The Deadly Assassin

Doctor Who on Trial for Murder!

The President of the Time Lords is dead.  Only Doctor Who predicted the assassination.  Only Doctor Who was seen firing the rifle.  And at his trial, with quite probably three hours to live, who else but Doctor Who would announce that he now wants to run for President!  THE DEADLY ASSASSIN is a Masterpiece of special effects and pure spectacle.  It’s the ultimate showdown between Doctor Who and his arch enemy, the Master-now more deadly than ever in his twelfth, and final regeneration!  And, yes!  This is the program with the now-legendary hallucinatory battle to the death between the Master’s relentless, mysterious champion and the wildly wily Doctor!

• Ranked highly amongst fans, "The Deadly Assassin" is the only Doctor Who story not to have a companion in it.

• This story also marks the return of one of Doctor Who's most popular villains, The Master (not seen since "Frontier in Space" some 3 years previously).

• This story was one of the most controversial adventures at that time.  The producers received quite a bit of flack for what was then considered an extremely violent scene with the Doctor being drowned at the end of episode 3.  This event had a great deal to do with the removal of Philip Hinchcliffe as producer of Doctor Who.  Ironic, since his 3 years on the show is now considered to be one of the "Golden Ages" of Doctor Who.

• George Pravda (Castellan Spandrell) made his first appearance for Doctor Who in the Troughton story "The Enemy of the World" as Denes and was also in "The Mutants" with Jon Pertwee.

• Bernard Horsfall (Chancellor Goth) had appeared 4 years earlier in the Pertwee story "Planet of the Daleks" as Commander Taron.  Prior to his "Planet" appearance he was a Timelord in "The War Games" and as Gulliver in "The Mind Robber."

• **Omnibus Format**  Unfortunately, this story was originally released in an edited "movie" (or Omnibus) format.  This means that individual episodes have been cut and pasted together into one viewing.  The BBC released Doctor Who videos like this until the early 90's.  Since then they have gone back and issued "re-releases" of virtually all of their omnibus versions.   Unfortunately, the U.S. (i.e. CBS/Fox at first, and then later Warner Home Video) hasn't been eager to follow suite, as they have only done two re-releases "The Brain of Morbius" back in 1997 and  "Terror of the Zygons" in 2000.  Additionally, many stories first released in the late 80's and early 90's are seeing re-release on DVD.  Unedited titles such as "Spearhead from Space," "The Ark in Space" and "Robots of Death" are all available now in their unedited formats.

• The U.K. never released "The Deadly Assassin" in an omnibus format.  When it was released in the U.K. it was already in its unedited episodic format.  To understand the events it is worth noting that in the U.K. videos have a certificate rating system (much like movies do here in North America).  As fate would have it, it was scheduled to release in 1989, but at the time it was to be given a PG rating.  Since BBC Worldwide considered Doctor Who as a children's program, they withheld the release until it got a lower U rating.  So, in 1989 the U.S. went ahead with the release while the U.K. held off.  The U rating was given to "Deadly Assassin" in 1991.  By that time, however, the practice of editing Doctor Who episodes together was abandoned in favor of releasing them in their original episodic version.  The end result is that North America got the omnibus version in 1989 while the U.K. got the unedited one 2 years later in 1991.  The moral of the story... sometimes good things come to those who wait.