Colony In Space

"Doctor Who and Helen Worth", "Colon Yin Space"

"The One with the Shrivelled Aliens" (USA), "Doctor Doo and the Whomsday Machine" (rare Target misprint - worth two million pounds on eBay)

Doctor Who stops the Master again. There are also good colonists and greedy capitalists so the producers can show that they're committed socialists.

*** - Endlessly entertaining for the most part though it's 97% dull too

The Master: "It's always innocent viewers who suffer."

Director: "'Bystanders', Roger, the script says 'bystanders'"

Roger Delgado: "I think you'll find the script as a whole bears out my version"

"A faulty computer on Earth has allocated these pants both for colonisation and for mineralogical exploitation."

The miners killing machine would go on to star in Coronation Street for decades and decades…

Captain Dent’s hair won the Turner Prize in 1973.

The Master was added to the story because viewers of episodes one and two took Television Centre hostage and demanded something be done.

The quaintness of the past’s vision of the future is never more adorable than the Mining Company’s space ship having a notice board and the Master storing secret papers in a metal filing cabinet.

A puppy was accidentally cast as Caldwell which led to episode two being completely reshot when Mrs Dicks pointed it out during a private screening.

The idea of an “entertainments console” which brings images of death and destruction was revived when Sony invented the Playstation. Malcolm Hulke was tempted to take legal action but his prior death ruled his claim null, void and tepid.

Katy Manning’s first trip to an alien planet proved most enjoyable. Filming Colony in Space was less interesting.

...is that you really should have a story as well as a moral.

Si Hunt

I Nothing Like I Better To Do

"I have a strange empathy with Story HHH as it features a wise and learned hero who goes to a primitive city with honourable motives and is then threatened with death before being exiled for life. It was the finals years of the last century and the annual "Panopticon" convention was being held at a hotel in central Coventry. I was to be one of the star guests, though as usual I chose to buy my own ticket (under an assumed name) and mingle with the proles rather than take my natural place on stage. I won't bore you with the details (I do so hate it when raconteurs embellish their tales with superfluous detail), suffice it to say that I had failed to find sanctuary in Frazer Hines' bedroom and was being chased through the city centre by a group of "Doctor Who" monsters simply because I happened to put forward the entirely sensible opinion that they should have been classified as "props" rather than "actors" because the people inside the costumes were so utterly irrelevant. The three small glasses of sherry I'd taken over the course of the weekend might've lead me to include the phrase "you're worthless scum and most of you could've been replaced with strings if the producers had had my intelligence" but that was no excuse for chaining me to the revolving restaurant and making a small bonfire out of my clothes. Synthetic tweed produces some unusual fumes and I didn't regain my wits until I had been dumped beyond the city limits with a letter from the Mayor which threatened me with death if I ever set foot in Coventry again."

Nige Tippit (writing in "The Truss of Rassilon") reviewed Colony in Space in the form of a rock opera. Though mostly ghastly, it did contain a chorus which would later be borrowed and slightly altered by popular pop combo "Guns and Roses" - "Take me down to the Primitive City, Where the guards are green and the walls are pretty". Meanwhile, Barry Mendel was back with a set of copyright guidelines to safeguard what was left of his body but, on this occasion, was only prepared to offer "a small pot of semen" in return for a tape of this story. A pro-Colony writer enthused that it was "of invaluable assistance when some squatters decided to live in my back garden. I would never have thought of adding claws to my Metro and driving it towards them."