The Claws of Axos

057 – The Claws of Axos
Doctor Who serial
The Doctor is held prisoner by Axon Claws.
Cast
Doctor Jon Pertwee (Third Doctor)
Companion Katy Manning (Jo Grant)
Others Nicholas Courtney — Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart Richard Franklin — Captain Mike Yates John Levene — Sergeant Benton Roger Delgado — The Master Fernanda Marlowe — Corporal Bell Peter Bathurst — Chinn Paul Grist — Bill Filer Donald Hewlett — George Hardiman David Savile — Winser Tim Pigott-Smith — Captain Harker Kenneth Benda — The Minister Derek Ware — Pigbin Josh Michael Walker, David G. March — Radar Operators Royston Farrell — Technician Bernard Holley, Patricia Gordino, John Hicks, Debbie Lee London — Axons Mildred Brown - Aged Jo Grant
Production
Writer	Bob Baker Dave Martin
Director	Michael Ferguson
Script editor	Terrance Dicks
Producer	Barry Letts
Executive producer(s)	None
Production code	GGG
Series	Season 8
Length	4 episodes, 25 minutes each
Originally broadcast	13 March – 3 April 1971
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by → The Mind of Evil Colony in Space

The Claws of Axos is the third serial of the eighth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 13 March to 3 April 1971.

Plot

The Axons land on Earth, desperately in need of fuel. They propose to exchange the miracle substance they call Axonite for some much needed energy. Axonite is a "thinking" molecule that can replicate any substance... or so they claim. As it turns out, the ship is a single organism called Axos whose purpose is to feed itself by draining all energy through the Axonite (which is just a part of itself), including the energy of every life form on Earth. The deception about the Axonite's beneficial properties was to facilitate the distribution of Axonite across the globe.

Meanwhile, the Master, who was captured by Axos and used his knowledge of Earth as a bargaining chip for his life and freedom, escapes Axos and makes his way to the Doctor's TARDIS — his own having been seized by Axos. He plans to repair it to escape from Earth.

Axos itself becomes interested in the Doctor's knowledge of time travel. It now plans to broaden its feeding base by travelling through time as well as space. The Doctor, realising this, plans to trick Axos into linking up its drive unit to his TARDIS so that he can send Axos into a perpetual time loop. After tricking the Master into completing the repairs on his TARDIS, the Doctor does just that. This results in every part of Axos dematerialising from Earth, including the Axon automatons and the Axonite.

At the end, with the Master having escaped in his own TARDIS during the confusion aboard Axos, the Doctor returns to Earth, but not of his own volition. The Time Lords have programmed the TARDIS to always return to Earth, the Doctor states that he is a "galactic yo-yo!".

Continuity

• Both the Doctor and the Master refer to the events of this serial in "Last of the Time Lords".
• "The Feast of Axos", a Big Finish audio play with the Sixth Doctor, tells the subsequent story of astronauts visiting Axos, still imprisoned in the time loop.
• The Axons reappear in the Eleventh Doctor Doctor Who Magazine comic strip "The Golden Ones", beginning in issue #425. In this story they are behind a brain-enhancing drink and associated anime show in Tokyo. The drink transforms children into Axons by "increasing the links between neurons in the brain" - in other words, the axons.
• An Axon is seen imprisoned in The Department's Alien Prison in Liberation, the second episode of Series 1 of K-9.

Production

Serial details by episode

Episode	Broadcast date	Run time	Viewership (in millions)	Archive
"Episode One"	13 March 1971 (1971-03-13)	23:51	7.3	PAL 2" colour videotape
"Episode Two"	20 March 1971 (1971-03-20)	24:00	8.0	RSC converted (NTSC-to-PAL) (NB some scenes also survive on an unedited PAL 2" colour studio videotape and are used in remastered version)
"Episode Three"	27 March 1971 (1971-03-27)	24:05	6.4	RSC converted (NTSC-to-PAL)
"Episode Four"	3 April 1971 (1971-04-03)	25:16	7.8	PAL 2" colour videotape

Writing

In late 1969, script editor Terrance Dicks contacted new writing duo Bob Baker and Dave Martin after reading a draft script they had sent around the BBC for another production, A Man's Life. After offering the duo a seven-part story in November 1969 for Doctor Who's eighth season, Baker and Martin submitted some various storylines they had. Despite the storylines not being suitable for a serial, Dicks commissioned an opening episode from them on 1 December, but as part of a six-parter, rather than a seven-parter - Dicks and producer Barry Letts believed that seven-episode serials were too long.

The original storyline for the serial was set in central London, with Battersea Power Station taking the place of Nuton Power Complex. However, the serial would have been too expensive to make on the budget available, and Dicks promptly told the writing pair to scale down the story. After going back to the storyline stage, they decided to set the story just outside London, and excluded the large action scenes set in space and around major landmarks in London.

Working titles for this story included Doctor Who and the Gift, The Friendly Invasion, The Axons, and The Vampire from Space. The last title was used through the production of the first two episodes, and was only changed by the time filming began on the third. The DVD release contains unused footage and cuts from the story that are packaged with the original title sequence – naming the story as The Vampire from Space. The serial was envisaged to be a six-parter, but the concept of the storyline changed as development progressed.

Shooting

Location shooting was planned to take place over five days in early 1971, starting on 4 January. Filming would take place in various locations around Kent.

During the location shooting of the scenes with the tramp, an overnight snow storm necessitated the creation of a line of dialogue in the programme to explain that the variations of weather from shot to shot in these scenes (filmed on various days but supposedly taking place within minutes of each other) are "freak weather conditions" as a result of Axos' arrival.

A common myth about this story is that the colour-separation overlay (CSO) backgrounds were accidentally omitted in some of the car interior scenes, leaving the blue screen behind the characters. In reality, the blue is supposed to represent the sky.^{[citation needed]} The differing shades of blue compared to the location exterior footage is the result of the shots' separate origins. This is contradicted by Paul Vanezis in an interview, in which he states "I wouldn't put a background in and I'll tell you why they didn't put a background in there - it wasn't lit properly. There wasn't enough blue in it to key it, or yellow or green or whatever it was. It was shot wrong. It shouldn't have been shot in the studio and it shouldn't have been shot on xchrome. These days with modern technology you could easily key it... easily, but it wouldn't look right."

For reasons unexplained, the opening titles for this serial use the Second Doctor's version of the Doctor Who theme music as opposed to the Third Doctor's, as do The Mind of Evil and Terror of the Autons. After this serial however, the theme reverts to the Jon Pertwee standard.

The story includes interior scenes inside the TARDIS for the first time in the Pertwee (and colour) era of the show. The configuration of the TARDIS set up is unique for this adventure. The TARDIS monitor appears to be a circular screen embedded in one of the 'roundels' in the console room wall, rather than the traditional rectangular screen. The doors of the console room do not open directly into the exterior as in all other adventures; instead they open into a corridor with the 'roundel' motif. The TARDIS interior re-appeared in the next production (Colony in Space) with both these features eliminated.

Cast notes

• Bernard Holley had been last seen in The Tomb of the Cybermen. He reprises his role of Axos, this time in the 2011 audio play The Feast of Axos.
• Tim Pigott-Smith would later play Marco in The Masque of Mandragora.
• Peter Bathurst had previously played Hensell in the The Power of the Daleks.

Outside references

The Lovely Invasion, an episode of the BBC Radio 4 series Nebulous, parodies this story: the world falls in love with the Lovely, a naked alien trio offering to "Lovelify" the Earth until they are nuked by Professor Nebulous (who had unfortunately just learned after setting the bomb, too late to disarm it, that the Lovely really were seeking nothing more than Earth's friendship).

In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in April 1977. The novel restored material deleted from the TV version, including a "meet-cute" for Jo and Bill Filer and a suggestion that the Doctor may be attempting to steal Axonite to repair the TARDIS. Pigbin Josh's distinctive dialogue is gone.

Doctor Who book
Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	10
Writer	Terrance Dicks
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Chris Achilleos
ISBN	0-426-11703-4
Release date	21 April 1977
Preceded by	'
Followed by	'

VHS and DVD releases

• The original 625 line PAL videotapes of episodes two and three were wiped/destroyed, although some scenes from episode two were found to have survived on an unedited studio recording block. In 1985 525 line NTSC copies were returned from Canada.
• In May 1992, the story was released on VHS.
• On 25 April 2005, the story was released on Region 2 DVD, followed by a Region 1 release on 8 November 2005. For remastering purposes the NTSC material was converted back to PAL using Reverse Standards Conversion and combined with the existing PAL footage.
• As of 15 October 2008, this serial has been included for sale on iTunes.

External links

• The Claws of Axos at BBC Online
• The Claws of Axos at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
• The Claws of Axos at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Restoration of The Claws of Axos

Reviews

• The Claws of Axos reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• The Claws of Axos reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide

Target novelisation

• Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide
• On Target — Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos