"Follow Mister Apollo,”

On 23rd August 1966 NASA’s Lunar Orbiter took the first picture of the Earth from the distance of the moon. While not now as famous as later, colour pictures of the Earth taken during journeys to the moon, such as ‘Earthrise’, it nevertheless marks a milestone in terms of human perceptions of our planet and our place in the universe.

August 1966 was also a significant milestone for Doctor Who. William Hartnell’s departure was announced on 2nd August, the same day Patrick Troughton signed a contract to appear in twenty two episodes of Doctor Who across late 1966 and early 1967. At the other end of the month, on the 30th August, and just a week after the NASA picture was taken, filming began on The Tenth Planet, Hartnell’s final Doctor Who serial at BBC Television Film Studios, at Ealing. Amongst those first images shot for the story? Several images of the Earth’s twin planet, Mondas, as seen from space. 

There was, of course, no time for The Tenth Planet’s model work to have been directly influenced by Lunar Orbiter’s groundbreaking pictures, but it was clearly influenced by the Apollo programme more generally, and it’s the first Doctor Who story noticeably to be so. Its astronauts, in their Zeus capsules (named after a different Greek god, but after a Greek God nonetheless) talk the talk of real space flight, and wear spacesuits that are recognisable as spacesuits.