Review The Deadly Assassin (1976)

[Doctor Omega]

Your thoughts on this story....

A mysterious evil is at work on Gallifrey. The President of the Time Lords has been assassinated and the Doctor caught red-handed. An inexorable master plan has been set in motion. There can be no escape

On to the next story....

THE FACE OF EVIL

https://www.imdforums.com/threads/the-face-of-evil-1977.5368/


Back to the previous story....

THE HAND OF FEAR

https://www.imdforums.com/threads/the-hand-of-fear-1976.5367/

 

[Doctor Omega]

 

[Doctor Omega]

This may be blasphemy, but I actually think I preferred it when the Time Lords were the lofty and God-like creatures of THE WAR GAMES.

While reducing them to a lot of outdated and dusty old men was amusing for this story, it took away a lot of the mystique and over the years has made the Time Lords ordinary mortals in the way they behave, reaching it's nadir in the new show with this kind of thing.....

The following short is just awful, in my opinion. Just awful....

As for THE DEADLY ASSASSIN itself, I love the emaciated Master and the dream sequence set in the Matrix. But for it's depiction of Gallifrey, I think it may have been, in retrospect, a mistake.

 

[Doctor Omega]

Sir Charles Curran was the BBC Director General during most of the 1970’s, and this is his response to Mary Whitehouse’s criticism of ‘Doctor Who’ over its violent content during the Hinchcliffe-Holmes era.

“The television service was not totally satisfied with the way ‘The Deadly Assassin’ developed. With hindsight, the service does accept that one or two viewers may have imagined that Dr. Who’s dreams were reality. What actually happened was that the head of the department felt, before these episodes were transmitted, that some of the sequences were a little too realistic for a science-fiction series. Accordingly, several of them were edited out before transmission.

“The result was what you saw on the screen, and which I myself think was reasonably acceptable. However, with hindsight, the head of the department responsible would have liked to have cut just a few more frames of the action than he did.”