The Deadly Assassin - Episode 1

Ok lets get this out of the way straight away and address the title. An assassin is deadly, so quite why you would need to put deadly at the beginning is a bit of a mystery. That said it’s the biggest weakness in this entire story so that tells you how highly I rate this story. After the departure of Elisabeth Sladen in the previous episode, this is the first time since ‘Mission to the Unknown’ that a companion doesn’t appear at all. This is also the first time that the story has been set on Gallifrey as opposed to briefly being in the story. It’s been 92 episodes since the Master last appeared which when put into context is just over 1,300 days. The Master was last seen in ‘Frontier in Space’ episode six way back in season ten. Then it was played by Roger Delgado who sadly passed away shortly afterwards so it was a brave decision to recast the role.

The previous episode ended with the Doctor getting a call from Gallifrey and the episode starts with a nice star wars style caption. Within a few moments the Doctor gets a sense of what’s going on when it appears that the President has been shot. The big thing that is going on Gallifrey is that the President is resigning and a new one is going to be nominated and the president is assassinated before he can name the successor. What I quite like is that the Doctor is on his own and has his back against the wall straight away. The whole episode is building up to the assassination and it’s very unusual for the tension to feel as high as it does in what is an opening episode.

The portrayal of the guards is slightly comedic and reminds me an awful lot of UNIT soldiers because they act tough but are easily outfoxed by the Doctor and by the end of the episode don’t come across as anything to worry about. What does work better is the Master and even though he’s not named its obviously him and its clear that he has someone working for him. Sadly Bernard Horsfall doesn’t do a great job in hiding his voice. This is probably the same approach that Christian Bale took when he was playing Batman.

The cliffhanger ends with what appears to be the Doctor shooting the outgoing President. The episode ends (for the second time in a row) with a freeze frame, however time it actually has a purpose because of the shocking conclusion. As an opening episode its one of the best that I can recall and shows that this is going to be one of the best stories of Tom Baker’s time on the show. I think that whereas this story was designed to show Tom Baker why he needed a companion, I think that it actually achieves the opposite and shows why the show might have benefited from not having anyone for the Doctor to worry about. This episode has to be one of the best one for Tom Baker so far and I really cant wait to watch the rest of the story because I know that there are going to be some classic moments and some interesting moments to mention.