Episode: 4580
Title: The First Doctor, Part 4
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4580/hpr4580.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:14:24 (official HPR transcript)

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4580, for 2026-02-20
Today's show is entitled, "The First Doctor, Part 4"
The host is Ahuka and the duration is 00:15:00
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "A continuing look at the first Doctor Who."
Hello, this is a hookah welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio and into the
exciting episode in our series on Science Fiction and we're going to go back to the early
doctor who some of the classic stories and back to the very first doctor and so we're
going to pick up where we left off with some of our previous episodes here and the
first story we're going to talk about is one called Galaxy 4.
This is a science fiction story that is focused on the fairly common idea of not judging
a book by its cover. The Tardis lands on a deserted dying planet. They see a funny looking
robot that Vicki calls a chumbly. Then another one appears and they investigate but are
rescued by three beautiful women who tell them they were in great danger and they take the three
travelers back to their ship where they meet the leader Maga another beautiful woman but
somehow these women are odd and a bit cold. They tell of how they met another ship from an
evil race the real and that in a space battle the ships damaged each other and landed on
this planet. Then later the Tardis travelers meet the real who initially refused to reveal their
appearance because it would frighten the humans. As it turns out they were very alien and appearance
but not at all evil it was the beautiful women who were the evil ones in this story.
Then there is a very interesting there's nothing like this anywhere else in the
canon of Doctor Who. It's a little one episode story. Why one episode? Partly they had a
Tadahila gap and so it takes place on the planet Campbell. Agents from Earth realize the
Daleks are hearing up to no good. It turns out this mission to the unknown is a prequel
to the Daleks master plan which comes just a little bit later and is notable as the only
Doctor Who story in which none of the regular cast appears. That's because this was an extra
episode given to the Doctor Who team late in the day and the regular cast were already given vacation
time off so consider this episode zero of the Daleks master plan and not has a standalone story.
Now the original story has been lost like so many episodes of early Doctor Who but a very nice
version was done by the University of Central Lancashire and you can view it on YouTube. I've
put a link in the show notes. It's introduced by Edward DeSusa who played Mark Cory in the original
and it's worth a good look. They did a good job with the story and you know that's it's nice
that some of these missing stories from the first two doctors you know there are big gaps in
William Hartnull and later Patrick Trouton from when the BBC was just saying oh no one will ever
want to see this again we can just wipe the tapes or throw them out or whatever and it's really nice
that in some of these cases that they you know someone has done a different version to bring
the story to life. Some of the Trouton stories were done as stage place and then the stage play
was filmed and those are very interesting. Then we get the myth makers now this is another one of
the historical stories and we've talked about how in the early days there was a tendency to alternate
science fiction and history and they did a lot more historical stories than modern Doctor Who does
but in this case instead of verified history it's historical legends that play here in the form
of the siege of Troy by the Greeks. So you have all of the Homeric cast here Achilles,
Prime, Hector, Odysseus. The Doctor is taken for a god by Achilles although Odysseus has his doubts.
Vicky is captured by the Trojans and taken to Troy, calls herself Cressida and is taken for a goddess.
Stephen goes to Troy to try and free her but is seen as a Greek so Vicky is now suspect.
She falls in love with a son of Prime named Trojless and you think something might happen here
particularly if you're familiar with a play of Shakespeare called Trojless and Cressida.
Now this story only has faint echoes of the play preserving that Cressida is Greek and Trojless's
in this case it is Cressida staying with Troyless. So instead of going back to the Titus Vicky is
now out one more companion gone. Now this also marks the departure of Verity Lambert as the producer.
She had been the producer of Doctor Who from the very beginning but went on to have a very successful
career as a producer both with the BBC and with independent channels in England.
And she was replaced by a fellow named John Wiles. Wiles tried to implement changes such as making
the show a bit darker but ran into opposition from both heart and all and BBC management
and resigned after producing four stories the myth makers threw to the arc and the popularity of
other SF shows on television made a move to more SF and less history desirable.
As for Heartinel's opposition it is notable that he had become quite identified with the role of the
Doctor and was very proprietary with it. This would come to pose problems later as his health declined.
Now the Daleks Master plan this is the one that we said mission to the unknown could be thought of
as episode zero or the prequel to this story. This story arc takes 12 episodes or 13 if you
add mission to the unknown as indeed you should. The reason for such a long story arc is that
Sir Hugh Weldon the director general the BBC at that time wanted a monster-length
Daleks story because his mother was a big Daleks fan and this story does have a lot going for it.
The length means you can do a little more character development. Now the story starts off with
Stephen recovering from a sword thrust during the fall of Troy and being attended by
Katarina a Trojan maiden who is now in the TARDIS. Now I think at one point there was a thought that she
might become a new companion but that turns out is not what happened. Now they arrive on the planet
Campbell the same one that we saw in mission to the unknown and meet with space special security agent
Brett Vaien played by Nicholas Courtney who in a few years would become the beloved to Brigadier
Luthbridge Stewart. Vaien tries to force the doctor to take him to Earth so he can warn the planet
but the doctor recognizes the Daleks and wants to find out more about their plans and this brings
us to one of the most evil villains in Doctor Who, Mavic Chen. You see the docs have assembled
a group of villainous aliens to join together in conquering the Earth and Mavic Chen is part of the
group but he is also the idolized guardian of the solar system so he's a traitor. Now Katarina the Trojan
maiden sacrifices herself to save the others from a convict they meet on a prison planet.
Another wonderful character is Sarah Kingdom played by Peggy Marsh who is head of space special
security who has been told by Mavic Chen that Vaien and the others are traitors and so she kills Vaien
who is in fact her brother but they manage to convince her that Chen is the real traitor and she joins
them. In the middle of all of this Christmas happened and this resulted in the most absurd
episode ever of Doctor Who, it's called the Feast of Stephen, capped by the doctor breaking the fourth wall.
The episode is now among the missing but you can find reconstructions on YouTube if you want to see
the absurdity of it and there is a reappearance of the meddling monk. This is a sprawling story I mean
12 episodes good lord but overall worth a look Mavic Chen played by Kevin Stony is delightfully evil
and Stony would return to play another villain in the Troutin story the invasion
and it is interesting to see Nicholas Courtney before he got the role he would always be identified with
Doctor Who would not do anything this large again until the flux in 2021 and frankly this story makes
more sense and that brings us now to another historical called the massacre of St. Boatholmese Eve
you'll often see this as simply the massacre which works because the herrily is no other story with a similar
title and after that massive science fiction story you know another historical story that was the way
they did it. Now this involves the true story of Protestants in France being massacred by the Catholics
and the main feature worth calling out here is that William Hartnell plays two roles in this story
he is the doctor of course but also the habit of M. Was a leader among the Catholics looking to
rid France of the Protestants. Now the idea of playing two parts became even more nicely done by
Patrick Troutin later in the story called the enemy of the world in any case this leads to confusion
by Stephen who thinks the habit is actually the doctor. Now in the story a servant girl named Anna Chaplet
is rescued and this opens up the interesting possibility that she is the ancestor of Dodo
short for Dorothea Chaplet a companion who appears at the end. She witnesses a car crash and
barges into the tire that's thinking she can call the police that's Dodo we're talking about.
Now while the novelty of Hartnell playing two parts may stand out on first look the story is really
a showcase for Peter Purvis in his role of Stephen Taylor. Now because Hartnell is not on screen very
much, Purvis really has to carry the plot and he does so admirably. Hartnell was on vacation when
the second episode was filled and so didn't appear at all and his health problems were beginning
to cause problems which contributed to this situation. He was having a lot of trouble with remembering
his lines which is a real problem for an actor. He was not that old by current standards as he was
58 when this story was produced. I'm now 74 so 58 seems more like late youth to me but you know
for Hartnell it was nearing the end of the line. And then the last one will discuss on this episode is the arc.
The tireless materializes on a spaceship in the far future so after this historical back to science fiction
it is carrying the future of the human race to a new planet refuses to
because the earth is falling into the sun. But it also has an odd race called the
monoids who are on board and they have one eye so that's what monoid stands for. They're an alien race
who came to earth when their own planet was dying and now they serve the humans.
Unfortunately the TARDIS crew carries germs for which humans and monoids on the arc have no
immunity and sickness breaks out. One faction wants to kill the doctor in his companions but instead
the doctor finds a cure for the disease and they leave on the TARDIS. Then the TARDIS materializes
back on the arc but they discovered that hundreds of years have passed. The monoids have
rebelled and taken over and now the humans serve them. As the old saying has it be kind of those you
meet on the way up for you will meet them again on the way down. So that's enough for this particular
look at the first doctor where moving towards completing all of the first doctor's stories.
But this is enough for now so this is a hookah for Hacker Public Radio signing off and is always
encouraging you to support free software. Bye bye!
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