September 1965 saw the return to our screens of Doctor Who for its third series with a
story called Galaxy 4.
Now sadly Galaxy 4 was one of the many which didn't survive the mass junking of archive
material by the BBC in the 1970s.
And to make matters worse, and unlike many of the later Doctor Who stories, no tele-snaps,
no publicity, hardly any publicity photographs, and virtually no photographic evidence of
any kind remains for this serial.
Apart from that is one five minute tele-cine segment and one short section which was recorded
off screen by a fan.
Nothing else exists.
Consequently the reconstruction of this story has been done in a rather unique way.
It has made use of what publicity photographs and what on set photographs remain, plus existing
material from other stories and various filmed reconstructions made by the Loose Cannon team.
Very brave project and I think they've succeeded rather well.
Now at this time stories were still being written in their original drafts for the Doctor's
original companions, Ian and Barbara.
So I unfortunately got landed with a great number of the lines which were meant and intended
originally for Barbara.
Consequently my character Stephen really never came to the surface at all, for which I was
rather disappointed.
I also was rather upset by the fact that in one of the scenes Stephen was overpowered
by Marga, the leader of the Dravins.
Though I suppose for many people to be overpowered by a magnificent Amazonian lady would be the
stuff of their dreams.
But I have to say that in spite of the fact that four magnificent leading ladies who played
the Dravins was not sufficient to make Galaxy 4 one of my favourite stories.
Obviously with the limitations that I've already told you about it would be impossible for
a complete reconstruction to be made exactly like the original.
But the Loose Cannon team have been working away like mad for over a year on this particular
reconstruction.
They've done a marvellous job and I think you'll enjoy what they have done with Galaxy
4.