27-497: The Deadly Assassin is the third serial of the 14th season of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who , which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 30 October to 20 November 1976. It is the first serial in which the Doctor is featured without a companion , and the only such story for the classic era. In the serial, the renegade alien Time Lord
54-643: A Doctor Who audio drama produced by Big Finish Productions . Horsfall also appeared, with a Swedish accent, as Christianson in an episode of The Persuaders! entitled "The Morning After" during 1972. His stage work included performances at The Old Vic , with the Royal Shakespeare Company and at the National Theatre . Horsfall died on 28 January 2013, aged 82, on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. He
81-462: A sniper rifle on a catwalk. The Doctor fights his way to the catwalk, but the assassin is among the delegates and shoots the President dead – the crowd assumes the Doctor is the killer. Under interrogation, he maintains that he has been framed; Castellan Spandrell believes him and orders Engin to assist him in an independent investigation. The Doctor announces that he will run for President, as liberty
108-607: A deathlike state. The Doctor, Spandrell, and Engin arrive at the morgue, where the Master seizes the Sash from the President's corpse and traps the three. Inside the Panopticon, the Master makes his way to the Eye and unhooks the coils; the Doctor arrives via a service shaft. Quakes and cracks appear in the floor. The two fight, until the Master loses his footing and falls into a chasm. The Doctor reconnects
135-481: A further appearance until five years later in 1981. The Masque of Mandragora saw the debut of the new wood-panelled "Secondary Console Room" set, which was to be used as the main TARDIS console room throughout the season. The season took a five-week transmission break between the broadcasts of The Deadly Assassin and The Face of Evil in order to extend the season further into 1977, allowing Robert Holmes time to work on
162-503: Is guaranteed for those running for office during the course of an election. He realises that it was the Master who had sent him the vision through the Matrix , a vast electronic neural network which can turn thoughts into virtual reality . Entering the Matrix, the Doctor confronts an assassin who reveals himself as Chancellor Goth; the Master tries to trap the Doctor; Engin gets the Doctor out of
189-915: The BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who . His first was as Lemuel Gulliver in The Mind Robber (1968). His other appearances were as a Time Lord in The War Games (1969), Taron in Planet of the Daleks (1973), and Chancellor Goth (intended to be the same character as he played in The War Games ) in The Deadly Assassin (1976). All four of these serials were directed by David Maloney . Many years later he returned to Doctor Who , appearing in Davros –
216-627: The Doctor Who DVD Files on 29 December 2010. It was released on Blu-Ray as part of the Time Lord Victorious box set. Doctor Who (season 14) The fourteenth season of British science fiction television series Doctor Who began on 4 September 1976 with The Masque of Mandragora , and ended with The Talons of Weng-Chiang . The third Fourth Doctor series, it was the final series of Philip Hinchcliffe 's production, whilst Robert Holmes stayed till The Sun Makers in
243-554: The Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art . Horsfall appeared in many television and film roles, including the title role in Campion (1959–1960), Pathfinders to Mars (1960), the second sequel to Target Luna , Guns at Batasi (1964), The Avengers (three episodes in 1966 and 1967), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Beasts , as Sir Christopher Hatton in the 1971 BBC miniseries Elizabeth R , Enemy at
270-487: The "Top Ten Doctor Who Cliffhangers". In 2018, Digital Spy described Part Three as "the show's most controversial cliffhanger". Tat Wood suggests it is "blindingly obvious" that the story was largely inspired by the film and book The Manchurian Candidate . A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks , was published by Target Books in October 1977, entitled Doctor Who and The Deadly Assassin . This story
297-543: The Daleks (1985). Peter Pratt , who plays the Master , was previously a leading man with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and a radio actor. The cliffhanger to Part Three—where Goth holds the Doctor's head underwater in an attempt to drown him—came in for heavy criticism, particularly from the 'clean-up TV' campaigner Mary Whitehouse . She often cited it in interviews as one of the most frightening scenes in Doctor Who , her reasoning being that children would not know if
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#1732845634053324-554: The Doctor survived until the following week and that they would "have this strong image in their minds" during all that time. After the episode's initial broadcast, the BBC apologised to Whitehouse and the master tape was edited to remove the original ending. The edited episode was included when the story was repeated on BBC1 from 4 to 25 August 1977 seen by 4.4, 2.6, 3.8 & 3.5 million viewers. Paul Cornell , Martin Day and Keith Topping wrote of
351-687: The Door ( ITV , 1978–1980), Gandhi (1982), an episode of The Jewel in the Crown (ITV, 1984), the character Frankland in The Hound of the Baskervilles (ITV, 1988), and the character Balliol in Braveheart (1995). His other roles included portraying British barrister Melford Stevenson in a 1980 Granada Television dramatisation of the 1955 case of Ruth Ellis . Horsfall made several guest appearances in
378-423: The Eye of Harmony within the "black void," the Doctor realises that the Eye is actually a black hole's nucleus , an inexhaustible energy source, and the Sash and Key are its control devices; the Master's plan is to steal this energy to gain a new cycle of regenerations; however, if the Eye is disrupted, Gallifrey will be destroyed. He also realises that the Master injected himself with a neural inhibitor that mimics
405-508: The Master ( Peter Pratt ) seeks to restore his life force by disrupting a power source that would destroy the planet Gallifrey along with his archenemy the Fourth Doctor ( Tom Baker ). The Doctor has a precognitive vision about the President of the Time Lords being assassinated and goes to Gallifrey to stop it. At the Panopticon, a Gallifreyan ceremonial chamber, he notes a camera and
432-455: The Matrix. They arrive where the two were accessing the Matrix, and find the Master pulse-less and Goth fatally burnt and dying. Goth reveals that he found the Master, nearing the end of his final regeneration , and went along with him for power. Dying, Goth warns that the Master has a doomsday plan. The Doctor finds that the President has access to the symbols of office: the Sash and Great Key of Rassilon . As records describe how Rassilon found
459-480: The assassin's victims do not, he is perhaps "deadly" in that sense. According to the text commentary on the DVD, Holmes argued that the title was not a tautology, stating that there were plenty of incompetent assassins. Bernard Horsfall guest stars as Chancellor Goth. He had previously appeared as an unnamed Time Lord (credited as 'Time Lord 1') in the serial The War Games (1969); extended media have since stated they are
486-399: The coils, saving Gallifrey. The Doctor bids farewell but warns that the Master may not be dead, as he had already harvested some energy. As the Doctor's TARDIS dematerialises, the Master sneaks into his own TARDIS and escapes. Following Elisabeth Sladen 's departure, Tom Baker told producer Philip Hinchcliffe that he wanted to do a story without a companion. Robert Holmes said that it
513-481: The final serial The Talons of Weng-Chiang . The entire season was broadcast from 4 September 1976 to 2 April 1977. All releases are for DVD unless otherwise indicated: Bernard Horsfall Bernard Arthur Gordon Horsfall (20 November 1930 – 28 January 2013) was an English actor of stage and screen. Horsfall was born in Bishop's Stortford , Hertfordshire, and educated at Rugby School . He trained as an actor at
540-725: The next series. Tom Baker continues his role as the Fourth Doctor . Sarah Jane Smith ( Elisabeth Sladen ) departs in The Hand of Fear , before the Doctor is joined by Leela ( Louise Jameson ) in The Face of Evil . Uniquely in the 'classic' era of Doctor Who , no companion appears in The Deadly Assassin . The Master reappears in The Deadly Assassin as the main antagonist, his first appearance since Frontier in Space (1973), this time played by Peter Pratt . The character would not make
567-470: The plotting and Matrix sequences, calling it "well-crafted all around". In 2010, Charlie Jane Anders of io9 listed the cliffhanger to the first episode—in which it appears the Doctor shoots the president—as one of the greatest cliffhangers in the history of Doctor Who . Den of Geek named the cliffhanger to the third episode as one of the ten best Doctor Who cliffhangers, praising the freeze frame . In 2013, Starburst also chose Part Three as one of
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#1732845634053594-879: The same character. Other parts played by Horsfall in Doctor Who were Gulliver in The Mind Robber (1968) and Taron in Planet of the Daleks (1973), all of which were directed by David Maloney . Angus MacKay later played the Headmaster in Mawdryn Undead (1983). George Pravda previously played Denes in The Enemy of the World (1967–68) and Jaeger in The Mutants (1972). Hugh Walters previously played William Shakespeare in The Chase (1965) and later appeared as Vogel in Revelation of
621-408: The serial four stars out of five. He described "the Master's putrid skull and split bangers for fingers" as "the most revolting images presented on teatime TV" but was positive towards its supporting characters, though he did criticise the Matrix sequences for being more earthly rather than alien, despite them being constructed from deceased Time Lords. The A.V. Club reviewer Christopher Bahn praised
648-667: The serial in The Discontinuity Guide (1995), "The reputation of The Deadly Assassin rests with its violence and its revelations about the Doctor's people and their culture. Politically literate and cynical ('We must adjust the truth'), the serial is the definitive text on the Time Lords. The Doctor's journey into the APC net ... is a visual and intellectual tour de force of hallucinatory images." In The Television Companion (1998), David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker reported that at
675-414: The time of broadcast several viewers took issue with the serial's portrayal of the Time Lords, finding it a contradiction of the small details that had previously been dropped about the Doctor's home planet, but over time its reputation became more positive. The pair themselves called it "a truly remarkable story" and praised the reintroduction of the Master. In 2010, Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times awarded
702-463: Was difficult to write the script for The Deadly Assassin without anyone for the Doctor to share his thoughts and plans with, which was the usual role of the companion. Working titles for this story included The Dangerous Assassin (which Holmes changed to "deadly" because he thought it "didn't sound right"). The final title is a tautology : a successful assassin must, by definition, be deadly. However, since Time Lords can in general survive death , and
729-602: Was released on VHS in March 1989 in edited omnibus format in the US only. It was released on VHS in episodic format in the UK in October 1991. It was also re-released and remastered for the WHSmith -exclusive Time Lord Collection in 2002 with a better-quality freeze-frame cliffhanger for Episode 3. The Deadly Assassin was released on 11 May 2009 on Region 2 DVD . The serial was released in issue 52 of
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