The fourth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who began on 10 September 1966 with the First Doctor (William Hartnell) story The Smugglers and, after a change of lead actor (Patrick Troughton) part-way through the series, ended on 1 July 1967 with The Evil of the Daleks. For the first time, the entire main cast changed over the course of a single season (the only other occasions this has happened are during Season 18 and Season 21).
Only 10 out of 43 episodes survive in the BBC archives; 33 remain missing. No serials in this season exist in their entirety. However, The Tenth Planet, The Power of the Daleks, The Underwater Menace, The Moonbase, The Macra Terror, The Faceless Ones and The Evil of the Daleks have currently had their missing episodes (twenty five in total) reconstructed with animation and subsequently have been released on home media.
Casting
Main cast William Hartnell as the First Doctor Anneke Wills as Polly Michael Craze as Ben Jackson Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor Frazer Hines as Jamie McCrimmon Deborah Watling as Victoria Waterfield
William Hartnell appears as the First Doctor for the first two full serials before being succeeded in the role by Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor for the remaining seven stories.
Anneke Wills and Michael Craze continue their roles as Polly and Ben respectively. They are shortly joined by Frazer Hines playing Jamie McCrimmon in The Highlanders. Polly and Ben depart in the penultimate story The Faceless Ones, and at the end of the season Deborah Watling makes her debut as Victoria Waterfield in The Evil of the Daleks.
Serials
Season 4 was produced by Innes Lloyd. Gerry Davis served as Script Editor, apart from the final four episodes of The Evil of the Daleks. Peter Bryant joined as associate producer for The Faceless Ones, and replaced Gerry Davis as script editor for the last four episodes of the season.
The Smugglers was the final serial to be produced during the third production block, but was held over to the start of Season 4.
The Tenth Planet introduced the Cybermen and the concept of Regeneration, which wouldn't be named so until Planet of the Spiders in 1974.
The Power of the Daleks was the first Dalek story to use the traditional ...of the Daleks title form. Of the nine subsequent Dalek serials, only Death to the Daleks from Season 11 was not named in this way. The naming convention for Dalek stories was first used in the revived series with "Evolution of the Daleks" in Series 3.
None of the nine serials from Season 4 are complete in the BBC archive, with four (The Smugglers, The Power of the Daleks, The Highlanders and The Macra Terror) each having all of their episodes missing; of the total of 43 episodes between "Episode 1" of The Smugglers and "Episode 7" of The Evil of the Daleks, only 10 are currently in the BBC archive. The most complete serial of the season, The Tenth Planet, is missing only its last episode; this serial, as well as The Power of the Daleks, The Underwater Menace, The Moonbase, The Macra Terror, The Faceless Ones and The Evil of the Daleks have had their missing elements recreated with animated episodes using the original soundtrack. The fully animated serials are presented in both colour and black and white formats, while The Tenth Planet and The Moonbase animations are presented exclusively in black and white.
: Episode is missing
Broadcast The entire season was broadcast from 10 September 1966 to 1 July 1967.
Production
During this season the title card for the series was changed for the first time, starting with The Macra Terror. A new theme arrangement would debut in the following serial, The Faceless Ones.
Season 4 was the first in which the Doctor's face appeared during the opening titles, starting with The Macra Terror. This practice would be consistently maintained until the end of Season 26 in 1989.
Scrapped stories
A number of stories were proposed for this season and scrapped. Brian Hayles proposed two serials, The Hounds of Time and The Nazis, with the latter being scrapped in favor of The SmugglersDoctor Who Magazine #321, DWM Special Edition #7, Doctor Who: The Handbook: The First Doctor while the former was written around the time of that serial's completion and ultimately scrapped. Roger Dixon proposed numerous storylines, such as The Ants, where the Doctor and his companions are shrunken to a small size and fight super-intelligent ants bent on taking over the Earth, The New Machines, where a race of robots create a new race of people after the former race died, but fear the new people will oppress them, The Return of the Neanderthal, in which the Doctor encounters descendants of the Neanderthals who want to return to Earth in 2016, The Sleepwalkers, which depicts the TARDIS crew arriving on a far-future Earth where a community of youths are dependent on unseen Elders, and a storyline named Twin World. Barry Letts pitched two storylines, one titled The Mutant, which would have involved a race of beings undergoing a butterfly-like cycle of mutations, and an untitled storyline about a sinister organisation operating on Earth as an amusement park. William Emms pitched The Imps, planned to be the fourth serial of the season, which would have seen a spaceship overrun by imp-like aliens. Due to a number of rewrites needed to accommodate the season's changing main cast, as while as due to Emms' illness, the story was dropped. David Ellis and Malcolm Hulke pitched a story titled The Big Store, which was to be about faceless aliens infiltrating department stores as display mannequins. Though scrapped, Ellis and Hulke reused elements of the plot in The Faceless Ones. Other scrapped stories include The Ocean Liner by Ellis. and The People Who Couldn't Remember by Ellis and Hulke, which was scrapped due to script editor Gerry Davis wishing to avoid the comic tone of the poorly-received The Gunfighters.A brief history of Doctor Who stories- The Lost Stories (The First Doctor)- Patrick Sullivan, Shannon
Missing episodes
Season 4 is notable for being the only season of Doctor Who from which not a single complete serial survives. The missing episodes are:
The Smugglers – All 4 episodes The Tenth Planet – Episode 4 (of 4 total) (Animated recreation exists) The Power of the Daleks – All 6 episodes (Animated recreations exist) The Highlanders – All 4 episodes The Underwater Menace – Episodes 1 & 4 (of 4 total) (Animated recreations exist) The Moonbase – Episodes 1 & 3 (of 4 total) (Animated recreations exist) The Macra Terror – All 4 episodes (Animated recreations exist) The Faceless Ones – Episodes 2, 4, 5 & 6 (of 6 total) (Animated recreations exist) The Evil of the Daleks – Episodes 1, 3 to 7 (of 7 total) (Animated recreations exist)
Home media
VHS releases
DVD and Blu-ray releases
In print
See also List of Doctor Who episodes (1963–1989)
References
Bibliography
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External links