Doctor Who-The Scripts: The Masters of Luxor

Doctor Who: The Scripts #5

by Anthony Coburn

THE WAIT IS OVER...

A dark and silent planet. A magnificent crystal edifice, perched on a mountainside. A legion of dormant robots, waiting for the signal to bring them back to life. The Doctor and his granddaughter Susan, and their reluctant companions, Ian and Barbara, are about to unleash forces which will threaten their very survival.

Read for the first time the complete script of this magnificent, but regrettably never produced, Doctor Who story.

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction

176 pages, Paperback

First published August 27, 1992

Reviews

[Rosa · Rating 3 out of 5]

My inner Whovian history nerd ate this script right up! I think fans of any franchise are always going to be interested in reading the episodes that were planned, but never filmed for one reason or another. For those who don't know as much about the history of Doctor Who, the show became a household name with its second serial -- a seven parter entitled The Daleks, by writer Terry Nation. The only previous story in the show as a four parter that came to be known as An Unearthly Child (the title of the first episode) but was titled by the scriptwriter as The Tribe of Gum, by writer Anthony Coburn. What is less known is that previous to The Daleks being commissioned to film, Anthony Coburn had also submitted a script for what was the be the second serial, and he titled that story The Masters of Luxor. However, when Verity Lambert and David Whitaker decided to commission The Daleks instead, this particular script story fell into obscurity and was only talked about because of people's natural curiosity about stories they never got to see. (Similar curiosities existed for people who were born in the 70s or later who wanted to see episodes from the 60s, which were -- for the most part -- wiped from the BBC archive, and for people curious about the 1979 episode Shada, which was partially filmed and then cancelled due to a BBC strike.)

However, during what is now called The Wilderness Years of DW (the period between 1989 and 2005 when the show was cancelled), the family of Anthony Coburn released the script that he had saved in his desk drawer, and fans were finally able to indulge in what may have been the second story. (And, in an alternate universe, probably was the second aired story.) And it's actually REALLY good. And I say that as a person who didn't much care for the first story of DW (I love the first episode, but the other three that make up the completed serial are just SO.BORING.) It's obvious script editor David Whitaker told both Anthony Coburn and Terry Nation some ideas about certain story elements he wanted included in the final product, and it's amazing both how similar location and back story the works from the two authors are, but still how very different the overall visions turned out to be.

The Daleks was a story about post-nuclear war and mutated races and the hatred between different groups of people. The story of Masters of Luxor is about what makes a person a human. In a lot of ways Masters of Luxor was the story of Frankenstein over a decade before Brain of Morbius embraced a similar theme. And as much as I love Brain of Morbius, I think Masters of Luxor covered that familiar theme better in a lot of respects. Masters of Luxor was about a man who wanted to create a perfect being -- wanted to be God and create something in his own image -- and found himself unable to love what he created because he hated the person he had become in order to create said perfect being. It is 100% Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, updated to a future, far off world.

The only downside is that the voices of the characters are a little bit off here, but that's really to be expected. After all, it's quite possible that none of the actors who made these roles as famous as they are had even been cast at the time this was penned. But the story and discussions contained are strong and interesting; I could see the actions clearly, and the motivation of the villain is actually quite clear and (somewhat) sympathetic (just as with Frankenstein's creature.) Chances are, if this script had gone to film, the small character voice discrepancies would have been changed on the studio floor cos William Hartnell could make anything work.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm giving the story 2 stars -- it's a pseudo-Asimov-style SF tale that doesn't work with the vision of "Doctor Who" that was being developed by the production team...too much declaiming and philosophizing. That said, I'm glad it was made accessible and presented in this manner, with a few tweaks to make it more comprehensible to modern Whovians.

[Billy Martel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m torn on this one, on the one hand why is this so sexist, on the other hand Ian gets to be the companion that twists his ankle, on the one hand Doctor Who delivering Christian apologetics is really weird, on the other hand robot space vampires!

[Tom Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE WAIT IS OVER... A dark and silent planet. A magnificent crystal edifice, perched on a mountainside. A legion of dormant robots, waiting for the signal to bring them back to life. The Doctor and his granddaughter Susan, and their reluctant companions, Ian and Barbara, are about to unleash forces which will threaten their very survival.
Read for the first time the complete script of this magnificent, but regrettably never produced Doctor Who story."

The back-cover blurb of this Titan script book (1992) previews one of the earliest "lost" Doctor Who stories: The Masters of Luxor. Like all of the first 118 Hartnell episodes, each of the 6-parts of this story had an individual title, namely: The Cannibal Flower, The Mockery of a Man, A Light on the Dead Planet, Tabon of Luxor, An Infinity of Surprises, The Flower Blooms.
The embryonic series was to open with The Giants followed by The Masters of Luxor, but ultimately both of these Anthony Coburn written scripts were abandoned in favour of 100,000 BC (aka An Unearthly Child) and The Daleks (aka The Mutants) respectively. The rest, they say, is history.

Synopsis
The crystal-city in which the TARDIS crew become trapped is in fact an automated prison on one of Luxor's 700 satelites, in the Primiddion galaxy.
The decadent Luxorite society was strictly ordered (effectively enslaved by their own robots), and anyone who revolted against the titular Masters was exiled to the prison-moon. The Masters deemed the women of Luxor to be inferior, and any "imperfect" female children were killed.
The rebels were then subjected to experimentation from Lord Tabon, one of the Scientific Masters, in his quest to create the 'Perfect One' in man's image (shades of Frankenstein). So both Tabon and his creation seem to have developed a God-complex, and this religious issue is touched upon in the scripts.
The Perfect One now seeks to drain the "flesh and blood" life-force from the time-travellers too, particularly the elusive "women". This idea is further explored in The Savages (1966).
Tabon's One has a liquid-metal cerebrum. When this Azzintium cortex is solidified by making One immobile, an atomic device linked to it's brain explodes and destroys the moon.

Notes
This story immediately follows events in The Tribe of Gum (mentions are made of Kal, Za, and Coal Hill Comprehensive).
The TARDIS can "free float" (ie. be manoeuvred "like a helicopter"); possesses a kind of intuitive power; has a Fault Locator (also seen in The Daleks, The Edge of Destruction, and The Planet of Giants); holds an "emergency" energy supply; is continually referred to as "she"; and is actually solar-powered.
The moon is described as a "dead planet" (but this one is not radioactive like Skaro), and the prison is a very similar setting to the Dalek city, with it's surveillance cameras and mountain-side "back-door".
Barbara compares the city to the carnivorous cannibal flower, sucking the TARDIS' power away.
The Doctor has a photographic memory, quotes Karl Marx, and embraces Tabon's religion.
Susan is called Sue or Suzanne throughout the original scripts.
The Doctor and Susan are not human (Ian and Barbara are "you Earth people") which ties in more with the pilot epiosde.
Cliffhanger recaps are absent from the scripts, and part six would have led directly into The Edge of Destruction.
Coburn's scripts feature a hierarchy of robots: the "primitive" Mark One machines (which bow at commands, and seem incapable of speech); the more humanoid Mark Two's; the more advanced Derivitrons (one is even named, Proto); and their overall master, the human-like 'Perfect One' (programmed by Tabon).
These automata have a remarkable parallel to those central to the future story The Robots of Death (1977). Here, the black 'Dums' servants are the lowest ranked robots in their caste-system (they cannot speak). The green 'Vocs' are superior to the Dums, whilst the silver 'Super Vocs' control all other robots. The roboticist Dask (unmasked as Taren Capel, who was raised by robots and hates mankind) has reprogrammed all of the Sandminer's automata to obey his will.

[Matthew Kresal · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1963 Doctor Who was just another television show slowly finding an audience. The writer responsible for writing its first story An Unearthly Child , Anthony Coburn, was initially commissioned to write its second story as well. As fate would have it, Coburn's script entitled The Masters Of Luxor, was to be abandoned in favor of a script by Terry Nation that was to guarantee the still new show's future: The Daleks. Coburn's script was to languish in obscurity for nearly thirty years when Titan Books published the script as part of its Doctor Who The Scripts range in 1992. With that book we can look at the road Doctor Who could have taken.

Coburn's plot is simple enough. Following on the events of An Unearthly Child, the TARDIS crew (the first Doctor, his granddaughter Susan with her teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright) find themselves exploring then trapped in a mysterious city with a seemingly dead TARDIS. The city's only occupants appear to be various robots and a mysterious man known only as The Perfect One. But is the so-called Perfect One all that is name implies? And what about the world outside the city? Across six episodes Coburn sets forth first a mystery, a battle for survival and lastly a desperate race against time.

The characterization of the four lead characters is interesting to note. For the most part, the characterization is dead one to what appeared in the aired stories of the era and one can imagine the actors saying the lines. The first episode is a perfect example of this as each character has moments that just he or she perfectly from Ian's "the projectionist has gone home" line to Barabra's ill-feelings about the city to the Doctor and Susan's curiosity about it. There are moments when the characterization goes astray such as the occasional piece of B-Movie exclamations or Ian's occasional swearing that more then likely would never have made it into a television version of the story. But these seemingly odd moments of characterization shows us just how different Doctor Who could have been in its earliest days.

Another interesting example lies within the script and its religious themes. The religious themes of the story aren't even subtle, they are made explicit at times such as a scene in the final episode where Susan, Ian and Barbara discuss it. It's debatable whether that scene would have survived into a TV version the themes are at the heart of the story. The Perfect One, his wishes and desires, especially with the involvement of the character Tabon in his past is revealed, is the perfect example of this. In this regard the script bares some superficial resemblance to the climax of 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture as a machine seeks its creator (or God as the characters themselves state) and tries to become more like it so it can be something more then what it is. As a result the script at least in terms of this themes, is perhaps more philosophical then many of the stories of the classic series and what result this would have had if had been aired on television is a compelling what if in its own right.

From its plot to its mostly spot on characterization and its religious themes, Masters Of Luxor makes for a fascinating what if from Doctor Who's early days. Considering it was replaced by a story that secured Doctor Who's future by introducing the Daleks, one can't help but wonder what Doctor' Who's future would have been if this story had been made. While this story, even its script form, certainly makes for an intriguing read in its own right perhaps it was better in the long run that this remained unmade.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/886338.html[return][return]Well, here is an oddity, the rejected script for the second ever Doctor Who story, written by the same guy who wrote the first, and published almost thirty years later as one of a short lived series of TV scripts.[return][return]Like The Daleks, which was the story used instead of The Masters of Luxor, we start with the Tardis crew exploring a mysterious abandoned city and encountering its robotic inhabitants; they find a more human ally outside the city and re-infiltrate it via a secret route through the mountains, before destrying the evil robot creatures.[return][return]There are significant differences though. The robots are more standard robots, human creations whose leader, the Perfect One, seeks to become human itself. The human ally is Tabon of Luxor, the robots' creator, roused from hibernation by the arrival of the Doctor and Ian. These are the only two significant guest roles, though a couple of the junior robots would have had speaking parts.[return][return]It's a slow starting six-part story - the robots don't appear until half way through part two, and Tabon not until part four. Our heroes spend a lot of time held prisoner or exploring new corridors, with the Tardis swooping around in part one rather like it does in The Runaway Bride, and Susan and Barbara in the grips of the robots (who have not previously encountered humans) for most of the story. Coburn does not seem to have been briefed about the desirability of cliff-hanger endings either, let alone a reprise for the start of the next episode.[return][return]The central plot - helping Tabon to destroy his own robotic creations - is similar to various other Who stories, but Tabon is interesting because of his early repentance, and one can even feel some sympathy for the Perfect One in its doomed quest to become human. Of the main characters, perhaps Ian is the furthest from the TV character we came to know, much more slangy in his vocabulary; the others seem fairly close to canon, though there is more explicit reference to the Doctor and Susan's off-Earth origins.[return][return]Anyway, this is an interesting alternate-history read, and frankly better than some stories that made it to the screen.

[Adam Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

In some ways, it's a pity that this script was written before there were spin off Doctor Who novels or that when this script wasn't reworkred into a novel when it was rejected by Doctor Who. It's a shame because it deals with a great science fiction concept as we're presented a terrifying tale of the Perfect One, an almost human android seeking to become flesh and blood and doing so by trying to take the life force from others. It's a terrifying concept and has a lot of great themes interwoven. It takes on the idea often expressed in Science Fiction that the machines will take over and wrought unknown horrors upon us by suggesting that the greatest danger we faced is not from machines but from ourselves.

Machines ultimately will only behave how they learn and machines created by people who believe the ends justify the means and are willing to treat human life as cheap will produce machines that will do likewise.

As a Doctor Who episode, it would have been hard to make this script work. The Part One "cliffhanger" is everyone sitting down for a meal, and many of the designs and graphics called for just couldn't have been supported on 1960s budget. The Perfect One would have ended up looking like some sort of weird mime, but reading it or listening to the Big Finish adaptation can allow people to give all the graphics they can imagine, so if you could find this book, it's worth a read.

[Jason Bleckly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up in a bulk lot while I was completing my Target collection back in the late 90s/early 00s. I hadn’t read it until today as it’s in script form and they aren’t that much fun to read. I would have much preferred a novelisation of the unproduced script. But it is what it is.

The TARDIS is pulled down onto a dead world and loses all power (shades of Death to the Daleks). They then find a hall with a meal all laid out for them by automated robots but it’s a trap (shades of The Keys of Marinus (the Morphoton section), and The Chase (the Mechanos section)). The trap has been laid by a loony robot who wants to be a real boy by consuming the life of people it’s trapped (shades of Mawdryn Undead and The Talons of Weng-Chiang (and Pinocchio)). The structure also plot similarities to The Daleks, as acknowledge in the afterword. It’s almost as if David Whitaker (script editor) gave some general direction to a couple of writers and picked the script he liked best. And non-Who comparisions would have to be Frankenstein with the relationship between the robot and it’s creator, and Psycho. The robot is very Norman Bates in it’s behaviour. This would have been a good story if it had been made. Well worth a read.

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this you could quite easily picture it as a First Doctor serial. There was running through corridors, being taken prisoner, and evil robots. It was strange reading in an hour a story that would have been shown over a month and a half.

This was clearly a very early script though as it had some really odd things in it though that (hopefully) wouldn't have made it into the actual show. There was a part where Susan and Barbara defeated the evil robot by singing hymns to it. There was quite a lot of discussion about god and how religion and science had to be in balance to be best for everyone. There was also quite a bit of sexism referring to "Women's intuition" and being the inferior sex. Even after Barbara and Susan had been quite clever in trying to free themselves from their prison Barbara then lamented they weren't as capable as the men!

Odd but interesting to read. I'm pretty glad we got the daleks instead!