by Mark Murton

Original Air Date: November 22, 1989

Director: Alan Wareing

This review contains a couple of Kitty Carnage Warnings!

Cat Out Of The Bag Alert! This review contains multiple spoilers for this story arc.

Synopsis: The Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) takes Ace (Sophie Aldred) back to her home town of Peveril where the disappearance of her friends and the presence of a mysterious black cat leads him to the Planet of the Cheetah People and a showdown with his nemesis, The Master (Anthony Ainley).

Clockwork Kitties and Featured Felines: The first sighting of one of the black cats, or Kitlings as they’re called in the story, finds it sitting on wall watching a man (Damon Jeffrey) wash his car in a quiet London street. (Note: Most of the Kitlings are portrayed by animatronic cats except when then are coming or going from a scene or need to perform other moving action. We’ll trust that you’ll be able to tell the difference.) The man is pursued by an unseen assailant. As he falls to the ground he his transported away in a flash of white light.

Next a Kitling is sitting on top of a car before jumping down and running off as the TARDIS materialises.

Nearby, hearing a disturbance in her garden, an elderly woman opens the window to shoo off the culprits and a black cat (also a Kitling?) runs away through the grass.

Another Kitling watches some boys play with a rugby ball on nearby Horsenden Hill (here we learn The Master is able to see through the Kitling’s eyes).

As the boys run off, they pass The Doctor and Ace and the Doctor notices the Kitling running off into the grass.

In search of Ace’s friends, the Doctor and Ace make their way to the local Youth Club where they encounter Patterson (Julian Holloway), an ex-army man and Youth Club leader. As Ace and Patterson talk, the Doctor spies a Kitling sitting outside the glass doors of the Club . . .

. . . which proceeds to hiss at him.

As the Doctor and Ace leave, the Kitling outside the glass runs off along the wall of the building.

The Kitling watches from the grass as they walk off.

Formulating a plan, the Doctor makes his way to a local shop for cat food. As he is making his choice a Kitling suddenly leaps out from behind the tins (complete with poor cat screech).

Kitty Carnage Warning! After the doctor leaves, the shop owners go into the back of the store looking for their pet cat, only to discover “something’s eaten Tiger!” It’s interesting to note that two versions of this scene were shot, one utilising offal from a local abattoir but that one was ultimately deemed too gruesome!

Soon after, a Kitling is sitting on a wall watching as a man jogs by. “He’ll do very well,” intones the Master.

Cat Burglar (Scene – and food – Stealer): The Doctor lays his trap of cat food on the pavement and waits behind a fence in a nearby garden. The food duly attracts one of the local cats but not the Kitling the Doctor is hoping for. This was an unscripted moment featuring a random local cat which they decided to leave in.

Meanwhile Ace is back on the hill, sitting on a roundabout, when she spots a Kitling on the grass nearby (eating the food placed there to keep it from running off!).

She approaches and picks it, then carries it to the swings. In a close-up, the Kitling hisses . . .

. . . before jumping out of her arms and running off.

This leads to an encounter with one of the horseback Cheetah People and Ace is whisked away to the Cheetah People’s planet. The first thing she sees on her arrival is three Kitlings near the body of the car washer seen at the start of the story.

Back on Earth, the Doctor’s trap has finally attracted one of the Kitlings.

He approaches stealthily but just as he is about to grab it he finds himself yanked back by Patterson, allowing the Kitling to run off.

Disabling Patterson, the Doctor resumes his pursuit and tracks the Kitling to some dustbins in an alley, but again it makes its escape.

The Doctor soon finds the Kitling sitting on another wall.

So he climbs up on the wall and crawls towards it . . .

Again Paterson interrupts allowing the Kitling to jump away, but as it does so it disappears in a flash of white light taking the Doctor and Patterson with it to the Cheetah People’s planet.

On the Cheetah People’s planet Ace watches two Kitlings feeding on another carcass.

Elsewhere on the planet, the Doctor and Patterson see a Kitling stretched out on the ground near some bones.

Back on earth, a milkman (Jack Talbot) on his rounds pauses to pet a Kitling on a wall.

Meanwhile, a Kitling is trotting by outside the Master’s tent on the Cheetah People’s planet.

Later the Master is standing on a hill holding a Kitling . . .

. . . which he sends to “seek them out”.

The Kitling observes a fight taking place between a band of Cheetah People and the Doctor, Ace, Patterson and some of the humans who have been transported to the planet.

After the fight ends the Doctor encounters the Master who is standing on wall with a Kitling at his feet.

The Master explains that the former human inhabitants of the planet evolved into the Cheetah People who then send the Kitlings to other worlds to bring back prey. As he is talking, another angle shows the Kitling framed by a red sun.

Through the Kitling the Master selects another victim which then enables him to return to earth.

Kitty Carnage Warning! The Doctor and Ace follow and the trail leads to house where they find a dead cat and a distraught child (Adele Silva) who tells them “The bad cat killed it.” This one is even less convincing than the dead “Tiger,” disparagingly described on the DVD commentary track as looking more like a pyjama case!

Cat Cattle Call: They continue to track the Master and find a couple of (non-black) stray cats by some bin bags.

The final cat appearance in the story comes when the Master is seen outside the Youth Club holding a Kitling.

Behind the Scenes:

The original title for this three-part story was the cleverly punning Cat-Flap.

The inclusion of the poster for the musical Cats, which can be seen on the notice board at the Youth Club, was Sylvester McCoy’s idea.

BBC policy is not to promote real brands on the channel and so fake tins of FURRY feline food were produced for the episode.

Despite this, tins of genuine brands WHISKAS and FELIX are clearly on view on the shelf in the shop, too. And when the Doctor is laying the food on the pavement there’s also a tub of another popular brand, SHEBA, in shot!

Much has been said about the clearly fake animatronic cat seen in the story which was produced by FX Designer Malcolm James. James was given the task after he’d built an impressive animatronic dog for another BBC series. But the technology of the time and the show’s notoriously small budget meant he was always fighting a losing battle, although the main problem was the fact that the general size of a cat’s head meant it was impossible to make a puppet that a human hand could fit inside to animate the features. So it all had to be done with clunky electronics.

Furthermore, the cat “puppet”, which the cast and crew quickly christened “Sooty” (not only a popular name for a black cat but also the name of a famous UK children’s puppet!), was supposed to have only been used sparingly and fleetingly. But due to the recalcitrance of the three cat actors hired to play the Kitlings it had to be used far more than anticipated.

A further complication was that Sophie Aldred (Ace) was allergic to cats and so kept her distance as much as possible.

The reluctance of the hired cats to perform lead one enterprising local schoolboy to bring his black cat along and offer its services. This cat appears in the scene where the doctor climbs up on the wall after the Kitling. The boy was rewarded with £5 which lead to many other local children bringing their cats along in the hope of obtaining similar riches!

The hired cats also objected to the gel that was applied to their fur (which can best be seen on the cat eating the food laid by the doctor) in an attempt to make them look like feral alien cats which they attempted to lick off as soon as it was applied.

The trivia track on the DVD states that in the scene on Horsenden Hill: “It was intended at one point to have a Kitling watching the Doctor and Ace from the undergrowth . . . but the idea was dropped.” Yet in this screen grab from the scene there does seem to be a Kitling in the grass behind Ace’s right shoulder, though no cat / Kitling features in the broadcast scene.

Amazingly, the original animatronic cats have shown up online. One was restored while another sold in an online auction for 850.00 GBP.

There was also a paperback novelization of the story published.

Final Mewsings: The next stage of human evolution is to become more cat.

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