Battlefield

156 – Battlefield
Doctor Who serial
A meeting with an old friend
Cast
Doctor	Sylvester McCoy (Seventh Doctor)
Companion	Sophie Aldred (Ace)
Guest stars
Nicholas Courtney — Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart Angela Douglas — Doris Angela Bruce — Brigadier Winifred Bambera Robert Jezek — Sergeant Zbrigniev Dorota Rae — Flight Lieutenant Lavel Paul Tomany — Major Husak Noel Collins — Pat Rawlinson June Bland — Elizabeth Rawlinson James Ellis — Peter Warmsly Ling Tai — Shou Yuing Jean Marsh — Morgaine Christopher Bowen — Mordred Marcus Gilbert — Ancelyn Marek Anton — The Destroyer Stefan Schwartz — Knight Commander
Production
Writer	Ben Aaronovitch
Director	Michael Kerrigan
Script editor	Andrew Cartmel
Producer	John Nathan-Turner
Executive producer(s)	None
Production code	7N
Series	Season 26
Length	4 episodes, 25 minutes each
Originally broadcast	September 6–September 27, 1989
Chronology
← Preceded by	Followed by →
The Greatest Show in the Galaxy	Ghost Light

Battlefield is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from September 6 to September 27, 1989.

Synopsis

In response to a distress signal, the Seventh Doctor and Ace materialize the TARDIS near Lake Vortigern in England. The sound of explosions leads the TARDIS crew into the acquaintance of Brigadier Bambera of UNIT, in charge of a nuclear missile convoy. Following from the encounter, the retired Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart is informed of the Doctor's return, and a helicopter is sent to his country home to collect him, against the protests of his wife, Doris.

Later, at the Gore Crow hotel, the Doctor and Ace meet a young woman called Shou Yuing, who shares Ace's love of explosives. Meanwhile, as Bambera stops to examine a blue police telephone box, she is caught in the crossfire between two groups of armoured knights, using both swords and futuristic guns.

The Doctor shows interest in a scabbard, excavated from the battlefield. The scabbard is hot to the Doctor's touch, and the hotel owner's blind wife, Elizabeth, says she can sense it waiting for something, or someone. When the archaeologist Warmsly arrives at the hotel, he dates the scabbard to the 8th century. The Doctor senses that it has been waiting for far longer.

As Ace and Shou Yuing share a talk about explosives, a knight sails through the brewery's roof, making a huge commotion. On investigation, the Doctor, Ace and Shou Yuing find the knight Ancelyn — who wakes, to recognize the Doctor as "Merlin". While the Doctor mulls the portent of this revelation, the party is surrounded by an ominous group of knights.

Bambera faces down their leader, Mordred. He is shocked to see "Merlin", who he believed bound by his mother, Morgaine. Following some vague threats from the Doctor, Mordred's knights retreat. Later, as Mordred begins an arcane ritual, the scabbard in the hotel flies across the room. Morgaine arrives on the scene through a rift in space and time; she proceeds to psychically taunt the Doctor.

The next day, Warmsly shows the Doctor where he uncovered the scabbard. They find a rune, which the Doctor translates to "Dig hole here." On further question, he replies that it is his own handwriting. Using a canister of Nitro-9, Ace blows an opening.

On arrival in Carbury, Lethbridge-Stewart's helicopter is shot down by Morgaine's sorcery. As Morgaine's knights hold a remembrance ceremony for the soldiers of Earth's world wars, Lethbridge-Stewart has a peaceable encounter with Morgaine — though she threatens Lethbridge-Stewart, in the event they should meet again.

The Doctor and Ace enter a chamber under the lake, finding the door keyed to the Doctor's voice. The Doctor tells Ace that this "Merlin" may well be a future version of himself. Presently, they realize that the chamber is part of an organic spaceship. They also find the body of King Arthur. When Ace removes a sword from a plinth, she activates a defence mechanism, unleashing a hostile, glowing entity. In attempt to hide, Ace enters an alcove. A door closes, and the alcove starts to fill with water. As Ace yells for help, the entity knocks the Doctor unconscious.

The Doctor recovers just in time to fiddle with a control panel, and eject Ace from the space ship. As Ancelyn and Warmsly stand at the shore, discussing the Lady of the Lake, Ace emerges, still grasping the sword. Ancelyn identifies it as Excalibur. The Brigadier arrives on-scene, in time to destroy the creature below the lake and rescue the Doctor.

Mordred and Morgaine go to the hotel, to retrieve Excalibur. When Lavel shoots, Morgaine simply catches her bullet with sorcery. Morgaine takes knowledge from Lavel's mind, then turns her body to dust. As she leaves, she pays Mordred's drinking tab by restoring Elizabeth's sight. Meanwhile, UNIT troops are staging an evacuation. The Brigadier shows off some of UNIT's specialized ammunition, and the Doctor inquires about silver bullets.

The Doctor instructs Ace to draw a chalk circle around herself, to protect against Morgaine's sorcery. He then drives off in his old car, Bessie, hoping to halt a battle between Morgaine's knights and the UNIT soldiers. A storm breaks outside the hotel, so Ace and Shou Yuing draw the circle around themselves and Excalibur. A localized night falls. Within the circle, Ace and Shou Yuing start to bicker. Ace nearly leaves the circle, before they realise they are being toyed with.

Just as Mordred and Ancelyn are about to fight, the Doctor intervenes. Mordred, however, reveals that this battle is merely a ruse to lure the Doctor, and that Morgaine has summoned the Destroyer of Worlds. Morgaine appears before Ace and Shou Yuing, and tries to entice them to hand over Excalibur. When they refuse, she unleashes the Destroyer.

The Doctor and the Brigadier capture Mordred, and set off for the hotel. Meanwhile, Morgaine is occupied with Ace's circle. On return, the Doctor finds the hotel in ruins yet Ace and Shou Yuing safe. He is pleased to hear that Ace gave up Excalibur to Morgaine, if doing so protected her. In the debris, the Doctor finds a portal to Morgaine's castle; he, the Brigadier, and Ace enter. On arrival, the Brigadier shoots the Destroyer, to no effect. The Destroyer's return volley sends the Brigadier flying through the window. Ace bursts through the portal, ramming into Morgaine, knocking Excalibur from her grasp.

Morgaine releases the Destroyer's bonds. In the confusion, she scoops up Excalibur and enters the gateway along with Mordred.

Outside, the Doctor readies the Brigadier's revolver and silver bullets — yet the Brigadier knocks him out, retrieves his gun, and faces the Destroyer alone. After some dialog, the Brigadier empties the revolver into the Destroyer's chest. The Doctor wakes to find the castle engulfed in flames. He spots the Brigadier's prostrate form, and begins to mourn his fallen friend — at which point the Brigadier stirs and rises, scuffed but unharmed.

Back at the convoy, Morgaine and Mordred attempt to detonate the nuclear missile. The Doctor confronts Morgaine, insisting that there is no honor to nuclear warfare. She agrees, then asks to fight Arthur in single combat. He tells her of Arthur's death, to her sadness. The Doctor prevents Mordred from killing Ancelyn, and asks Bambera to imprison Mordred and Morgaine.

Back at the Brigadier's house, Doris thumbs her nose at her husband by going for a drive in Bessie with Ace, Shou Yuing, and Bambera, leaving him and the other men to do the gardening and prepare supper.

Continuity

• As broadcast, this story marks a costume change for the Seventh Doctor. (Initially, The Curse of Fenric was meant as the first story of the season, and an outfit reveal was built in partway through the story.) Most of his clothing is darker, most notably his coat which is now dark brown as opposed to the light grey in previous seasons. This was to represent his darker, more manipulative character. This costume would continue until the end of the classic series' run. When the Seventh Doctor next appears in the 1996 TV movie, he is wearing a completely re-designed outfit with only his hat remaining (which was owned by Sylvester McCoy).
• It is implied that Merlin is, or will be, a future incarnation of the Doctor. It is also possible that Merlin is an alternate Doctor from the same parallel universe that Morgaine and the rest of the knights are from.
• The Doctor mentions that they are several years in Ace's future. A £5 coin is in common circulation.
• The Doctor, talking to the new Brigadier, mentions Yeti (The Web of Fear), Autons (Spearhead from Space and Terror of the Autons), Daleks (Day of the Daleks), Cybermen (The Invasion) and Silurians (Doctor Who and the Silurians).
• Bessie appears for the first time since The Five Doctors, with the numberplate 'WHO 7', though the actual car used is a different model from that featured earlier; in the Doctor's personal chronology, he was last shown using the vehicle soon after his regeneration into the Fourth Doctor in Robot (in The Five Doctors the vehicle is only used by the Third Doctor).
• This story marks the last appearance of the TARDIS console room in the classic series. The set itself which had been in use since The Five Doctors had been destroyed in between seasons so a cheap mock-up (with a curtain standing in for the wall) was used here.^{[citation needed]} The lighting in this scene is very low to disguise this, although the console itself survived and was used.
• UNIT itself would not appear again on television until the Ninth Doctor story Aliens of London, after which it would be seen in the Tenth Doctor's initial outing, The Christmas Invasion, and several subsequent stories. The organization was also referred to in the spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures and represented by its medical officer, Martha Jones, in Torchwood.
• This story is the last appearance in the television series of Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, after 21 years in the series since his first appearance in in 1968's The Web of Fear. The character has subsequently appeared in several spinoff stories, including short stories, novels and audio dramas. The canonicity of these is unclear. 'Sir Alistair' was mentioned in the 2008 episode, The Poison Sky, as still being an active member of UNIT and will reappear in the last story of the second season of the spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures in Enemy of the Bane.

Production

Pre-production

Working titles for this story included Nightfall and Storm Over Avallion. An early version of the script was to have included the death of Lethbridge-Stewart.^[4]

The Doctor refers to one of Clarke's three laws — telling Ace that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic — to explain that Arthur's transdimensional spaceship was grown, not built, and adds that the reverse of Clarke's Law is also true. Game designer Dave Lebling wrote in the 1986 interactive fiction game Trinity, "Any sufficiently arcane magic is indistinguishable from technology."

Casting

Guest stars making return appearances include Jean Marsh, who over twenty years earlier had played Princess Joanna in The Crusade and later, companion Sara Kingdom in The Daleks' Master Plan and June Bland, who appeared in the Fifth Doctor story, Earthshock.

Archaeologist Peter Warmsly was played by the renowned actor James Ellis, best remembered for his role as Lynch in Z Cars. See also Celebrity appearances in Doctor Who.

Production

The first director approached to handle Battlefield was Graeme Harper, who had previously directed The Caves of Androzani and Revelation of the Daleks for the programme in 1984 and 1985 respectively. However, Harper was committed to episodes of the Central Television drama series Boon, and unavailable to return to Doctor Who.^[5] He would, however, later return to direct episodes of the revived version of the show from 2006 onwards.

During recording of the sequence where Ace is trapped in the water tank, the tank cracked, causing Sophie Aldred to sustain minor cuts to her hands and creating a major hazard as water flooded out onto the studio floor, across which live wires were running. The moment when the tank first cracked can be seen in Part Three as the Doctor struggles with the controls and Ace is lifted clear of the water.

VHS and DVD Release

• This story was released on VHS in March 1998 with two minutes of additional footage not shown in the 1989 broadcast.
• It will be released on Region 2 DVD on December 29th 2008.

Doctor Who book
Battlefield
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	152
Writer	Marc Platt
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Alister Pearson
ISBN	0 426 20350 X
Release date	15 November 1990
Preceded by	The Curse of Fenric
Followed by	The Pescatons

In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by Marc Platt, was published by Target Books in July 1991.^[6] It was the last novelisation of a televised Doctor Who serial to be published in the traditional "short paperback" format Target had been using since 1973. After one more novelisation based upon the untelevised The Pescatons, all remaining novelisations would be published in paperback editions with greater page counts and a different format.