The Claws of Axos is the third serial of the eighth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 13 March to 3 April 1971.
In the serial, set in Britain, the alien organism Axos spreads its Axonite particles across the Earth to allow itself to feed on all life on the planet.
Plot
A group of aliens calling themselves the Axons land on Earth, desperately in need of fuel. They propose to exchange the miracle substance they call Axonite for some much-needed energy. Axonite is introduced as a "thinking" molecule that can replicate any substance. However, it turns out that the ship, and the Axons themselves, are all a single organism called Axos, whose purpose is to feed itself by draining all energy through the Axonite (which is just a part of itself), including the energy of every life form on Earth. The deception about the Axonite's beneficial properties was to facilitate the distribution of Axonite across the globe, and help end world hunger, given the property of Axonite being able to enlarge and multiply any given matter.
Meanwhile, the Master, who was captured by Axos and used his knowledge of Earth as a bargaining chip for his life and freedom, escapes Axos and makes his way to the Third Doctor's TARDIS—his own having been seized by Axos. He plans to repair it to escape from Earth.
Axos itself becomes interested in the Doctor's knowledge of time travel and takes him prisoner aboard itself. It now plans to broaden its feeding base by travelling through time as well as space. The Doctor, realising this, plans to trick Axos into linking up its drive unit to his TARDIS so that he can send Axos into a perpetual time loop. After fooling the Master into completing the repairs on his TARDIS, the Doctor does just that. This results in every part of Axos dematerialising from Earth, including the Axon automatons and the Axonite.
At the end, with the Master having escaped in his own TARDIS during the confusion aboard Axos, the Doctor returns to Earth, but not of his own volition. The Time Lords have programmed the TARDIS to always return to Earth, making the Doctor, as he notes, "some kind of a galactic yo-yo!".
Production
Writing
In late 1969, script editor Terrance Dicks contacted new writing duo Bob Baker and Dave Martin after reading a draft script they had sent around the BBC for another production, A Man's Life. After offering the duo a seven-part story in November 1969 for Doctor Whos eighth season, Baker and Martin submitted some various storylines they had. Despite the storylines not being suitable for a serial, Dicks commissioned an opening episode from them on 1 December, but as part of a six-parter, rather than a seven-parter.
The original storyline for the serial was set in central London, with Battersea Power Station taking the place of Nuton Power Complex. However, the serial would have been too expensive to make on the budget available, and Dicks promptly told the writing pair to scale down the story.
Filming
Location shooting was planned to take place over five days in early 1971, starting on 4 January. Filming would take place in various locations around Kent, mainly Dungeness.
During the location shooting of the scenes with the tramp, an overnight snow storm necessitated the creation of a line of dialogue in the programme to explain that the variations of weather from shot to shot in these scenes (filmed on various days but supposedly taking place within minutes of each other) are "freak weather conditions" as a result of Axos' arrival.
In some of the car interior scenes the colour-separation overlay (CSO) backgrounds were omitted, leaving the blue screen behind the characters. As Paul Vanezis of the Doctor Who Restoration Team explained in an interview, "they didn't put a background in there [as] it wasn't lit properly. There wasn't enough blue in it to key it, or yellow or green or whatever it was. It was shot wrong. It shouldn't have been shot in the studio and it shouldn't have been shot on xchrome. These days with modern technology you could easily key it... easily, but it wouldn't look right."
The story includes interior scenes inside the TARDIS for the first time in the Pertwee era of the show. The configuration of the TARDIS set-up is unique for this adventure. The TARDIS monitor appears to be a circular screen embedded in one of the 'roundels' in the console room wall, rather than the traditional rectangular screen (this feature is seen again once, a year later, on the unique set built for The Time Monster). The doors of the console room do not open directly into the exterior as in all other adventures; instead they open into a corridor that features the 'roundel' motif. When the TARDIS interior reappears, in the next production (Colony in Space), both these features have been eliminated.
Cast notes
Bernard Holley had been last seen in The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967). He reprised his role of Axos in the 2011 audio play The Feast of Axos. Peter Bathurst had previously played Hensell in The Power of the Daleks (1966). Tim Pigott-Smith would later play Marco in The Masque of Mandragora (1976).