The Savages begins with the TARDIS landed on a barren plain, its crewmembers the target of raggedy Neanderthal types wielding crude weapons. “We must be back at the beginning of Man!” despairs companion Dodo. Back in 100,000 BC, even; back at the beginning of Doctor Who itself. By the end of the first episode, Dodo has found herself in the corridors of an ultra-modern City, and a sliding door has caused her to become separated from shipmate Steven Taylor; lost in those strange corridors, someone or something advances upon her, and she screams…
It’s rather reminiscent of the situation Barbara Wright found herself in, again back at the very beginning of Doctor Who; back on The Dead Planet (1963), also directed by Christopher Barry – who could have been forgiven a sense of déjà vu when he came to The Savages’ first cliffhanger.
Perhaps, though, that was the whole point of The Savages – to go to back to basics, after a sequence of wildly contrasting, rather atypical adventures. Newly installed producer Innes Lloyd seemed to think so. On 6 June 1966, he wrote to Christopher Barry to thank him for the ‘hard work and tremendous imagination’ he’d put into it: ‘From beginning to end it had a clarity of direction and purpose which, to my mind, is echoed in the finished product. I do believe, one way or another, you have managed to put Dr. Who [sic] back on the lines on which it was originally intended to be run…’