Who Killed Kennedy? (episode)


*The following article is written from an Out of Universe perspective.*

Who Killed Kennedy? was the fourth story of Season 37 of Doctor Who. It was written by David Bishop, directed by Christine Gernon and featured Michael French as the Doctor, Laurie Holden as Sammy Thompson and Gillian Kearney as Lou Madison.

Synopsis

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on 22 November, 1963.

Now, the publication of this volume reveals frightening new information about the assassination, the real reasons why the President of the United States had to die and an incredible plan to save the man known as JFK!

These stunning revelations involve an ultra-secret military force disguised as a minor off-shoot of the United Nations and an international terrorist leader who has twice brought the world to the brink of nuclear conflict.

For more than three decades the public has been fed lies, half-truths and misinformation. Now — despite government attempts to halt the publication of this volume — the complete, shocking story can be told.

Plot

To be added.

Cast

Original actors in episodes:

The Doctor - Jon Pertwee
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - Nicholas Courtney
Liz Shaw - Caroline John
Jo Grant - Katy Manning
Sergeant Benton - John Levene

Crew

Created by Sydney Newman, Donald Wilson and C.E. Webber
Executive Producer - David Renwick

Director of Photography - Geoff Harrison
Production Designer - Jonathan Taylor
Visual Effects - The Mill
Make-Up Designer - Vanessa White
Casting Director - Andy Pryor
Music - Rob Lane
Costume Designer - James Baylan
Edited by - Mark Lawrence

Memorable Quotes

To be added.

Background Information

Development

Conceiving the story

After the success of "Don't Blink", Sue Vertue and Steven Moffat were interested in doing another 'Doctor-lite' type story which follows a normal person being involved in the life of the Doctor.
Originally, David Bishop pitched "Who Killed Kennedy?" as a possible 35th anniversary for Doctor Who to be broadcasted in 1998 as part of Season 35. However, the story was not ready in time and was put on hold until a later date.
When, "Who Killed Kennedy?" was revived, about a year later, the idea came about to set the action concurrently to the events of the Jon Pertwee era of Doctor Who and have the main character investigate these events. David Renwick pushed to include original footage from Pertwee stories and use state of the art techniques showcased in both the 1994 Robert Zemeckis movie "Forrest Gump" and the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations". This would allow James Stevens to appear in original 1970s footage and to some extent interact with the original narrative.
In 2012, Bishop spoke about the naming of the main character, James Stevens: "During development of "Who Killed Kennedy?", the name of the protagonist flip-flopped between a few alternatives. He was called Jack Marshall in the original proposal before becoming James Stephens early in 1999. Steven Moffat wanted the character's surname changed to Stevens for reasons I can no longer remember. I preferred Stephens but felt it wasn't worth an argument. The character's name was derived from my own middle names, James and Stephen."

Combining the past with the present

Many members of the senior Doctor Who Production Team as well as director, Christine Gernon, were initially worried about the feasibility of creating a story such as this on the budget of Doctor Who. However, Renwick persuaded them when he showcased the DS9 episode "Trials and Tribble-ations" and announced that he had shifted the budget around as well as raised some more money from the BBC and Paramount to allow the same Visual Effects team to work on "Who Killed Kennedy?" as well as give them a very similar budget as what they had on DS9. On top of this, technological advancement in just the previous couple of years had made the process much easier and cheaper.
To further tie into the feel of 70s era Doctor Who, composer Rob Lane composed the music for this serial in the style of frequent 70s composer, Dudley Simpson, including re-arranging existing leitmotifs in the style of Simpson. One scene, set in the context of "Doctor Who and the Silurians", includes a tongue-in-cheek homage to the music of Carey Blyton, however speaking in 2012, Lane said: "I did that as a joke for the fans. I'm going to be honest here, I found Blyton's music awful, completely wrong for Doctor Who. So, yes, my use of his style of music was used in the context of comedy and I was making fun of Blyton's score for the Silurians. However, I do believe fans thoroughly enjoyed it's usage."

Production

Due to the story being shot on film, most of the footage from the episodes used were the film inserts, and video footage was used sparingly but the footage that was used were up-scaled and also given a 'film overlay' to match.
To recreate the performance of Jackie Lane, actor, Nana Visitor, was brought in to play Dodo Chaplet as seen throughout the 1970s.
According to William Snow, it was easier acting with stock footage than real people, due to the fact that they could watch the existing footage and observe exactly what the other person would be doing in the scene.
Reportedly, the cast and crew found it enjoyable and challenging adjusting to making the show in an 'old-school' style due to the difference in production in the 00s to the 70s.

Reaction

This episode received a 7-Day Viewing Figure from BARB of 9.46m viewers. It ranked at 17th over the week.
David Renwick commented: "The story was just amazing, amazing all round. The crew, the technical people, the actors – they just threw themselves into it. They were all having fun. Just sitting on those sets, being on that bridge. It was a hoot, a real hoot. Everyone who worked on it should be credited. The enthusiasm was like a little virus that just kept spreading. It's very rare in television, where you're fighting the clock and you have to produce so much in a limited amount of time, to really lavish the care on an episode the way we did on this. The only regret I have is that we can't lavish that time and attention on every single serial." Also, Renwick was thrilled with the high ratings the story received and it's the critical response.
However, while most critics loved the story, some felt that it shows that Doctor Who has got to a point where it has to rely heavily on it's history and it's far too continuity bound.

Story Notes

This is the first story to feature Dodo Chaplet since (DW: The War Machines). This is also her final appearance.
The title is a reference to the fact that Doctor Who's first episode (DW: An Unearthly Child) aired the day after the real-life assassination of President Kennedy.

Continuity

The person that James Stevens speaks to on the phone is Mullins. The man with inhuman blood was the Third Doctor following his regeneration, who had been sent to the hospital following a meteorite shower. Stevens was one of many reporters barred entry by the Brigadier and UNIT. The poacher Stevens had met was Sam Seeley, who had found a meteorite. The terrorist attack of Black Thursday was actually an alien invasion of Autons.
Stevens calls the Wenley Moor nuclear research facility and is surprised when the phone is answered by the Brigadier, who hangs up as soon as he realises that Stevens is a journalist.
Several weeks after the plague outbreak, a woman named Doris Squire was still being treated for shock "after claiming to see some sort of lizard walking upright like a man." According to Stevens, this story did not even make the gutter press.
Stevens interviews Ralph Cornish of the Space Centre on the state of British scientific development in the run-up in the Mars Probe 7 crisis.
Stevens inquires as to the effect of the death of International Electromatics founder Tobias Vaughn on said development.
Stevens dismisses Isobel Watkins' claims that Earth had been invaded by "robot men from outer space."
While interviewing Isobel Watkins, Stevens jokes that the country "...[isn't] decimalised yet..."
Stevens ignores Greg Sutton's outlandish claim that a green slime from the centre of the Earth transformed scientists into wolf monsters during the Inferno Project. He describes Sutton's story as sounding like the plot of a "science fiction potboiler."
After the failures of the Wenley Moor nuclear research facility and the Inferno Project were publicised by Stevens in his "Bad Science" series of articles, Harold Wilson's position as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom became untenable and the Labour Party lost the general election to the Conservatives.
Stevens collects reports of a series of agent provocateurs known as "the Doctor" who have been involved in numerous unusual incidents such as the ULTIMA Incident in 1943, the Shangri-La Incident in 1959, the Shoreditch Incident in November 1963, the C-Day fiasco and the contemporaneous Gatwick Incident on 20 July 1966 and the London Event as well as the aforementioned death of Tobias Vaughn and the Wenley Moor Incident.
After almost a year of attempting to collate information about the "Doctor" agents from disparate sources, Stevens finally sees one of them in person at the press demonstration of the experimental Keller Process at Stangmoor Prison. The Doctor was accompanied by a "small, mousy looking woman with a pleasant face."
Stevens suspects that the Doctor and UNIT may have been involved in the disappearance of a fifteen-year-old Coal Hill School pupil named Susan Foreman and her teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright from Shoreditch in November 1963. Susan, whose home address was I.M. Foreman's junkyard at 76 Totter's Lane, only spent several months at the school and had difficulty making friends. Other students described her as being strange and remembered that she mentioned that she lived with her grandfather. All of her records were later found to be clever forgeries. Despite extensive searches and appeals for assistance, Susan was never found. Chesterton and Wright reappeared in the summer of 1965. They claimed to have spent the previous year and a half doing missionary work in Central Africa. Not quite returning to their old lives, Wright became a university history lecturer, specialising in the Aztec period of Central American history and Ian became a university science lecturer and gained a professorship within a year. He specialised in astronomy, but showed expertise across a wide range of fields beyond the scope of a former secondary school science teacher's training.
Stevens later meets a young woman named Dodo Chaplet who suffered a nervous breakdown following the events of C-Day. She does not remember anything about that day, but her claims to have met one-eyed reptile men and Wild West gunfighters, as well as having played games with living dolls, resulted in her being sent to a psychiatric institution.
Dodo tells Stevens that she researched her family tree for a school project and discovered that her ancestors were Hugenots who fled France due to religious persecution.
A terrorist known as Victor Magister or "the Master" is arrested following an incident at the village Devil's End. He and his accomplices are subsequently charged with the attack on Black Thursday, the plague outbreak and the failure of the World Peace Conference, among other incidents. Magister escaped from custody, causing a great deal of scandal in the prison service. Stevens notes that his terrorist activities of the late 1970s were little remembered by most British people in 1996.
A Liverpudlian UNIT soldier named Francis Cleary is deeply disturbed by the sight of one of his fellow soldiers Billy Boyle, a good friend, being killed by an alien at the Nuton Power Complex and finally goes mad after seeing Satan himself at a church in Devil's End.
Stevens and Dodo watch the opening of Devil's Hump in Devil's End on The Passing Parade on BBC3. They see Alastair Fergus interviewing Professor Gilbert Horner.
The Master tells Stevens that he is "usually referred to as the Master...Universally."
Dodo's funeral is attended only by Stevens and "a small, dishevelled man with an air of sadness".
Following Dodo's murder and funeral, Stevens sees a television report which mentions that UNIT is providing security for the Second World Peace Conference at Auderly House. Entering the grounds of the manor house clandestinely, he is saved from death at the hands of an ape creature by the Doctor. The Brigadier later shows him its body, which finally convinces him that the various outlandish stories which he has heard about aliens visiting and/or the invading the Earth are entirely true.

Home Video Releases

To be added.