Doctor Who: The Claws of Axos

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The Claws of Axos is a four-part serial from Doctor Who Season 8, originally broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 13 March to 3 April 1971. It was written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin and directed by Michael Ferguson. It stars Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor, Katy Manning as Jo Grant, Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and Roger Delgado as the Master.

A golden, organic spacecraft lands in England carrying the beautiful Axons, who offer a miraculous substance called Axonite that promises limitless energy and growth, but the Doctor suspects a trap. As UNIT tries to manage political pressure and scientific excitement, the Master returns with his own plans, forcing uneasy alliances and daring gambits.

The story mixes vivid visuals, strange biology, and quick reversals, setting the stage for a clever time-looping solution and showing how curiosity and caution must work together when gifts from the stars arrive.

Episode 1

A freak blizzard and a power surge hit the Nuton power complex as radar picks up a tumbling mass from space. UNIT secures the site; the Brigadier brings the Doctor and Jo to a crater where a pulsing, root-like ship unfurls. Golden, serene figures step out and call themselves Axons. They offer a miracle substance, Axonite, that can absorb, copy, and redistribute energy: instant food, limitless power, cures for scarcity.

Mr Chinn, a blustering civil servant, tries to nationalise the lot and gag UNIT. The Doctor’s smile tightens; he reads hunger behind the generosity. An American agent, Bill Filer, arrives tracking the Master and is swallowed by the ship’s tendrils; the Axons promise to “study” and return him. A local tramp, Pigbin Josh, vanishes into the organic corridors, leaving only bones.

Back at Nuton, Professor Winser prods Axonite in a lab while Jo tours Axos with the Doctor and glimpses a vast, living interior that breathes. The Axons press for worldwide distribution within hours; Chinn beams at the cameras. The Doctor warns that a global release will create a planetary antenna. That night, the golden masks slip: elsewhere on site, a raw, fibrous Axon monster rises from the mud and pads toward the power lines, starving for a first taste.

Episode 2

Axos starts testing its bait. The Axon creature tears into a UNIT patrol, shrugging off bullets until liquid nitrogen slows it. In the lab, Winser drives a probe into Axonite against the Doctor’s orders; the lump blossoms into tendrils and kills him in seconds. Chinn blames UNIT and doubles down, ordering Axonite shipments prepared. The ship births a perfect duplicate of Bill Filer and sends him to steal the Doctor’s TARDIS key; the real, shaken

Filer breaks free long enough to warn Jo before Axon tentacles drag him back. The Doctor forces a parley with Axos and learns the truth: ship and “people” are one parasitic organism. Axonite is a network seed: spread it, and Axos can drain Earth’s energy in a single gulp.

Meanwhile the Master, on the run, slips into Nuton under an alias to hijack the station’s output for his TARDIS repairs. Axos grabs him, reads his mind, and offers a bargain: free him if he helps open a stable energy link to the planet’s core and the Doctor’s time machine. He smiles and nods: anything to get his freedom. The Doctor races back to UNIT with a plan to confine all Axonite to one location. Chinn signs export papers anyway.

Episode 3

The Doctor corrals every scrap of Axonite into Nuton to limit the threat, but his containment field only gives Axos a bigger mouth. The ship locks onto the complex like a leech, gulping power as alarms wail and turbines scream. Golden Axons arrive with new “advisers”: the Master in cuffs, apparently captive, and a blank-eyed Filer clone.

In a blur of deals and betrayals, the Master plays go-between. He warns the Brigadier of an imminent overload while whispering to Axos that the Doctor’s TARDIS can magnify their feast. UNIT fights Axon monsters in cable tunnels; Benton and Yates drag hoses of liquid nitrogen down stairwells while Jo helps the real Filer crawl from a pulsating wall. The Doctor gambles: if he can link his TARDIS to Axos’s time field, he might either sever the drain, or ride it out.

He asks the Master to help get the ship flying. The Brigadier fumes at the alliance; Jo, frightened, trusts the Doctor anyway. As the power meter pegs into the red and lights die across the south of England, the two Time Lords mesh cables and chant over cobbled circuits. Axos opens like a carnivorous flower, swallowing the TARDIS whole. The Doctor tells Jo he’s going to stop Axos: or leave with it.

Episode 4

Inside Axos, time runs like syrup. The Doctor and the Master stand in a nerve-bright chamber facing Axos’s core intelligence: a knotted brain of vines and light. It demands coordinates for conquest; the Master demands his freedom. The Doctor appears to break, offering a route out of Earth’s time trap and proposing an alliance to plunder the cosmos.

While Axos integrates the TARDIS into its systems, he slips a different equation into its mind: a closed loop with no outside, a forever-fall through the same moment. Outside, UNIT holds the line as Axon beasts lunge for generators and soldiers pump freezing fog through the halls. Jo reaches the TARDIS doors just in time to see it fade. Chinn’s authority collapses; Nuton teeters on meltdown. The Master realises the trick too late; the TARDIS rips free as Axos bites on the time-loop bait.

Ship and organism fold in on themselves, trapped in endless recursion. The energy drain snaps; lights blink back; Axon monsters sag into dead fibre. The Master bolts for his own TARDIS and vanishes with a bitter promise. The Doctor rematerialises at UNIT, singed and triumphant: until his console coughs and dies. Exile holds. He shrugs, grins at Jo, and asks the Brigadier how many cables need tidying.

Themes

Loud, lurid, and gleefully strange, The Claws of Axos is Season 8’s pop-art blockbuster. It may not have the gritty realism of The Mind of Evil or the folk-horror resonance of The Dæmons, but its pace, scale, and psychedelic imagination make it a standout. It is easily shoulder to shoulder with Terror of the Autons and not far below the moral weight of Doctor Who and the Silurians.

The Master’s slippery alliances sharpen the drama, while UNIT gets one of its most kinetic outings; as sheer entertainment, it’s top-tier Third Doctor.

Threaded between The Mind of Evil and Colony in Space, the story tightens Season 8’s Master arc and refines the Doctor–Jo partnership that will flower by The Green Death. Its “miracle technology” hook rhymes with earlier cautionary politics in The Ambassadors of Death, and its satirical bite (government greed, corporate opportunism) echoes forward to The Green Death and even the revived series’ The Power of Three.

The Doctor’s brief TARDIS gambit foreshadows the loosening of his exile in The Three Doctors, while the Master’s gamesmanship anticipates the larger canvas of Frontier in Space. In short, The Claws of Axos isn’t just a wild detour: it’s a bright hinge in the UNIT years.

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

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To view the list of other Doctor Who serials, please click this link

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