30 DECEMBER 1972 – 20 JANUARY 1973

If the Doctor’s own people are prepared to break the laws of time, then it must be a grave matter indeed…

By EDDIE ROBSON

Dead Ends

When Terrance Dicks handed Bob Baker and Dave Martin the premise of the Doctor meeting his previous selves, the writers felt it was logical for this timebending concept to take place “somewhere out of time”. They settled on “a kind of Underworld, Hades… the World of the Dead…”

Referencing Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 classic The Seventh Seal (above), they pitched a tale where Death plays chess with the President of the Time Lords – who has three kings at his disposal, representing the three Doctors. They’re accordingly cast into Limbo and must pass initiative tests to defeat the allied forces of evil. Baker and Martin acknowledged that the idea owed something to Dicks and Malcolm Hulke’s The War Games (1969) in “the use of baddies from different zones and cultures”.