Carnival of Monsters

066 – Carnival of Monsters
Doctor Who serial
Major Daly trying to best a Drashig.
Cast
Doctor Jon Pertwee (Third Doctor)
Companion Katy Manning (Jo Grant)
Others Michael Wisher — Kalik Terence Lodge — Orum Peter Halliday — Pletrac Leslie Dwyer — Vorg Cheryl Hall — Shirna Tenniel Evans — Major Daly Jenny McCracken — Claire Daly Ian Marter — Lt John Andrews Andrew Staines — Captain
Production
Directed by	Barry Letts
Written by	Robert Holmes
Script editor	Terrance Dicks
Produced by	Barry Letts
Incidental music composer	Dudley Simpson
Production code	PPP
Series	Season 10
Length	4 episodes, 25 minutes each
Originally broadcast	27 January–17 February 1973
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by → The Three Doctors Frontier in Space
List of Doctor Who serials

Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters

Author	Terrance Dicks
Cover artist	Chris Achilleos
Series	Doctor Who book: Target novelisations
Release number	8
Publisher	Target Books
Publication date	20 January 1977
ISBN

Carnival of Monsters is the second serial of the tenth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 27 January to 17 February 1973. It is the first serial since The War Games in which the Doctor is allowed to pilot the TARDIS completely under his own control.

It was also the title of a 1999 BBC documentary looking at some of the adversaries that the Doctor had faced in the programme.

The TARDIS misses Metebelis Three and materialises on the SS Bernice, a ship that suddenly disappeared while travelling the Indian Ocean. Being repeatedly arrested as stow-aways, they find out that ship's occupants keep repeating their actions, having no recollection of earlier encounters. The pair escape from the ship through a strange hatch plainly visible to them both but ignored by the crew and passengers. The Doctor and Jo venture through the circuitry of some sort of giant machine and arrive at marsh lands.

They soon discover that they are not outside but are still inside the machine. Chased by Drashigs, huge swamp-dwelling carnivores, they escape back into the circuitry. Here, the Doctor realises that they have materialised inside the compression field of a Miniscope, a machine that keeps miniaturised groups of creatures in miniaturised versions of their natural environments. The Time Lords have banned such machines, but apparently one escaped. The Drashigs break into the circuitry and the Doctor and Jo flee back to the ship. They are separated in the confusion as the crew defend against the Drashigs.

The events inside the miniscope are intercut with events involving its owners, travelling showman Vorg and his assistant Shirna, who have just arrived at the planet of Inter Minor but are suspected of being spies and refused entrance by a tribunal. The tribunal learns that objects removed from the machine soon return to their normal size when Vorg extracts a foreign object stuck in the circuitry - actually the TARDIS - from the machine. Two of the tribunal members, dissatisfied with the leadership of their planet, plot to let the Drashigs escape from the machine and allow them to wreak havoc, causing a crisis and the president's resignation.