THE STORY
Arriving in London at the end of the 19th Century, the Doctor and Leela make friends with a police pathologist, Professor Litefoot, and learn that hairs taken from the clothing of a dead body found floating in the Thames seems from a very large rat. The Doctor's investigations take him first into the sewers, where there are indeed giant rats acting as guards, and then to the Palace Theatre, where a stage magician, Li H'sen Chang, is kidnapping young girls from the streets of London, for his master, the Chinese god Weng-Chiang.Weng-Chiang is actually Magnus Greel, a war criminal from the 51st Century. the journey back through time has disrupted his molecular structure and he now needs to regularly feed on the life force of others - hence his use for the missing girls. He has come to London to retrieve his lost time cabinet, which is in the possesion of Litefoot. Infiltrating the Professro's home with Chang's ventriloquist doll Mr Sin - a computerised homonculus with the brain of a pig - he retrieves the cabinet and prepares to travel back to his own time. The Doctor, aided by Leela, Litefoot and Henry Gordon Jago, the proprietor of the Theatre, tracks him to his lair and traps him before he can escape. Greel falls into the life force extraction machine and disintegrates. The Doctor is then attacked by Mr Sin but manages to disconnect its circuitry, rendering it harmless.
CAST:
The Doctor (Tom Baker), Leela (Louise Jameson), Li H'sen Chang (John Bennett), Jago (Christopher Benjamin), Casey (Chris Gannon), Professor Litefoot (Trevor Baxter), Mr. Sin (Deep Roy), Sergeant Kyle (David McKail), P.C. Quick (Conrad Asquith), Buller (Alan Butler), Ghoul (Patsy Smart), Lee (Tony Then), Coolie (John Wu), Weng-Chiang (Michael Spice), Teresa (Judith Lloyd), Cleaner (Vaune Craig-Raymond), Singer (Penny Lister), Ho (Vincent Wong).
FACTS:
This is the only Fourth Doctor story where the Fourth Doctor did not wear a scarf in any form, although he does don a Sherlock Holmes type costume.
Ideas from the story have been used in novels including 'The Shadow of Weng-Chiang' by David A. McIntee and 'The Bodysnatchers'which featured Professor Litefoot.
OTHER FORMATS:
The Fourth Doctor Novelisations
Script book released in 1989, edited by John McElroy, with cover by Duncan Fegredo
Back to the Fourth Doctor Programme Guide
