The Reign of Terror (Doctor Who)

008 – The Reign of Terror
Doctor Who serial
Susan and Barbara take a journey to a possible painful end: Madame Guillotine
Cast
Doctor William Hartnell (First Doctor)
Companions Carole Ann Ford (Susan Foreman) Jacqueline Hill (Barbara Wright) William Russell (Ian Chesterton)
Others Keith Anderson — Robespierre Tony Wall — Napoleon Jack Cunningham — Jailer Jeffry Wickham — Webster Neville Smith — D'Argenson Laidlaw Dalling — Rouvray Peter Walker — Small Boy James Cairncross — Lemaitre Roy Herrick — Jean Donald Morley — Jules Renan Caroline Hunt — Danielle Edward Brayshaw — Léon Colbert John Law — Paul Barras Dallas Cavell — Road Work Overseer Dennis Cleary — Peasant John Barrard — Shopkeeper Ronald Pickup — Physician Howard Charlton — Judge Robert Hunter — Sergeant Ken Lawrence — Lieutenant James Hall — Soldier Patrick Marley — Soldier Terry Bale — Soldier
Production
Directed by	Henric Hirsch
Written by	Dennis Spooner
Script editor	David Whitaker
Produced by	Verity Lambert Mervyn Pinfield (associate producer)
Executive producer(s)	None
Incidental music composer	Stanley Myers
Production code	H
Series	Season 1
Length	6 episodes, 25 minutes each
Episode(s) missing	2 episodes (4 and 5)
Date started	8 August 1964
Date ended	12 September 1964
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by → The Sensorites Planet of Giants
List of Doctor Who serials

The Reign of Terror

Author	Ian Marter
Cover artist	Tony Masero
Series	Doctor Who book: Target novelisations
Release number	119
Publisher	Target Books
Publication date	March 1987 (Hardback) 20 August 1987 (Paperback)
ISBN

The Reign of Terror is the partly missing eighth serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts from 8 August to 12 September 1964. The story was set in France during the period of the French Revolution known as the Reign of Terror. It is the second now-incomplete Doctor Who serial to be released with full-length animated reconstructions of its two missing episodes.

The Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Susan arrive outside Paris in 18th-century France and venture to a nearby farmhouse. They find it is being used as a staging post in an escape chain for counter-revolutionaries during the Reign of Terror. They are discovered by two counter-revolutionaries, D'Argenson and Rouvray, who knock the Doctor unconscious and hold the others at gunpoint. A band of revolutionary soldiers surrounds the house and both D'Argenson and Rouvray are killed during the siege, but only after they have worked out that there must be a traitor in their escape chain. The soldiers capture Ian, Barbara, and Susan and march them to Paris to be guillotined. The soldiers set fire to the farmhouse – unaware of the Doctor inside.

The Doctor awakes the next morning to find he has been saved by a young boy, who tells him that his friends have been taken to the Conciergerie Prison in Paris. He sets off after them.

Ian, Barbara, and Susan are all sentenced to death as traitors. Ian is confined in one cell, while the women are taken to another. Ian's cellmate is an Englishman named Webster who only lives long enough to tell him there is another English spy, James Stirling, highly placed in the French Government, who is now being recalled to England. It was Webster's job to find him and he only knows that Stirling can be found through Jules Renan at the sign of "Le Chien Gris". Once Webster is dead, a government official named Lemaitre arrives and probes any conversation between Ian and the dead man. Lemaitre crosses Ian's name off the execution list.