s office
to see some feet being dragged into shot (unless that shot was cut – what seems
to be the corresponding bit of dialogue (“There. Now”) isn’t on the soundtrack.
Then who should walk in but Sara Kingdom (we can get a pretty good idea of what
it looked like from the camera position) just in time to shoot Bret (again, no
thrilling visual effect, alas). And then, to avoid the need for the set being
used in the next episode, she runs out into the corridor to tell Borkar that
the fugitives have escaped (as fugitives are wont to do). So when she turns to
look at Bret’s unseen corpse, she is looking back into Daxtar’s office (and not
just more corridor, as it might appear).
Which, of course, brings us up to the cliffhanger, and ‘Counter Plot’. So, apart from Katarina’s death, the hologram of Bret and a couple of scene-mixes, possibly not the most spectacular episode, and not that many mysteries at all, but still desperately needed to fill a gap!
