'Black Orchid' (2 Parts) Story Code '6A' by Terence Dudley

The TARDIS arrives at a train station, Cranleigh Halt, in 1925, where the Doctor, Tegan, Adric and Nyssa are given a warm welcome by the local gentry. After the Doctor takes part in a cricket match, where he gives a superb performance, he and his companions are invited to a masked ball that is to be held that afternoon by Lady Cranleigh and her son Charles. At the Cranleigh manor house the travellers meet Charles's fiancée, Ann, who is almost the exact double of Nyssa. While the Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Adric prepare for the party, a mysterious man escapes from the room in which he is imprisoned, and steals the Doctor's Harlequin costume. While the inquisitive Doctor gets lost in the house’s secret passages, the masked ball begins out on the patio; the unknown man dances Ann inside the house; when she becomes frightened the man becomes angry, attacks Ann and murders a servant. The Doctor is blamed for the death, but manages to prove his innocence to the local constabulary; he then discovers that the murderer is George Cranleigh, Charles's brother and Ann's original fiancé, who was thought to have been killed whilst exploring the Amazon basin. When George attempted to steal the natives' scared symbol, the Black Orchid, they cut out his tongue and scarred him horrifically, and now, driven mad by his experience and the knowledge that Ann is to marry his brother Charles, he now lives a life of seclusion in the manor's attic, his existence known only by Lady Cranleigh and his Brazilian guard, Latoni. George is locked up in the attic once more, but he quickly escapes, causing a fire in the process. Mistaking Nyssa for Ann, George seizes her and climbs to the roof of the manor. The Doctor attempts to reason with George, and manages to persuade him to release Nyssa; but when Charles steps forward to hug his brother, George panics and falls to his death. The Doctor and his friends stay for George's funeral, and are given a gift of his book, ‘The Black Orchid’.

Peter Davison (The Doctor), Matthew Waterhouse (Adric), Janet Fielding (Tegan), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa / Ann), Barbara Murray (Lady Cranleigh), Moray Watson (Sir Robert Muir), Michael Cochrane (Lord Cranleigh), Brian Hawksley (Brewster), Timothy Block (Tanner), Ahmed Khalil (Latoni), Gareth Milne (The Unknown / George Cranleigh), Ivor Salter (Sergeant Markham), Andrew Tourell (Constable Cummings)

Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Ron Jones

TX:
Part 1 - 1st March, 1982 @ 6.55pm - 7.20pm
Part 2 - 2nd March, 1982 @ 7.05pm - 7.30pm

Notes:
*Featuring the Fifth Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan

*This is the first purely-historical television story since 'The Highlanders' in Season 4

*Working title: 'The Beast'