Warriors' Gate

Plot

Inside the TARDIS, the Fourth Doctor, Romana, Adric, and K9, while travelling between E-Space and the normal universe (N-Space), become trapped in a white null space between the universes. Elsewhere in the void, a slave vessel, run by Captain Rorvik, has also become trapped. It uses members of the leonine Tharil race as their navigators. On becoming stuck, the current navigator, Biroc, escapes the ship and makes his way to the TARDIS on the winds of time. Biroc warns the TARDIS crew of Rorvik's treachery before disappearing. K9's memory wafers are shredded by the winds of time, leaving him functional but lacking long-term memories. The Doctor leaves on his own to explore the null space. He encounters some robots, called Gundans.

Meanwhile, Rorvik and his crew have discovered the TARDIS. Romana leaves to talk to them. Rorvik, believing Romana to be time-sensitive like the Tharils, dupes her into returning to their ship to examine the engines. When Romana does not return, Adric and K9 leave to recover her, but get separated; Adric eventually makes it to the ship and hides aboard, while K9 reunites with the Doctor and aids in repairing the Gundan, after which he learns from it that they were built by slaves and used to overthrow their masters in a violent battle. The Doctor's work is disrupted when Rorvik and several of his men arrive. During a stand-off between the crew and the Doctor, another Gundan activates and walks through the seemingly-solid mirror. Rorvik demands an explanation from the Doctor, revealing he has Romana captive, but the Doctor's only response is to walk through the mirror himself.

Aboard the slaver ship, Romana is freed by another Tharil named Lazlo, and she hides in the hull. She encounters Adric; the two work out that the ship is made from an incredibly dense dwarf star alloy that can contain the Tharils. K9 arrives, and informs the two of dimensional instability in the null space, which they attribute to the alloy, causing the space to collapse in on itself. Romana rejoins Lazlo, who takes her to the gateway and through the mirror, while Adric remains aboard the ship.

On the other side of the mirror, the Doctor and Romana are reunited with Biroc in a stable, time-locked universe. A repentant Biroc explains they were the slave masters, travelling on the winds of time in order to ravage other planets and subjugate their populations as slaves until the Gundan revolt. The Doctor and Romana are returned to the null space, and are immediately captured by Rorvik. Rorvik's crew realise that the null space is shrinking as the distances between the gateway, the TARDIS, and slaver ship continue to decrease. Rorvik has ordered the crew to try to blast through the mirrors in gateway, believing it to be the way out, but the mirrors resist all attacks. With the gateway and ship in visible distance of each other, Rorvik resorts to one last attempt to break the mirrors by using the exhaust of the ship's engines against them. While the Doctor warns that this action will be as doomed as the previous ones, Romana regroups with Lazlo and Adric, and together they free the remaining Tharils on the slaver ship. The TARDIS crew flee to the TARDIS as Rorvik initiates his plan—the blast from the engines is reflected by the mirrors back onto the ship, destroying it and its crew.

Production

Conception

In 1979, Douglas Adams, at the time Doctor Who's script editor, met with science-fiction novelist Christopher Priest to develop a four part serial that Adams hoped would add more hard science fiction to the show. In December of that year, Adams left the show, leaving Priest's serial abandoned. Adams was replaced by Christopher H. Bidmead, who aimed to reorient the series around serious science fiction concepts. Bidmead approached several new writers for the series, eventually contacting Priest after being impressed by one of his novels and Priest's conceptual bent. In February 1980, Bidmead commissioned a scene breakdown of the idea Priest had developed with Adams, now titled Sealed Orders. The next month, he commissioned Priest to produce four scripts for Sealed Orders, which was to run as the fifth story in the upcoming eighteenth season and conclude a trilogy of stories set in the universe of E-Space. The story would be a political thriller set on Gallifrey and featuring a duplicate Doctor and several TARDISes. Although Bidmead closely supervised Priest, who had never written for television before, the scripts Priest produced were judged unusable, resembling a novel more than a workable television script. Priest took issue with Bidmead's proposed changes and rewrites, and eventually withdrew from the series in April 1980.

As a back-up in case Sealed Orders fell through, Bidmead had also commissioned a script from writer Stephen Gallagher. Although, like Priest, Gallagher had never written for television, he was well-experienced in writing for radio. Gallagher had written a successful play for Piccadilly Radio titled The Last Rose of Summer, set in a dystopian Britain and broadcast in 1978. The following year, Gallagher produced a sequel, Hunter's Moon, and in 1980 completed the trilogy with The Babylon Run. Early in his tenure on Doctor Who, Bidmead had read Gallagher's 1979 BBC Radio 4 play An Alternative to Suicide, submitted as a writing sample by the play's director. Impressed by the play, Bidmead contacted Gallagher and met with him in December 1979 to discuss ideas for a serial. Although Gallagher was familiar with Doctor Who, he had not seen the show since it featured companion Sarah Jane Smith, who was written out in 1976.

Among the ideas Gallagher presented was a one-page outline for a story called The Dream Time, originally intended as the final play in his The Last Rose of Summer Trilogy before Gallagher replaced it with The Babylon Run. Inspired by the Aboriginal Australian concept of the Dreaming, which an Australian colleague had introduced to Gallagher, The Dream Time centres on the character Mitchell fleeing to a wasteland planet once inhabited by an advanced civilisation, culminating in a chase through gateways into parallel worlds. Gallagher pitched a five-page outline of the story to Bidmead. As he was unsure when the serial would be produced, he did not include the Doctor's current companions, K9 and Romana, in the outline.

Writing

Gallagher's story was heavily influenced by the Jean Cocteau films La Belle et la Bête and Orphée, as well as two novels he was reading: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman and The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester. With Bidmead, Gallagher developed the idea of a marooned spaceship in a white void and an old banqueting hall where multiple dimensions meet. The story would see the Doctor and his companion follow the time-sensitive navigator of the spaceship to the banqueting hall. The Doctor would eventually escape the spaceship crew, now trying to make him their navigator, by falling through a "mirror like door" into a maze-like house. The serial would end with the crew attempting to blast through the mirror door, eventually destroying their spaceship. Bidmead and Gallagher incorporated the concept of the I Ching, which Bidmead had been reading about, into the story as a means of navigation for the Doctor.

Gallagher met with Bidmead on 30 January 1980 and was briefed on the concept of E-Space, a universe that the TARDIS would be trapped in throughout several of the season's serials. Bidmead suggested the story could end the E-Space arc by having the TARDIS escape through the interdimensional gateway. He also directed Gallagher to include K9 being permanently damaged, with only the Gateway able to save him. The two decided on the names of several characters. The time-sensitive navigator and another escaped member of his species would be named Biroc and Laszlo respectively, after cinematographers Joseph Biroc and Ernest Laszlo. Two old cleaners aboard the ship, inspired by two cleaning women Gallagher knew from Granada Television, were named Aldo and Waldo. The ship's captain was named Rorvik, after science journalist and novelist David Rorvik, while another crewman, Sagan, was named for Carl Sagan. After meeting with Bidmead, Gallagher put together an episode breakdown. He rewrote the cliffhanger to the first episode from the Doctor being menaced by one of the time-sensitive creatures to him being attacked by a suit of armor in the Gateway, which he suggested to Bidmead in early February.

On 15 March, Bidmead wrote Gallagher about new developments in the season that The Dream Time needed to include. As well as ending the E-Space trilogy, Gallagher was also given the task of writing out Romana and K9 and incorporating the new companion Adric. Producer John Nathan-Turner and Lalla Ward had agreed on Romana's departure early in the year, while K9 was phased out because of difficulties with using the prop and Nathan-Turner's feeling that the robot dog had become a "get out clause" for writers. Gallagher had to include Romana's summons to Gallifrey, mention of the Charged Vacuum Emboitment through which the TARDIS had entered E-Space, and that Romana was now mature enough to leave the Doctor. On 17 March, a scene breakdown was commissioned, which Gallagher delivered on 25 March.

Casting and design

Several actors were considered for the part of Rorvik, among them John Normington, Frank Windsor, Stratford Johns, and Derek Jacobi. Clifford Rose wrote to Nathan-Turner on 22 July to ask for the part of a "nasty" and got the part. Rose's approach to the character was inspired by the character of Captain Mainwaring from the sitcom Dad's Army. Kenneth Cope was cast as the crew member Packard, while Freddie Earlle, Bidmead's father-in-law, was cast as Aldo. Vincent Pickering, a mime, was cast as Sagan after he performed as a lion for Joyce. Joyce cast David Kincaid as crew member Lane after seeing him in the BBC production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. David Weston, who had previously appeared on the show in the serial The Massacre, was cast as Biroc after Joyce remembered seeing him in The Masque of the Red Death. Weston had previously worked with star Tom Baker in a 1966 production of The Winter's Tale. Graeme Story, who had worked on The Horns of Nimon, was brought on as set designer. Pauline Cox, who had worked on Image of the Fendahl, was chosen as make-up designer, while June Hudson, who had worked on the series since The Ribos Operation, was selected as costume designer. Matt Irvine was chosen to supervise visual effects.

Filming

Because of the serial's complexity, Joyce opted for six rather than five studio filming days.

On completion in June, script editor Christopher H. Bidmead found the scripts to be overlong, as well as needing more work to keep them in line with other stories in the series. Therefore, he and director Paul Joyce re-worked the story significantly, including re-writing much of the dialogue. Originally, the script was much more comedic, with Rorvik's crew being given a lot of humorous dialogue, two of the workers being played as a double-act. Executive producer Barry Letts in particular was against this, saying that it was turning the show into pantomime and stated that the crewmen must be played for real. As many of these lines were cut from the script, the few remaining "comedy" lines were to be played straight as well. The scripts were finalised in late August 1980, but were then criticised by Letts, who found them rather confusing. By this time however, there was no more time to rework them further as Bidmead needed to begin work on the following story. Producer John Nathan-Turner too found the story complicated but had not got involved with the story during its scripting stages. Bidmead met with Gallagher with the revised scripts, the latter being none too happy with the extensive changes.

Warriors' Gate was significant in that it was the last story to feature companion Romana played by Lalla Ward as well as the last regular appearance of John Leeson as long-running companion K9. Ward had requested to leave earlier, having been offered a part in another series, but Nathan-Turner kept her to her contract. It was also during the making of this serial that Tom Baker let it be known that he would leave at the end of the series. Ward and Baker were in a relationship and had been for some time, but by now things were turning acrimonious between the two, with many production personnel believing that they were on the point of splitting-up. It was with much surprise when they learned that just a few weeks later they had married. Leeson, who left the series at the end of Season 16, returned for Season 18 on the understanding that K9 would be written out toward the end of the season.

Joyce was keen to push the limits of the series by directing the serial like a film as he considered some of the earlier productions to be quite bland and workmanlike. This approach however caused problems early on with significant delays in order to achieve various shots such as the pan through the spaceship in the opening sequence. This included shooting the camera upwards where the gallery lights could be seen - known as "shooting off set", something which is forbidden by the BBC. Problems such as this increased as time began to run short and he and producer Nathan-Turner clashed frequently and even executive producer Letts had to step in to advise Joyce. With letters being written to higher executives complaining of Joyce's style of work (also seen as inexperience), Joyce was asked to leave part way through production. His duties were taken up by assistant Graeme Harper, who directed a number of scenes before finally Joyce was re-instated. Setting up of certain shots that Joyce had envisaged proved to take up too much time and shooting over-ran on a number of days. In the end, the serial was completed and was indeed a departure in terms of style over the norm and was complimented by Bidmead, but Joyce was never to work on Doctor Who again.

Reception

Ratings for the series increased with Warriors' Gate compared to the previous four serials of the season, due to the fact that the rival ITV network were no longer scheduling Buck Rogers in the 25th Century against Doctor Who. Warriors' Gate actually achieved the highest ratings of the entire 18th season with an average of 7.5 million viewers.

Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping wrote of the serial in The Doctor Who Discontinuity Guide (2013), praising the direction and Romana's departure from the series. Mark Braxton of Radio Times awarded the serial four out of five stars, regarding it as "an elaborate experiment with striking results."

Commercial releases

In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by Stephen Gallagher under the pseudonym "John Lydecker", was published by Target Books in April 1982. It and Terminus (Gallagher's other novelisation of his own script under the John Lydecker byline) are the only two Target novels that consist of continuous prose with no chapters. The novelisation contains many elements abandoned during the story's production, including the slaver's opening pursuit and damage at the hands of an Antonine Killer craft.

The novelisation was reprinted under Gallagher's own name in July 2023 as Warriors' Gate and Beyond: this edition also includes two short stories by Gallagher; "The Kairos Ring" and "The Little Book of Fate".

Home media

Warriors' Gate was released on VHS as part of "The E-Space Trilogy" boxed set in November 1997. It was released on DVD in January 2009, again in a boxed set entitled "The E-Space Trilogy". This serial was also released as part of the Doctor Who DVD Files (issue 87) in May 2012, and The Collection - Season 18 Blu-ray boxed set in March 2019.