The Krotons

"The Krotons" is a quietly hated story that was unremarkable at the time but somehow acquired quite weighty significance much later. It's a b-team story, rushed off the bench at the last minute to replace the incredibly-even-duller "Prison in Space" (to join a Museum in Space and a Mining Colony in Space that season - what next? The Library In Space?). A hurriedly produced tale about a planet full of people called Gond (Vana Gond, Abu Gond etc.) being subjugated by two big crystal monsters in a spaceship. It's possible that the Gond civilisation was first crippled by the logistics of producing the 'G' volume of their telephone directory.

But let's not argue the merits or otherwise of "The Krotons". The point is, all concerned probably breathed a sigh of relief when the cameras wrapped on Episode 4 and they were able to turn their efforts towards plodding through the rest of the season. Little did they know how Doctor Who would be changed by "The Krotons". If that crumpled Robert Holmes script hadn't been rescued from down the back of Terrance Dicks' filing cabinet, it could have been Dick Sharples who was called up to open the next season. With no Holmes, we'd have no Gallifrey, no Autons and no Sontarans. Perhaps with Pertwee's comedy background in mind, "George and Mildred" writer Sharples would have envisaged the UNIT setup quite differently.

However, the influence of the story stretches well beyond the later achievements of its writer. By some twist of fate, "The Krotons" became one of the relatively few Troughton adventures to survive the seventies archive purge. Ironic eh? "Power of the Daleks", "Fury from the Deep", "Web of Fear"... all burned and gone. And yet this hastily produced replacement is still with us today, complete and in remarkably good condition. It's like finding out that the entire Dylan songbook has been erased but his cover of "Mr Bojangles" has somehow survived.

Yet Holmes certainly didn't turn his back on "The Krotons", considering its key ideas worthy enough to revive for later adventures. For example, the notion of a society that gives its two brightest students to a ruling power as a gift was pinched later for "The Mysterious Planet" - in fact, if you add in a huge shining robot that nobodies ever seen, a world that was long ago 'cleansed' of natural life and turned into a wasteland and a ruler who depends on an artificially produced substance to function, it's almost a re-write. And the story has plenty of other quirks of Holmes imagination to offer, the TARDIS re-locating to avoid destruction for one. "The Krotons" isn't popular today because it fell into a rushed season and was badly made and edited. There's a gem of a story in there somewhere, and it's easy to see this triumphing as a Pertwee adventure if it had only been held back.

However it turned out, "The Krotons" is now one of the few representations of the era we have left, as well as giving us a writer that would fashion the show's entire future development. I suppose the lesson is not to discount something just because it doesn't come up to scratch - you never know how important it might turn out to be later.