The Rescue

Information

Writer: David Whitaker
Director: Christopher Barry
Script Editor: Dennis Spooner
Producer: Verity Lambert, Mervyn Pinfield (associate producer)
Executive Producer(s): None

Originally Broadcast: 2nd January - 9th January 1965
Episodes: 2
Duration: 25 mins each episode
Production Code: L
Series: 2
Story Number: 11
Enemy: Koquillion
Setting: Dido, 2493

Synopsis

Two crash survivors on planet Dido live in fear of the dreaded Koquillion, but the Doctor soon discovers things are not as they seem...

Cast

The Doctor - William Hartnell

Ian Chesterton - William Russell

Barbara Wright - Jacqueline Hill

Vicki - Maureen O'Brien

Bennett / Koquillion - Ray Barrett

Space Captain - Tom Sheridan

Sand Monster - Tom Sheridan (uncredited)

Inhabitant of Dido - John Stuart (uncredited)

Inhabitant of Dido - Colin Hughes (uncredited)

Story Notes

• This is the first episode featuring Vicki.
  
• All episodes exist in 16mm telerecordings.
  
• Negative film prints of both episodes exist and were recovered by the BBC in 1978.
  
• Telesnaps of this story are held by private collectors.
  
• The story was originally known as Doctor Who and Tanni. It was originally intended that the new companion would be named Tanni.
  
• Koquillion was originally credited as Sydney Wilson (a combination of Sydney Newman and Donald Wilson) to hide his true identity.
  
• Desperate Measures was the first episode of Doctor Who to make the UK's top 10 most watched programs list.
  
• The 1973 Radio Times 10th anniversary special called the story The Powerful Enemy as it titled all the early stories by the title of the first episode. Some subsequent listings repeated this error, as did the story's broadcast on some American PBS stations.
  
• During the scene in which Jacqueline Hill fired a gun at Vicki's pet she was injured suffering shock and a sore face. This was caused when the explosion connected to the wooden gun went off with more force than expected.
  
• "The Rescue" is also the original broadcast title of episode 7 of The Daleks.
  
• Tom Sheridan, who played the Space Captain heard but not seen in this story, was also inside the Sand Monster costume.
  
• "The Powerful Enemy" boasts the first occasion on which a sound effect is laid over footage of the TARDIS re-materializing. Prior to this, exterior shots of the TARDIS landing had implied that the ship appeared soundlessly in a new environment. Although the precise sound of "re-materialization" — with its distinctive, final "thud" — would not be finalized until The Three Doctors, this was the start of a sometimes important convention about the TARDIS. People on the outside can hear it coming and going. Without this innovation, the teaser from The Christmas Invasion, for example — in which Jackie and Mickey respond solely to the sound of the TARDIS — wouldn't have been possible.
  

Preceded by: The Dalek Invasion of Earth - Followed by: The Romans