Doctor Who season 12

The twelfth season of British science fiction television series Doctor Who began on 28 December 1974 with Tom Baker's first serial Robot, and ended with Revenge of the Cybermen on 10 May 1975.

Starring

No. of stories5

No. of episodes20

Original networkBBC1

Quick facts Starring, No. of stories ...

Doctor Who
Season 12
Cover art of the Blu-ray release for the complete season
Starring	Tom Baker Elisabeth Sladen Ian Marter
No. of stories	5
No. of episodes	20
Release
Original network	BBC1
Original release	28 December 1974 (1974-12-28) – 10 May 1975 (1975-05-10)
Season chronology
← Previous Season 11 Next → Season 13
List of episodes

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This is the first season to feature Tom Baker as the fourth incarnation of the Doctor, an alien Time Lord who travels through time and space in his TARDIS, which appears to be a British police box on the outside. He is accompanied by companions Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), continuing from season eleven, and Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter), who joins in this season. With Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks having both departed along with Jon Pertwee, new producer Philip Hinchcliffe and new script editor Robert Holmes worked on this series. Letts's last story as producer was Robot, with Hinchcliffe producing the rest of the season. Holmes had previously written for the programme.

Casting

Main cast

During production of season eleven, it was known that Jon Pertwee would be leaving his role as the Third Doctor and that a new Fourth Doctor would need to be cast for the part.^[1] Tom Baker was an out-of-work actor, working in construction at the time.^[2]^[3] Baker had been a television and film actor, having major parts in several films including The Vault of Horror (1973) and as the main antagonist in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad the same year. He had written to Bill Slater, the Head of Serials at the BBC, asking for work.^[3] Slater suggested Baker to Doctor Who producer Barry Letts who had been looking to fill the part.^[2]^[3] Letts had been the producer of the series since the early Pertwee serials in 1970. He had seen Baker's work in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and hired him for the part.^[4] Baker would continue in his role as the Doctor for seven seasons, longer than any other actor to play the part.^[5]

Elisabeth Sladen returned to play the role of companion Sarah Jane Smith throughout the season. Ian Marter joined the cast as Harry Sullivan. The character was created before Baker was cast; there had been discussion of casting an older actor as the Doctor, and so Harry was created as a younger character to handle the action scenes.^{[citation needed]}

Recurring cast

Nicholas Courtney and John Levene reprised their roles as the Brigadier and Warrant Officer Benton respectively in the first serial, Robot.^[6] Courtney had begun his role in the Second Doctor story The Web of Fear (1968), where the character was a colonel. Levene had begun in Second Doctor story The Invasion (1968), replacing another actor. Both were members of the military organization United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT). They, along with Sladen, would be the transition cast to carry through from the Third Doctor to the Fourth Doctor, though Robot is the only UNIT story for the twelfth season.

Serials

After Robot, all the serials in this season continue directly one after the other, tracing one single problematic voyage of the TARDIS crew. Despite the continuity, each serial is considered its own standalone story.

The season was initially formatted as the previous Pertwee season had been with three six-part stories and two four-part stories. To this end, the initial structure was to open with the four-part Robot and the four-part Space Station by Christopher Langley followed by three six-parters – Genesis of Terror (later retitled Genesis of the Daleks), Loch Ness, and another six-part story to be determined. Script editor Robert Holmes discussed with Philip Hinchcliffe the possibility of replacing the as-yet undecided six-parter with a four-part story and a two-parter, both with the same production team. The season structure later became two four-part stories (Robot and a replacement for Space Station, The Ark in Space), the new two-parter The Destructors (later retitled The Sontaran Experiment), the six-part Genesis of Terror, and a four-part version of Loch Ness (later retitled Terror of the Zygons and held over for season 13).^[7] This decision made The Sontaran Experiment the first two-part story since Season 2's The Rescue. It was also the first to be shot entirely on location since Jon Pertwee's opening story Spearhead from Space in Season 7, and the first to be shot entirely on videotape instead of 16mm film, as was usual for location shooting.^[8] As a means of saving money, The Ark in Space and Revenge of the Cybermen were shot on the same sets.

More information No. story, No. in season ...

No. story	No. in season	Serial title	Episode titles	Directed by	Written by	Original release date	Prod. code	UK viewers (millions) ^[9]	AI ^[9]
75	1	Robot	"Part One"	Christopher Barry	Terrance Dicks	28 December 1974 (1974-12-28)	4A	10.8	53
			"Part Two"			4 January 1975 (1975-01-04)		10.7	53
			"Part Three"			11 January 1975 (1975-01-11)		10.1	—
			"Part Four"			18 January 1975 (1975-01-18)		9.0	51
Sarah investigates the National Institute for Advanced Scientific Research, colloquially known as the "Think Tank". She finds that director Hilda Winters, her assistant Arnold Jellicoe, and former Think Tank member Professor J.P. Kettlewell are developing a robot, K1, out of living metal; and Winters and Jellicoe have secretly instructed K1 to steal international nuclear launch codes from the government. K1 discovers Sarah's presence and when UNIT arrives, the three conspirators and K1 escape with Sarah as their hostage. Winters sends a list of demands to the world governments, then orders Kettlewell to connect to the launch computers. Kettlewell hesitates, and Sarah and Harry attempt to escape. Winters orders K1 to stop them, but the robot inadvertently fires the disintegrator gun at Kettlewell; UNIT forces take Winters and Jellicoe away and K1 seeks out Sarah to protect her, an effect of Sarah's previous compassion; and then absorbs a disintegrator ray blast and grows to an enormous size. The Doctor returns, and uses a metal virus designed by Kettlewell to defeat the robot. Sarah is saddened by the loss of K1. The Doctor offers to cheer her up with a trip in the TARDIS, extending the invitation to Harry as well.
76	2	The Ark in Space	"Part One"	Rodney Bennett	Robert Holmes	25 January 1975 (1975-01-25)	4C	9.4	—
			"Part Two"			1 February 1975 (1975-02-01)		13.6	—
			"Part Three"			8 February 1975 (1975-02-08)		11.2	—
			"Part Four"			15 February 1975 (1975-02-15)		10.2	—
Thousands of years in the future, an insectoid alien race known as the Wirrn intend to absorb the humans on board Space Station Nerva.
77	3	The Sontaran Experiment	"Part One"	Rodney Bennett	Bob Baker and Dave Martin	22 February 1975 (1975-02-22)	4B	11.0	—
77	3	The Sontaran Experiment	"Part Two"	Rodney Bennett	Bob Baker and Dave Martin	1 March 1975 (1975-03-01)	4B	10.5	55
On a future Earth, the Sontaran Field Major Styre experiments on humans he trapped there.
78	4	Genesis of the Daleks	"Part One"	David Maloney	Terry Nation	8 March 1975 (1975-03-08)	4E	10.7	—
			"Part Two"			15 March 1975 (1975-03-15)		10.5	57
			"Part Three"			22 March 1975 (1975-03-22)		8.5	—
			"Part Four"			29 March 1975 (1975-03-29)		8.8	58
			"Part Five"			5 April 1975 (1975-04-05)		9.8	57
			"Part Six"			12 April 1975 (1975-04-12)		9.1	56
The Fourth Doctor, Sarah, and Harry are sent on a mission to Skaro to change the Dalek's history at their beginning to prevent them from becoming the dominant race. A war between the Thals and the Kaleds has left it nearly inhospitable. Sarah Jane is captured by the Thals; the Doctor and Harry by the Kaleds, and taken to a bunker where they meet the lead scientist Davros, who unveils his new invention, the Dalek. When halted from proceeding by the leadership, Davros covertly provides the Thal leaders a way to attack the Kaleds. Sarah is rescued; all Kaleds not in the bunker are killed. The Daleks attack the Thals. The survivors make their way to the bunker, and the Doctor goes inside. The Doctor rigs the Dalek incubation room with explosives, but hesitates to detonate them, questioning whether he has the right to make that decision. The Daleks return and exterminate the remaining Kaleds. A Dalek inadvertently sets off the explosives. The Doctor escapes before a bomb caves in the bunker, trapping Davros and the Daleks, who seemingly exterminate Davros. The Doctor considers his mission complete: out of the Daleks' evil, good will always arise to challenge them.
79	5	Revenge of the Cybermen	"Part One"	Michael E. Briant	Gerry Davis	19 April 1975 (1975-04-19)	4D	9.5	57
			"Part Two"			26 April 1975 (1975-04-26)		8.3	—
			"Part Three"			3 May 1975 (1975-05-03)		8.9	—
			"Part Four"			10 May 1975 (1975-05-10)		9.4	58
The Doctor, Harry and Sarah Jane find themselves on Space Station Nerva but millennia earlier when it was just a beacon for incoming and outgoing space ships, where a lethal infection is spreading through the crew.

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Production

Barry Letts served as producer for Robot, after which he was succeeded by Philip Hinchcliffe. Robert Holmes took over from Terrance Dicks as script editor.^[10]

Robot was written by Dicks, who cited King Kong as an influence for the serial.^[11] Dicks incorporated several familiar elements from the Third Doctor's first story Spearhead from Space (1970), which helped the audience transition between actors.^[12]^[13] The Ark in Space was written by Robert Holmes from a story by John Lucarotti that was considered unusable.^[14]^[15] Letts and Dicks were eager to have Terry Nation return to write the Daleks, but initially found his script too similar to past Dalek adventures. They suggested that he write a Dalek origin story instead, which became Genesis of the Daleks.^[16] However, under Hinchcliffe, the serial gained a darker tone.^[16]

The sets of The Ark in Space were reused for Revenge of the Cybermen.^[17] Genesis of the Daleks was the last serial of the season to be filmed, after Revenge of the Cybermen.^[18] This took place in January and February 1975.^[19]

Broadcast

The entire season was broadcast from 28 December 1974 to 10 May 1975.

The title sequence for Part One of The Ark in Space was tinted sepia as an experiment, but was not repeated for subsequent episodes.^[20]