Doctor Who: The Dominators

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The Dominators is the first serial of Season 6 of the classic Doctor Who series. Originally broadcast in five weekly episodes from 10 August to 7 September 1968. It was written by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln. It stars Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, Frazer Hines as Jamie McCrimmon, Wendy Padbury as Zoe Heriot, Ronald Allen as Rago, Kenneth Ives as Toba, and Arthur Cox as Cully.

The TARDIS lands on the peaceful planet Dulkis, where a pacifist people, the Dulcians, are unready for invasion by the harsh Dominators and their box-like robot soldiers, the Quarks. The Doctor quickly sees that the visitors plan to drain energy and destroy the planet, while Jamie and Zoe push the reluctant authorities to act and join forces with the rebellious Cully.

The story was originally commissioned as six parts but was cut to five due to production issues, including tension between the writers and production staff.

Episode 1

The TARDIS lands on a bleak island once used for atomic tests on the pacifist world of Dulkis. The Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe expect dangerous radiation, but Geiger clicks are strangely low. Among scorched boulders they meet a Dulcian research party (Educator Balan and students Kando and Teel) studying why the fallout has faded. Cully, a thrill-seeker from the mainland, crashes their camp with tales of “robots” that blasted his tourist craft; no one believes him.

Overhead, a black saucer knifes down. Two harsh strangers (Dominators Rago and Toba) stride out with squat, boxy robots called Quarks. They probe the ground, hungry for power sources, and decide the island will do. The Doctor spots their drilling survey and smells conquest. Cully drags Zoe toward the capital to warn the Council. Balan wants calm study; Jamie wants a bigger stick.

The Dominators capture the Doctor and Jamie, testing them like livestock for strength and obedience. The Doctor plays slow and harmless; Jamie bristles and gets a shock for his trouble. Quarks fan out, mapping the bedrock with shrill bursts while Toba itches to destroy anything that moves. As night falls, the island’s sand trembles to alien drills. The first borehole opens, and the Quarks’ eyes blaze in the dark.

Episode 2

At daybreak, Rago orders systematic drilling; Toba argues to save time with terror. The Doctor and Jamie are chained to a test rig, forced to haul equipment and “prove” their usefulness under Quark guns. The Doctor feigns clumsiness to study controls, quietly noting power levels, tool interfaces, and the way Rago reins Toba in to conserve energy. Zoe and Cully reach the Dulcian capital and find a serene Council that prides itself on non-violence.

Cully’s warnings are dismissed as stunts; Zoe’s logic earns a polite request for more evidence. A delegation is approved: slowly. Back on the island, Balan pleads for his students’ lives and is pushed aside as Dominator probes rip into the subsoil. The Doctor recognises the pattern: a grid to reach magma chambers. Rago speaks of “seed devices,” dropped into the planet to trigger vast energy release: fuel for the Dominator fleet.

Jamie slips away long enough to spring Kando and Teel; together they wreck a cable run and topple a Quark with rolling rocks. Toba retaliates by blasting the research hut to splinters. Rago snaps at the waste and orders tighter patrols. The Doctor meets Jamie’s eye over a tangle of leads. If they can’t stop the drilling, Dulcis itself will burn.

Episode 3

The Council’s survey craft crosses to the island and is promptly seized; its officials (still convinced this is a misunderstanding) are herded into labour lines. Zoe scribbles a fast topographical sketch and whispers a route to the shore for Kando and Teel. Cully raids a dusty museum for a handful of antique explosives and heads back, grim for once. Underground, the Quarks’ heads bob as they deepen the bores; each meter chews more power from the saucer. Rago calculates.

Toba prowls, eager to kill. The Doctor lets a tool “slip” and short-circuits a panel long enough to peek at a caged cylinder engraved with Dominator script: the seed. He pieces together the plan: drill to a molten pocket, drop the device, ignite a chain reaction that will saturate the crust with radiation, then harvest the energised world. Balan tries to intercede and is cut down in a brutal demonstration.

Jamie’s temper flares; the Doctor restrains him, promising a bigger blow. Zoe and Cully link up with the students and test the museum charges on a patrol, toppling two Quarks in a shower of sand and sparks. Toba screams defiance and orders a swathe of the island levelled to find the saboteurs. Rago, colder, sets a launch time.

Episode 4

With the grid nearly complete, Rago prepares the seed device. The Doctor gambles, asking to “optimise” bore alignment; Rago, curious despite himself, allows brief access. In seconds the Doctor maps the firing sequence, nicks a coupler, and pockets a critical plug. Jamie and Cully organise hit-and-run ambushes using museum charges and slings, luring Quarks onto unstable ground. Two topple; a third explodes under falling rock.

Toba, enraged, disobeys orders and wastes power blowing cliffs to dust. Zoe sneaks into the saucer and traces the seed’s arming cradle to its jettison hatch, then sets a timed relay the Doctor described. Kando and Teel shepherd frightened Dulcians toward the shore. The Council’s last envoy arrives and is frozen by what pacifism looks like when no one listens.

Rago finds the damaged coupler and realises someone has been inside his timing stack. He locks down the site, shackles the prisoners, and orders Toba to prepare for launch: under strict power ration. A Quark drags the seed to the mouth of the master bore. The Doctor leans close as if to pray and slips Zoe’s altered plug into place. If the timing holds, the jettison will fire: just not where the Dominators think it will.

Episode 5

Everything runs at once. Sirens rasp; the seed counts down; Quarks close ranks around the bore. Jamie triggers the last diversion, drawing patrols off the saucer. Rago marches prisoners downhill to watch their world die. The Doctor murmurs to Zoe; she dashes for the ship’s hatch and flips her relay. The seed capsule ejects: not into the bore but back into the saucer’s launch bay, clamping into its own cradle as if nothing is wrong.

Toba, seeing movement at the rim, defies orders and opens fire, bleeding his batteries. Rago shoves him aside and hits “detonate.” On the beach, Cully pulls students flat. A sun blossoms where the saucer sits; the Dominator ship vaporises in a sheet of white heat. Shock waves hammer the island; vents roar; fresh volcanism rips open as the abortive drilling destabilises the crust. The Doctor tears free the shackles and sprints his friends toward the TARDIS.

Cully helps the Dulcians into boats, suddenly a leader in a world that will need one. In the capital, the Council stares at news of survival bought by action, not debate. On the island, lava fountains rise. The blue box fades in the glare. Inside, alarms whoop and the roundels throb: the next danger is already dragging them into the void.

Themes

As a season opener, The Dominators sits in the lower tier of the Troughton run. It is less inventive than The Mind Robber, far less expansive than The Invasion, and without the suffocating grip of The Web of Fear or The Tomb of the Cybermen.

Still, it has its own pulpy appeal: the Doctor–Jamie–Zoe trio spark nicely, the satire of timid bureaucracy on Dulkis lands better than its reputation suggests, and the Quarks (however limited) are an eye-catching addition. Measured against its neighbours, it’s a brisk, light starter: tidier than The Underwater Menace, but a clear rung below Season 6’s highlights.

In the series tapestry, it follows the space-station stakes of The Wheel in Space and hands straight into the surreal detour of The Mind Robber. The trio dynamic it consolidates powers the run through The Invasion, The Krotons, The Seeds of Death, and ultimately The War Games.

Its themes (occupation, imposed authority, and a pacifist society under pressure) echo back to the social control of The Macra Terror and look ahead to later debates in The Silurians and Frontier in Space. Even its doomsday drilling and technocratic arrogance faintly prefigure the catastrophes of Inferno. Modest though it is, The Dominators still nudges the pieces into place for bigger battles to come.

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This is a chapter from Craig Hill’s book “Doctor Who – The Second Doctor”, chronicling every episode featuring the Second Doctor. It is available on Amazon.

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