The library provided another William Hartnell serial, number 8, which was the last of the first season. The Reign Of Terror first aired on August 8 1964 and ended on September 12. The first Doctor is joined by Carole Ann Ford, Jacqueline Hill and William Russell on a trip to 1793 France during the French Revolution. Old crabby pants thinks he's got them to England so William and Jacqueline can return home. That Doctor, he sure can pick the places to land, oh, wait, he can't, the Tardis still doesn't work right. Not that he would admit it. They go to search for clues that he's right and wind up in an abandoned house where they are caught in the middle of some citizens chasing some other guys. The Doc is knocked out and everyone else is taken to Paris. The citizens burn the farmhouse with the still horizontal Doctor in the upstairs bedroom.
Don't worry, we all know he'll escape. The Doc chases after the rest of the Tardis gang and effects a sort of rescue. Everyone escapes and gets caught a couple of times each. It's a six parter, so you have to expect a bit of that. There's a lot of the show shot in the prison and some other bits are shot in the house of the men who are plotting against the evil tyrant Robespierre. He is a real dick that one. Mind you some of the monarchy he replaced were real pains in the collective ass. The King of France, Louey had lost his head because he lead the country into ruin. The resulting ruling class didn't do that very good a job of anything but killing people. At least the guillotine was quicker than starving. In one of the making of interviews it's mentioned that kids of the time when the show originally aired would know about the French Revolution and intimated that they wouldn't know much about it today. I know I knew a little, stuff that I had learned in school, but I had to go look it up on the Wikipedia to get some more detail. They sure sucked, those Frenchies. Eventually the Doc and the gang get in the same place at the same time and with the help of a spy from England they get escape Paris to the place they first landed. Then the Tardis takes them off for the next adventure on The Planet Of The Giants. There were memos passing around the BBC about the renewal of the series and who was going to be in the show if it did re-air. Jacqueline and Carole were most discussed for the chopping block. The show would return the following year of course and all three of the companions would leave the series in that season. Most of the serial was ok but a lit long. Better than some of the other historical programs.
Episodes 4 and 5 had been lost. There was a sound track from a fan and they re-created the show with flash animation and released it on this dvd last February. That's a couple of screen caps from the episodes. Kind of scarey, huh. It's still better than some of the previous attempts to re-create an episode. There's the usual commentary and a couple of making of featurettes. The photo gallery had several nice pictures.
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