Mission to Magnus

Template:Doctorwhoserial Mission to Magnus is the third television serial of doctor who's twenty third season]] It was written by Philip Martin, who had previously written the television stories Vengeance on Varos and .

Synopsis

The Sixth Doctor and Peri find themselves being threatened by Anzor, an old school bully from the Doctor's time on Gallifrey, who locks the TARDIS in orbit above the planet of Magnus. On this planet, Anzor has been working with the female upper caste to his own ends, alongside the Doctor's old enemy Sil. When the Doctor investigates further, he discovers that the polar icecaps of the planet hide an even darker foe — the Ice Warriors.

Background

It was announced in 1985 that Michael Grade, controller of BBC1, had cancelled a number of long running programmes in order to help fund the launch of a new soap opera named EastEnders. Of the many programmes that were cancelled, Doctor Who was the most high profile. A campaign was quickly launched by the national press to see about its return and Grade very quickly confirmed that Doctor Who would be returning in 1986.

Several stories had already been in the planning stages for the 23rd Season of Doctor Who, three of which were in the middle of being scripted when the announcement was made. Writer Philip Martin, who had seen mild success with his script for Vengeance on Varos the previous year, was asked by producer John Nathan-Turner to write a script containing the return of the popular Sil, introduced in that story. He also requested the inclusion of the Ice Warriors, who hadn't been seen in Doctor Who since The Monster of Peladon in 1974. As the third in production, this script was the least complete at the time of the cancellation, and no director had yet been announced (evidence suggests it might have been Ron Jones, who helmed both of Martin's other scripts for the series).

In 1988, Target Books, which had been successfully publishing novelisations of Doctor Who stories for many years, saw itself quickly running out of available televised material (although a number of serials remained unadapted, most of these were off-limits due to licensing problems). While negotiations went forward with the BBC for the publication of all new adventures, the decision was made to resurrect three of the cancelled scripts and publish them in book form. The writers of all three were approached, and all were signed on to write the novels.

Notes

As it was the least complete of the three scripts, Mission to Magnus required a great deal more work in adapting it to novel form. Martin would later recall that everything up to the point where Anzor vanishes from the story was more or less scripted, and the material that followed that had only been storylined at the point the series was rested. One thing that he took advantage of in the process of "finishing" the story in novel form was to include a reference to the Mentor Kiv, a character seen in this story's eventual replacement in the produced Season 23 The Trial of a Time Lord story, Mindwarp.

References

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