When The Rat’s Away The Mice Will Play
Believing that Batman and Robin are out of the way, the Riddler refocuses his criminal ambitions on the visiting foreign king, or more precisely, the gold-encrusted treasure the king carries as a gift to Gotham City. The Riddler even sends one of his henchmen to visit Commissioner Gordon…in the guise of Batman. But even more awkwardly, “Batman”‘s visit occurs while Commissioner Gordon is discussing business with Bruce Wayne…
written by Fred de Gorter
directed by Tom Gries
music by Nelson Riddle / Batman theme by Neal Hefti
Cast: Adam West (Batman), Burt Ward (Robin), Alan Napier (Alfred), Neil Hamilton (Commissioner Gordon), Stafford Repp (Chief O’Hara), Madge Blake (Mrs. Cooper), Frank Gorshin (The Riddler), Susan Silo (Mousey), Reginald Denny (King Boris), Marc Cavell (Fangs), Tim Herbert (Whiskers), Roy Jenson (Whitey), Marvin Miller (TV Announcer)
LogBook entry by Earl Green
Cast: Vicky Williams (Nicky), Keith Ashton (Jonathon), David Garfield (Mr. Gordon), Jack Watson (Peter), Tony Hughes (Jack), Zuleika Robson (Margaret), Stella Tanner (Anne), Kenneth Gilbert (Innkeeper), Daphne Neville (Villager), Godfrey Jackman (Publican)
Notes: Actor Brian Patrick Clarke is credited as “Brain.” Roddy McDowall joins the show in this episode, playing a part that was written specifically to attract him to the show. His genre credits already included the Planet Of The Apes films and their short-lived TV spinoff. Writer Harold Livingston also penned episodes of Mission: Impossible, Future Cop, The Six Million Dollar Man and the William Shatner series Barbary Coast, but his most famous genre gig was, of course, the unenviable job of coming up with a coherent script for Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979, a job Livingston didn’t relish as it put him into conflict with Gene Roddenberry (Livingston later claimed that his rewrites were being rewritten and sabotaged by Roddenberry). This episode is contains rare references to the pilot, with Fred comparing the red cloud to the green one in the Bermuda Triangle, and Varian noting that the traveling party is almost as large as the original group of shipwreck survivors. Sil-L conveniently hides for almost the entire duration of the episode, appearing only at the beginning and the end; presumably he was marking his territory in Willaway’s outdoor planters the rest of the time.
Cast: Catherine Sanderson (Tess Hunter), Heather Baskerville (Mrs. Hunter), Simon Fenton (Ben Naismith), Emma Jane Lavin (Carey Naismith), Marc Sinden (Francis Naismith), Tatiana Strauss (Julia), Bernard Kay (Richard Naismith), Alex Mollo (Ashe), Mary Wimbush (Esme Harkness), Georgine Anderson (May Harkness), Eileen Way (Alice Harkness), Donna Fawthrop (Young Woman), Jennifer Harris (Little Girl)
In the wake of the events surrounding the crash of the R-101, the Doctor and Charley take in a stray time vortex-dwelling creature, which Charley names “Ramsay.” But when Ramsay falls ill, the Doctor steers the TARDIS toward the Garazone system, where he hopes to find a cure. But the Doctor’s stopover at Garazone launches him into an even more perilous adventure. The scrap ship Vanguard is preparing to depart under the command of a mysterious new captain, and the Doctor and Charley are forced to stow away when the TARDIS is mistakenly loaded into the Vanguard’s cargo bay. Matters are made worse when the Vanguard makes a bee-line for a hulking derelict spacecraft. The Doctor and Charley watch helplessly as the crew try to board the enormous ship, and then one by one begin falling victim to that ship’s population of Cybermen, who have received a signal to reactive. But a danger greater than Cybermen may be lurking among the Vanguard’s crew – a danger which threatens the future of the entire human race.
