Saturday 13 March 2010

A Matter of Time: The Claws of Axos


ORIGINAL BROADCAST: 13/03/1971

Thirty-nine years ago today, the Doctor and his companion Jo began their adventure to prevent the Axons from draining all energy from the planet Earth. This story starred Jon Pertwee as the third Doctor, Katy Manning as Jo Grant, and Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stuart. Like the previous season, the entire of the stories in this season were set on Earth in the present day, as the Doctor had been exiled by the Time Lords.

In late 1969, script editor Terrance Dicks commissioned a new writing duo, Bob Baker and Dave Martin, to write a six-part story for the eighth season. The original storyline was set in central London, with Battersea Power Station taking the place of Nuton Power Complex. However, this story would have been too expensive to make on the budget available, and Dicks promptly told the writing pair to scale down the story. After a few rewrites, they decided to set the story just outside London, and changed the format to four parts.

Location shooting was planned to take place over five days in early 1971, around various locations in Kent. During the location shooting of the scenes with the tramp, a huge overnight snow storm occurred, meaning that a line had to be added into the script. The variations of weather from shot to shot in these scenes, filmed on separate days, were explained by the Axons causing ‘freak weather conditions’.

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