DOCTOR WHO:  CITY OF DEATH

commentary by Judy Harris

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"David Agnew" is a pseudonym for the collaboration between script editor Douglas Adams and producer Graham Williams. Their script is based on an idea by David Fisher.

This is not quite another time loop story; here the effect is called a time slip and instead of repeating endlessly, it repeats only once.

This is the first DOCTOR WHO story to shoot location footage on foreign shores, in this case Paris. Later foreign shoots include two Peter Davison shows--ARC OF INFINITY in Amsterdam and PLANET OF FIRE at Lanzarote in the Canary Islands; and one Colin Baker show, THE TWO DOCTORS in Seville, Spain.

For the most part the Paris locations are interesting, touristy shots--the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, etc., but they are really just filler showing Tom Baker, Lalla Ward and Tom Chadbon running up and down the streets.

On Earth in primeval time, Scaroth, a Jagaroth, takes off in his crippled spaceship, which blows up. This is an excellent, colorful miniature landscape. The spaceship model is an interesting diving bell shape with spidery legs. The Jagaroth is a one-eyed creature with green sea-weedy skin. The mask isn't too bad, but the hands are obviously gloves.

The randomizer has brought the Doctor and Romana to Paris in 1979, so they decide to take a holiday. The Doctor has a pin shaped like an artist's palette and 3 paint tubes attached to the lapel of his coat. Romana is dressed in a straw hat and blazer, like a French schoolgirl.

From atop the Eiffel Tower, the Doctor tells Romana Paris is "the only place in the universe where one can relax entirely." They ride the amazingly clean Metro--the Paris subway train--to lunch. The station resembles the British underground. They walk past the Notre Dame Cathedral to a cafe.

In an laboratory beneath the chateau of Count Carlos Scarlioni, the Count gives a million francs to Professor Kerensky, so he can continue his research. Scarlioni tells Hermann, his butler, the sale of the Gainsborough didn't fetch enough money, so one of the Gutenberg Bibles must be sold.

Back at the cafe, an artist sketches Romana, but she moves so he gives up and tosses the sketch away. Suddenly, the same action replays. The Doctor remarks, "It's as if time jumped a groove for a second." The sketch is of the face of a clock wearing a straw hat. "For a portrait of a Time Lady, that's not at all a bad likeness," the Doctor comments. This is the first time Romana is referred to as a Time Lady; previously she has called herself a Time Lord.

At the lab, Scarlioni compliments Kerensky on his experiment (unseen by us, but which caused the time dislocation felt by the Doctor and Romana). The Count is in a great hurry for the next experiment to be performed and tells Kerensky, "Time, Professor, it's all a matter of time."

"I think there's something the matter with Time," the Doctor says to Romana at the cafe, "You and I exist in a special relationship with Time, you know, perpetual outsiders." He takes her to the Louvre, which he calls "One of the greatest art galleries in the whole galaxy," and leads her to the Mona Lisa.

A Louvre Guide brings a tour past and asks the Doctor to move along. There's another time slip, which makes the Doctor dizzy. He falls into the lap of Countess Scarlioni and is helped up by Duggan. The Doctor tells him, "I just dented my head on your gun."

Romana and the Doctor leave and Duggan follows them back to the cafe (they never do seem to have the bouillabaisse they planned on having for lunch). They realize they've been followed. The Doctor thinks Duggan wants the bracelet worn by the woman he bumped into. He stole it and put it in Romana's pocket because it's a micromeson scanner, which she was using to get a report on the alarm systems around the Mona Lisa. The scanner is not a product of Earth technology.

Duggan pokes a gun in the Doctor's back and forces him and Romana into the cafe, where the Doctor orders 3 glasses of water, adding, "Make them doubles."

At the chateau, the Countess tells Scarlioni the bracelet was stolen, but she has had Duggan, who is a detective, followed.

At the cafe, two of Scarlioni's thugs point a gun at the Doctor's head and demand the bracelet, so he returns it. They leave and Duggan, accusing the Doctor of staging this action, asks what Scarlioni's angle is. The Doctor has never heard of him. "Everyone on Earth's heard of Count Scarlioni!" Duggan insists. "Ah, we've only just landed on Earth," the Doctor replies.

The thugs return the bracelet to the Countess and the Count has them killed. The Countess has Hermann send different thugs to pick up the Doctor, Romana and Duggan.

At the cafe, Duggan tells the Doctor the art world is in a furor because masterpieces missing for centuries are suddenly turning up. They don't seem to be fakes; they stand up to every scientific test. The only connection among them is the Count.

Alone in the lab, Scarlioni removes his face; it was just a mask. Beneath it is the one-eyed creature from the prologue--a Jagaroth. This scene seems to exist mostly to serve as a cliffhanger for part #1, as well as partly to let the audience know that Scarlioni is a Jagaroth.

Before the Doctor, Romana and Duggan are brought in, the Countess hides her bracelet in a Chinese puzzle box. Hermann pushes the Doctor roughly in the room. "I say, what a wonderful butler; he's so violent," the Doctor remarks, introducing everyone and sitting in a Louis Quinze (King Louis the 15th) chair. The Doctor helps himself to a drink and tells the Countess he stole her bracelet because he's a thief.

Romana easily opens the puzzle box and removes the bracelet. Sensing the Count and Countess aren't buying his story, the Doctor tries to leave gracefully, suggesting to Romana "A quick stagger up the Champs Elysees, perhaps a bite at Maxim's;" but the Count decides to lock them in the cellar.

On the way to be locked up, the Doctor spies Kerensky's laboratory. After Hermann locks them up, the Doctor tries to open the door with the sonic screwdriver, but it isn't working. Duggan bangs it against the door, which somehow fixes the sonic screwdriver. "Would you like to stay on as my scientific adviser?" the Doctor asks him.

He opens the door and looks around. Although Duggan is all for escaping immediately, the Doctor wants to find out what's going on because "In the last few hours I've been thumped, threatened, abducted and imprisoned. I found a piece of equipment which is not of Earth technology and I've been through two timeslips."

Professor Kerensky returns and the Doctor, Romana and Duggan hide. The Professor performs an experiment on an egg, creating a time bubble and accelerating the egg through hatching and growth to a mature chicken. The Doctor comes up behind him and tells him he's got it wrong.

"You're tinkering with time; that's always a bad idea unless you know what you're doing," the Doctor remarks. Kerensky says he's the foremost authority on temporal theory in the whole world. "Well, that's a very small place when you consider the size of the universe," the Doctor points out. Who can, Kerensky asks. "Some can and if you can't, you shouldn't tinker with time," the Doctor replies, pointing out Kerensky's time acceleration experiment has turned the chicken into a skeleton.

"The whole principle you're working on is wrong. You can stretch time backwards or forwards within that bubble but you can't break into it or out of it. It's true you have created a different time continuum, but it's totally incompatible with ours," the Doctor explains, reversing the polarity on Kerensky's equipment and turning the skeleton back into an egg. In the bubble he catches a glimpse of the image of a Jagaroth.

While the Doctor stares at the Jagaroth image, Duggan thumps Kerensky, knocking him out. "If you do that one more time, Duggan, I'm going to take very, very severe measures," the Doctor says angrily, "I'm going to ask you not to."

Romana has discovered a bricked up room behind the one they were locked in. The brickwork is 4-500 years old. "In my view, a room that's been bricked up 4 or 500 years is urgently overdue for an airing," the Doctor says.

In the chateau, Hermann puts the Countess' bracelet in a machine, which projects a simulacrum of the Mona Lisa exhibit area at the Louvre. The Count and his thugs stage a rehearsal of the theft they plan, cutting through the glass surrounding the painting with a sonic knife. To get through the laser beam alarms, the Count alters the refractive index of the very air itself with a prismatic field. The theft of the actual Mona Lisa is scheduled for tonight.

With Duggan's help, the Doctor breaks into the sealed room and discovers six copies of the Mona Lisa; they all appear genuine in brushwork and pigment.

Duggan knows seven people willing to buy the Mona Lisa. If the copy in the Louvre is stolen, Scarlioni can sell it seven times, and each buyer will think he has the original and only copy.

Scarlioni walks in with a gun and Duggan knocks him out. "Duggan, why is it that every time I start to talk to someone you knock him unconscious?" the Doctor asks, "If you don't understand heads, you shouldn't go about hitting them."

Upstairs, Duggan knocks the Countess out with a Second Dynasty Ming vase. The Doctor sends Romana and Duggan to the Louvre to prevent the theft.

He rushes through scenic Parisian streets to the Denise Rene art gallery on the Rive Gauche, where he uses the sonic screwdriver to let himself in the front door. He straightens the frame of a painting hanging on the wall and then enters the TARDIS, greeting K9, who is unseen and unheard.

The TARDIS dematerializes and then rematerializes in Florence in 1505. How the Doctor did this with the randomizer in place is never addressed; presumably he removed it, hoping the Black Guardian wouldn't notice.

The Doctor is in the rooms of Leonardo DaVinci. He calls out for Leonardo but gets no answer. "Ah, that Renaissance sunshine," the Doctor remarks, whistling to a caged bird. He finds Leonardo's plans for a helicopter as a soldier comes over and points a sword at him. Captain Tancredi enters; he is the image of Scarlioni and calls the Doctor by name.

At the Louvre, Romana and Duggan find every alarm has been immobilized and the Mona Lisa gone. Romana confesses to Duggan she is 125 (although she was "nearly 140" in THE RIBOS OPERATION). Duggan accidentally triggers the laser alarm, so he and Romana dash out of the Louvre.

In 1505, Tancredi asks how the Doctor can be here as well as Paris in 1979. "Well, I do flit about a bit, you know," the Doctor replies. Tancredi tells the Doctor he is Scaroth, the last of the Jagaroth, a race which destroyed itself in a war 400 million years ago. He arrived on Earth in its primeval time and tried to leave, but his crippled spaceship disintegrated. Scaroth was fractured into 12 splinters of his being, which are scattered in time--all identical, none complete.

The Doctor pretends to Tancredi he doesn't know how he can travel in time and has never before seen that blue police box in Leonardo's room. The Doctor sees the Mona Lisa and realizes Tancredi is forcing Leonardo to make six copies, which he'll brick up for Scarlioni to find in 474 years. "A very nice piece of capital investment," the Doctor says.

Setting off to collect instruments of torture, Tancredi tells the soldier to hold the prisoner. The Doctor takes a Polaroid flash camera out of his pocket and takes the soldier's picture, which develops instantly. When the soldier leans over to look at it, the Doctor punches him on the chin, knocking him out.

With a felt tip marker, the Doctor writes THIS IS A FAKE on each of the six canvasses Leonardo will use for the duplicate Mona Lisas; and leaves the following note, printing backwards: "Dear Leo, Sorry to have missed you. Hope you are well. Sorry about the mess on the panels. Just paint over--there's a good chap. See you earlier. Love, the Doctor." In THE MASQUE OF MANDRAGORA the Doctor just missed meeting Leonardo and he doesn't actually see him this time, but from the tone of the note, it seems they have met somewhere along the line.

Before the Doctor can leave, Tancredi returns with a set of thumbscrews.

In Paris, Scarlioni wakes up and shows Kerensky diagrams of what he really plans to do, which is put the entire world into Kerensky's bubble and send it backward in time 400 million years. Kerensky thought he had been working on an way to accelerate the growth of animals to feed the human race. Hermann enters with the Mona Lisa stolen from the Louvre. The sale of the seven Mona Lisas will bring $100 million to fund Kerensky's experiments.

In Florence, Tancredi orders the Doctor attached to the thumbscrew machine. Before the soldier starts to turn the screws, the Doctor cries out because the soldier's hands are cold. "If there's one thing I can't stand it's being tortured by someone with cold hands," the Doctor says.

In Paris, Scarlioni tells his uncomprehending wife the other splinters of himself have: caused the pyramids to be built, the heavens to be mapped, invented the first wheel, shown the true use of fire, and brought the whole human race up from nothing.

Suddenly Scaroth's other selves try to communicate with him, distracting Tancredi. The Doctor uses his mouth to unscrew his fingers, dashes into the TARDIS, dematerializes and rematerializes in 1979 back in the art gallery (again despite the randomizer).

Romana and Duggan have a strategy meeting at the cafe and decide to return to the chateau. Romana leaves a note for the Doctor with the cafe owner.

The Doctor goes to the Louvre and finds out the Mona Lisa's been stolen. There's no sign of Romana and Duggan so he goes to the cafe and gets Romana's note.

At the chateau, Hermann holds a gun on Romana and Duggan. Scarlioni brings them to the lab and threatens to blast Paris through an unstabilized time field unless Romana tells him how to stabilize Kerensky's time field. To demonstrate he means business, Scarlioni forces Kerensky into the field and turns it on, accelerating him into an old man and then a skeleton.

Hermann locks Duggan up. Scarlioni tells Romana he wants to go back in time 400 million years and stop his original self from pressing the button in the warp control cabin of the Jagaroth spaceship, so he can prevent the explosion and his splintering. He insists Romana build him a field interface stabilizer.

The Doctor shows up at the chateau and tells the thug who's guarding him he used to know Shakespeare. The Countess shows him a first draft of HAMLET. The Doctor knows it's genuine because it's in his own handwriting; Shakespeare had sprained his wrist writing sonnets. The Doctor points out a mixed metaphor he warned Shakespeare against in the "To be or not to be" soliloquy.

The Doctor tells the Countess about her husband, but she doesn't believe him. Hermann takes the Doctor away, and the Countess gets out a scroll of Egyptian pictographs, which shows a Jagaroth, just as the Doctor described.

"Romana, hello, how are you? I see the Count broke you in as a lab assistant. What are you making for him? A model railway? Gallifreyan egg timer? I hope you're not making a time machine--I shall be very angry," the Doctor says, practically in one breath on entering the lab.

The Doctor tells Scarlioni he's going to stop him going back in time, but it's too late. Romana has already built the field interface stabilizer.

The Count goes to say farewell to the Countess, who pulls a gun on him. He admits he's Scaroth and removes his Scarlioni mask to reveal his true self. He touches his ring, causing the bracelet she wears to emit a signal which kills her.

Romana, Duggan and the Doctor are locked up again. Romana tells the Doctor she's rigged the component so it will go back in time for only 2 minutes; after that, it will catapult Scaroth back to 1979. Duggan breaks down the door and Scaroth points a gun at them. He activates the equipment and dematerializes.

The Doctor, Romana and Duggan leave and try unsuccessfully to hail a cab. At the gallery, two art lovers admire the TARDIS, which they think is an exhibit. One (John Cleese) says, "For me one of the most curious things about this piece is its wonderful afunctionalism." The other (Eleanor Bron) agrees, "Divorced from its function and seen purely as a piece of art, its structure of line and color is curiously counterpointed by the redundant vestiges of its function."

The Doctor, Romana and Duggan dash into the TARDIS, which dematerializes and rematerializes (despite the randomizer) 400 million years previously. With a telescope, the Doctor locates the Jagaroth ship. He tells Duggan they were a "vicious, callous, warlike race; the universe won't miss them." The ship's atmospheric thrust motors are disabled, which is why it will explode on take off.

Picking up some primeval mud, the Doctor calls it "The amniotic fluid from which all life on Earth will spring, with the amino acids fused to form minute cells--cells which eventually evolve into vegetable and animal life." The mud is currently inert, waiting for a massive dose of radiation, which will never occur unless the Jagaroth ship explodes.

"The explosion that's caused Scarlioni to splinter in time also caused the birth of the human race; and that's what's about to happen--the birth of life itself," the Doctor tells Duggan.

If the Doctor doesn't stop Scaroth, "The entire human race will cease to exist instantly." Scaroth arrives and Duggan thumps him, knocking him out. "Duggan, that was possibly the most important punch in history," the Doctor praises, beaming. Scaroth dematerializes at the end of his two minutes.

The Doctor, Romana and Duggan race back to the TARDIS and dematerialize, seconds before the Jagaroth ship explodes.

In the chateau laboratory, Scaroth rematerializes and Hermann, who has never before seen him in his Jagaroth form, throws something at him, which causes the equipment to explode and the chateau to catch fire, killing Scaroth.

Back on the Eiffel Tower, the Doctor tells Duggan only one copy of the Mona Lisa wasn't damaged in the fire. He and Romana say goodbye to Duggan and dash away from the Eiffel Tower.

Julian Glover, who plays Count Scarlioni, Scaroth and Captain Tancredi, played Richard the Lionheart in the Hartnell story THE CRUSADE. He appeared with Tom Baker in NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRIA (1971) but they had no scenes together.

Tom Chadbon, who plays Duggan, plays Merdeen in the initial installment of the Colin Baker story THE TRIAL OF A TIME LORD.

David Graham, who plays Professor Kerensky, has provided Dalek voices in 5 stories, played Charlie in THE GUNFIGHTERS and provided a Mechanoid voice in THE CHASE, both Hartnell stories. He provided many voices for Gerry Anderson's puppet series, especially THUNDERBIRDS.

Catherine Schell, who plays Countess Scarlioni, played Maya on SPACE: 1999.

Peter Halliday, who plays a Solider, played Packer in the Troughton story THE INVASION; Pletrac in the Pertwee story CARNIVAL OF MONSTERS; and provided the voice of an alien in THE AMBASSADORS OF DEATH and the voice of a Silurian in THE SILURIANS, both Pertwee stories. He played a Vicar in the McCoy story REMEMBRANCE OF THE DALEKS.

Cameos are performed by John Cleese of MONTY PYTHON and FAWLTY TOWERS and Eleanor Bron, a comic actress who has appeared in HELP (1965), BEDAZZLED (1967), ALFIE (1966), TWO FOR THE ROAD (1967), WOMEN IN LOVE (1969) and other films. She appears as Kara in the Colin Baker story REVELATION OF THE DALEKS.