City of Death

“Mick Jaggeroth”, “City of French People”, “Louvre Back in Anger”

“The One with the Painting We’ve Never Heard Of” (USA), “Ou Ze Ell Is Docteur Who?” (France)

Doctor Who and Romana battle with whatever Douglas Adams thought was funny at the time.

*** - It's iconic and then some.

"I say - what a violent butler - he's so wonderful" (Tom would go on to ad lib a funnier version of this line, or so he claims)

"Pants have... a bouquet"

Bruges doubled for Paris in all external shots.

Tom Baker, drunk as a lord, proposed marriage to the Eiffel Tower but Lalla Ward got herself in the way and nature took it’s religio-legal course.

Ambitious production unit manager John Nathan Turner would go on to hold higher Doctor Who office when he script edited Terror of the Vervoids.

Lalla’s school girl outfit was not a cheap ratings ploy. It was purely coincidental that this story got the highest ratings of the season. Fact.

A scene where John Cleese peels off his face and is exposed as an alien was recorded but dropped due to him insisting on shouting ‘this is an ex face’ when he had finished.

“Doctor Who never tasted so good” declared the Sheldon Monk in a front page spread. They went on to devote the entire issue to the series. It was the first and last time that they let the work experience boy edit the paper.

...is that physical violence actually does solve life's problems.

Si Hunt

"I remember once being unfortunate enough to be visiting "g-a-y" Paris and was up the Tower when I overheard two proles chattering like apes.

"Paris has a bouquet" said one of them in a woefully inaccurate attempt at reproducing dialogue from Story 5H. My camera script for episode one was back at my lodgings so I was unable to prompt from the sidelines but I didn't want to let them continue humiliating themselves.

"Don't be pathetically stupid" I quipped, "the correct reading of the line should be Romana says 'Mmm! That bouquet!', the Doctor says 'What Paris has...it has an ethos. It has a life. A...', Romana says 'A bouquet?', the Doctor says 'A spirit all of its own...like a white wine. It has...', Romana says 'A bouquet?' and the Doctor says 'It has a bouquet'. Anything other than an accurate reading renders the entire thing beneath contempt. you may as well do what Baker used to do and make it up as he went along."

I tried to barge past them to get to the souvenir shop (which I'd noticed earlier hadn't bothered to put the postcards in alphabetical order) when they grabbed me.

"Shall we get rid of this odious man?" asked one.

"Yes" said his colleague. "Shall we bundle him down in the lift or let him fly?"

"Let's not be ostentatious" said the first. And that's how I came to be hanging from the Eiffel Tower by the seat of my hard wearing tweed trousers. The awful plebs didn't even have the strength of character to throw me over the railings properly. Eventually the authorities cottoned on to the fact that I wasn't attempting suicide and, when their attempts to convince me otherwise failed, they cut me down."

Clive Spinmeround, writing in "Violent Butlers Rule OK", put forward a strong case for City of Death placing the whole of Fawlty Towers within the Doctor Who canon. 'John Cleese is clearly playing the role of Basil Fawlty. The moustache is pure Fawlty, the obvious attempts to impress a glamorous woman are pure Fawlty, the height with which he imbues his character is pure Fawlty. I believe that Mr Fawlty, perhaps because his hotel has been closed for a period of structural alteration, has decided to take a vacation in France and brush up on his art. There he meets a woman who is precisely his general modus operandi and spouts classic Fawlty nonsense in the hope of impressing her. You can tell he is playing the part of Basil as there is a seething rage just beneath the surface which beautifully counter-points the essential serenity of the scene. I intend to flesh my theory out in a twelve novella saga which will seamlessly merge the events of Fawlty Towers and the Williams-Adams-Baker era. These will be exclusively published by the VBRok Press, an order form is available overleaf. Photocopies are acceptable if you do not wish to spoil your magazine.'