Doctor Who Rare Entries Contests

DWRE17: 8 December 2009

Results

A slightly below-average turnout this time round, with a field of just 33
entries - the lowest since January 2007's DWRE9 which itself was the lowest
turnout ever. That doesn't mean the competition was not fierce though, so
hearty congratulations to froo who romps home with a hugely impressive score
of just 48. Ben Goudie and Nightsky are not far behind with 288 and 512
respectively and here are their answer-slates.
 
     FROO                   BEN GOUDIE             NIGHTSKY                
0    Kidnap                 Volcano                Castrovalva             
1    Argon                  Tin                    Beryllium               
2    Terry Nation           Kit Pedler             Terry Nation            
3    The Krotons #3         The Leisure Hive #1    Caves of Androzani #1   
4    Philip Voss            Cyril Shaps            John Cleese             
5    Gwyneth                Padmasambhava          Sarah Jane Smith        
6    Simon Gipps-Kent       Michael Leeston-Smith  Dean Lennox Kelly       
7    Martha Jones           Steven Taylor          Nyssa                   
8    The Time Warrior       The Silurians          The Time Warrior        
9    Stolen/Journey         Mission to the Unknown Bad/Parting  

To review the scoring:
The scores on the different questions are MULTIPLIED to produce a final
score for each entrant. Low score wins; a perfect score is 1. If your answer
to a question is correct, then your score is the number of people who gave
that answer, or an answer I consider equivalent. A wrong answer, or a
skipped question, gets a high score as a penalty. This is the median of:
- the number of entrants
- the square root of that number, rounded up to an integer
- double the largest number of entrants giving the same answer (right or
wrong) as each other on the question

Here is the complete table of scores. Use a monospaced font to see proper
alignment (this may mean doing 'view source'). 

RANK     SCORE    ENTRANT             Q0 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9 
 
 1          48    froo                 1  3  2  1  1  1  2  2  2  1  
 2         288    Ben Goudie           1  4  3  2  1  3  2  1  1  2  
 3         512    Nightsky             1  2  2  2  4  2  2  2  2  1  
 4         960    Mr Harry             1  2  3  2  1  1  2  4  2  5  
 5       1,120    DAL to LEKS          1  1 WR  1  5  1  2  2  2  2  
 6       3,000    Simon Kinnear        1  4  5  2  1  1  1  3  5  5  
 7       3,072    HolmesBaker          2  4  2  2  2  6  1  2  1  4  
 8       3,888    David Ainsworth      1  9  3  2  3  2  2  1  6  1  
 9       3,920    trstr                2  4  7  7  2  1  1  1  1  5  
10       8,064    Fortmap              1  4  3  7  1  1  1 WR WR  1  
11       9,072    Lord of Thyme        1 WR  2  7  1  1  1  3  3  4  
12       9,216    Jonathan Morris      2  2  4  6  1  1  3  2  2  8  
13      11,520    Ben Brown            2 WR  2  2  1  2  2  4  1  5  
14      14,400    James Munro         WR  2  1  2 WR  6  1  2  1  5  
15      20,736    magicbaboon          1  3  4  6  1  1 WR  2  3  8  
16      26,880    Old Type 40          1  2  7  6  1  1  2  2  5 WR  
17      28,800    Mr Saxon             1  4  5  1  4 WR  1  1  6  5  
18      34,560    Trevor Gensch        1  2  2  2  5 WR  1  3  3  8  
19      45,360    Lightrock            1 WR  7  1  2  3  1  2  6  5  
 =      45,360    delijoe79            3  9  7  2  2  2  2  3  1  5  
21      47,040    DoctorBrownCoat      2  4  7  7  5  1  1  3  2  4  
22      48,384    Eye of Horus         2  1  7  6  2  3  1  3  2 WR  
23      57,600    Stanmore             2  9  5  2  5  2  2  1  1 WR  
24      61,440    Ed Rackstraw         2  4  3  2  2  2  2  4  5  8  
25      70,560    Wilf                 1  3  7 WR  1  2  1  3  5  8  
26      77,760    Binro_The_Heretic    2  9  2  2  2  2  3  3  6  5  
27      82,944    Joe Henning          2 WR  4  1  3  6  2  1  2  8  
28     103,680    Aquatics64           1  9  4  6  4  1  1  4  6  5  
29     161,280    Regenerator          1 WR  2  7  2  2  1  2  5 WR  
30     272,160    Bazza                1  9  1  7  5  6  3  1  3 WR  
 =     272,160    Steven Allan         1  9  5  7  3  6  1  2  3  8  
32     279,936    hcd199               3  9  3  2  4  6  2  3  3  4  
33     311,040    Barnaby Salton       3  9  5  6  1  2  2  2  6  8  

Here is the complete list of answers given. Each list shows correct answers
in the order worst to best (most to least popular). 

0. Name a story or episode whose exact title features in the dialogue of
another story.

3 The Ark (The Ark in Space)
2 Kinda (The Visitation)
2 Power of the Daleks (Day of)
2 Robot (Robots of Death)
2 Rose
2 The War Games (The Awakening)
1 Bad Wolf (Turn Left)
1 Blink (The Monster of Peladon)
1 Castrovalva (Time-Flight)
1 Checkmate (The Time Meddler #4) (Curse of Fenric)
1 Day of the Daleks (The Evil of the Daleks)
1 Inferno (The Parting of the Ways)
1 Kidnap (The Sensorites #5) (The Faceless Ones)
1 Marco Polo (The Power of the Daleks)
1 The Bomb (The Ark #4) (Tenth Planet)
1 The Chase (The Unquiet Dead)
1 The Daleks
1 The Ice Warriors
1 The Invasion
1 The Plague (The Ark #2) (The Visitation)
1 The Romans (Fires of Pompeii)
1 The Sea Devils (Warriors of the Deep)
1 The Watcher (The Time Meddler #1) (Logopolis)
1 Turn Left (Remembrance of the Daleks)
1 Volcano (Dalek Master Plan #8) (Fires of Pompeii)
Wrong
1 The Long Game

A pretty easy one to start with. This question was intended to be a
companion question to "Name a story whose exact title features in dialogue
from that story" but it seems I never actually asked that question. Maybe
somebody else did, or maybe I imagined the whole thing. One entrant misread
the question in this form, but they fluked it - the title they chose (The
War Games) was also included in the dialogue of another story.

It was possible to find some pretty easy answers by picking stories which
named long-running characters or enemies ("The Daleks", "Rose") or titles
consisting only of common phrases ("Robot", "The Invasion"). Others were a
bit craftier, remembering the reference to the Kinda tribe at the beginning
of the subsequent story, The Visitation, or the Doctor's direction to Ace to
"turn left" in the first episode of Remembrance of the Daleks. Although the
craftier types did well (which is as it should be), the top choice by the
smallest of margins is one of the more obvious answers. In fact plenty of
obvious answers were also unique and in general there was enough choice to
mean that no-one did worse than 3.

The one wrong answer was a very near miss. In Bad Wolf The Doctor comments
that "someone's been playing a long game," but this is not the exact title
of The Long Game as required by the question.

The entrant who gave Inferno specified that this was The Romans #4 and not
the Pertwee story of the same name, and further directed me to interpret
Inferno given by other entrants as an answer without further explanation as
referring to the Pertwee story. It is precisely because of potential
ambiguities such as these that rule 4.5 was added, and I see no reason to
suspend it on one entrant's request. There is also no need, as no-one else
gave this answer.

Except where blindingly obvious, the story where the dialogue can be heard
is shown in brackets.

1. Give the name of a real chemical element or compound which is used as a
modifier to describe or name a fictional person, place or thing in a Doctor
Who story. For example, if there was a staff called The Caesium Staff or The
Staff of Caesium in an episode of Doctor Who, then caesium would be a
correct answer.

9 Gold (Usher) (Deadly Assassin)
4 Silver (Nemesis)
4 Tin (Dog) (School Reunion)
3 Argon (discharge globes) (Frontios)
2 Beryllium (clock) (TV Movie)
2 Hydrogen (inrush) (Castrovalva)
2 Mercury (pools) (Power of the Daleks)
1 Ice (Warriors)
1 Sodium (Street) (Paradise Towers)
Wrong
2 Copper
1 Argonite
1 Carbon
1 Nickel

From one of the easiest questions in the contest, to one of the hardest.
It's perhaps worth pointing out that for DWRE17 I removed the paragraph in
the rules reminding people to give their answers in the form requested,
thinking that after 16 contests it was a little patronising. I was obviously
wrong, as 13 out of 33 entrants gave their answer in the form "Gold Usher"
or "Hydrogen in-rush" rather than simply naming the element, as required by
the question.

When I realised I might be marking almost half the field wrong on a
technicality, my first thought was to use the DWCE method here and accept
"Gold Usher" as equivalent to "gold" (and therefore correct) but to accept
answers in the form of "Rod of Iron" as equivalent to "rod" (and therefore
wrong). This would have meant accepting "The silver carrier" as "the" which
seemed unfair, especially with so few right answers to choose from, so I
ended up ignoring this issue and extracting the element or compound from
each answer. This meant that the entrant who submitted the imaginary item
"Mercury link" (thinking of the fluid link on which the plot of The Daleks
episode 1 turns) was deemed to have answered "mercury" which is correct,
thanks to the mercury pools found on Vulcan in The Power of the Daleks. I
don't promise to be so lenient in future contests.

Meanwhile, entrants found other ways to be wrong. "Argonite" in a Doctor Who
context is a mineral traded by The Space Pirates so it probably is used as a
modifier to describe something (the entrant didn't specify) but it fails the
other criterion of the question - it isn't a real element or compound; it's
a brand name for a mixture of argon and nitrogen. And before you clamour, I
added "or compound" just to expand the range of possible answers a little,
but that doesn't include mixtures, alloys or other combinations of
substances. You could, however, use common names for familiar compounds. One
of the potential answers I compiled for this question was the somewhat
dubious "water thief" (The Mysterious Planet). Another craftier entrant came
up with "ice" as in Warriors, which I was initially unsure of, but the word
"ice" is usually taken to mean water ice, and that identifies the compound
H2O (it would thus have been marked equivalent to "water" had anyone
volunteered that answer).

Other entrants fumbled this one due to not knowing what a modifier is. The
word "tin" modifies the noun "dog" to make the noun-phrase "tin dog". The
same is not true of "Copper" as in "Mr Copper". "Copper" would have been a
right answer if mention had ever been made of "The Copper Foundation" but as
far as I can tell, it is only ever given the ludicrously clumsy soubriquet
"The Mr Copper Foundation". This makes "Mr Copper" the modifier, not
"Copper". I was unable to find any other instances of "copper" used as a
modifier.

So it was with the entrants who submitted "nickel" and "carbon". I would
have bet "carbon" was a right answer, but I couldn't find a phrase which
fitted the bill and nor could the entrant. Among all this, there were right
answers not given. Paradise Towers holds not just Sodium Street, but also
Potassium Street, making potassium a right answer. Mention is made in The
Power of Kroll of methane processors (methane is the compound CH4), and I
would have accepted cobalt as in "Great Cobalt Pyramid" (since both "great"
and "cobalt" function as modifiers).

"Beryllium clock" I briefly imagined might be a real thing, but although the
phrase does have a real-world meaning, it doesn't refer to a literal
time-piece, so this answer is fine.

"Silver" (and other correct answers besides) is used to modify more than one
noun in Doctor Who stories, but these answers are all equivalent (which was
why you were only asked to provide the element or compound). This is truest
of all possibly for "gold" which can modify "Usher", "bullets", "arrows" and
much else besides. It was the runaway most popular answer and the worst
answer of the contest, scoring a hefty nine points.

2. Name someone who has written or co-written five or more Doctor Who
stories. In general, programme credits should be taken as authoritative,
however every story was written by someone, so if a non-existent person is
named in the programme credits, you should instead count those who in fact
did most of the actual writing.

7 Brian Hayles (6)
5 Malcolm Hulke (7)
4 Bob Baker (9)
3 Dave Martin (8)
3 Kit Pedler (5)
2 David Whitaker (8)
2 Robert Holmes (18)
2 Terrance Dicks (5)
2 Terry Nation (11)
1 Gerry Davis (5)
1 Russell T Davies (24)
Wrong
1 Dennis Spooner (4)

Having learned my lesson about setting the bar too low in the last contest,
I did my homework on this question, and determined that five or more stories
was the appropriate cut-off. This gave you 12 right answers, of which 11
were given (and the one that wasn't is the most marginal). 

Let's begin with the obvious. Plenty of people have a big input into the
scripts of Doctor Who stories, but this is not always reflected in the
credits. Russell T Davies is thought to have written pretty much all of The
Impossible Planet two-parter, but Matt Jones gets his name on it as the
writer. Similarly, Derrick Sherwin wrote episode one of The Mind Robber at
the eleventh hour, but you won't see his name on the credits. So, this was
in part a trap to catch anyone who punted Eric Saward. The long-serving
script-editor wrote all or most of (The Visitation, Earthshock, Resurrection
of the Daleks, The Twin Dilemma, Attack of the Cybermen and Revelation of
the Daleks and rumours persist that he wrote much of The Awakening. That's a
total of at least six, but he only gets his name on four, and since both
Twin and Attack are credited to other real people, they don't increase his
total for the purposes of this question. It seems you all spotted this, as
nobody went for Saward.

That leaves two issues remaining. The first is who gets the credit for the
pseudonymous stories? There are only six of these, of which only one is
crucial. Giving Haisman and Lincoln the credit for "Norman Ashby"'s script
lifts them to three, giving Robert Sloman and Barry Letts credit for "Guy
Leopold"'s work lifts Sloman to four and Letts to one, so none of these pass
the five stories barrier either way. The same is true of Lewis Grieffer (aka
"Stephen Harris") and David Agnew (where Graham Williams, Anthony Read and
Douglas Adams are concerned). Other writers pass the five stories mark
without help from their alter-egos. Giving Robert Holmes the credit for
"Stephen Harris" is utterly unnecessary as he's already second only to RTD
with 16 stories to his credit. The same is true of "Robin Bland" which also
simply adds a sixth to Terrance Dicks' existing total of five.

So the only writer we need to consider is David Fisher, whose contribution
to City of Death is concealed behind the David Agnew nom-de-plume. Although
Douglas Adams clearly did all the scripting, an awful lot of elements of
Fisher's "A Gamble With Time" storyline were included, so I decided I would
count this story towards Fisher's total which, with Stones of Blood,
Androids of Tara, The Creature from the Pit and The Leisure Hive gives him
the requisite five. After all that, nobody went for Fisher - the only right
answer not given.

The second issue is the occasional use of credits other than "by" or
"written by". The chief offender here is Kit Pedler whose name (variously
spelled!) is associated with several 60s stories, mainly those with Cybermen
in them. But his partnership with Gerry Davis generally meant Pedler
providing scientific concepts while Davis hammered out the script. The
upshot of this arrangement is that Pedler is given a full writing credit
alongside Davis on The Tenth Planet and Tomb of the Cybermen and he gets
sole credit on The Moonbase, so that's a clear three. But on The War
Machines, he only gets "based on an idea by", and on both The Wheel in Space
and The Invasion he gets "from a story by". My interpretation of these
credits is that "based on an idea by" equates to not having done any
writing, but that writing the story does amount to contributing to the
writing of a script, so I'll accept Wheel and Invasion bringing Kit up to 5.

Obviously wrong is Dennis Spooner, who was only credited for writing The
Reign of Terror, The Romans, The Time Meddler and The Daleks Master Plan
(with Terry Nation). Some sources assert that Spooner also contributed to
the script for The Power of the Daleks but since he received no credit for
this, and since no pseudonym was used, we have no need to look further than
David Whitaker here.

No other new series writers besides RTD make the grade, although Moffat will
change that in March 2010. Top choice was Brian Hayles, I assume based on
the theory that many people will count four Ice Warrior stories and then
stop, omitting The Celestial Toymaker and The Smugglers (or the opposite of
that theory - that The Nightmare Fair having recently been released by Big
Finish, Hayles' first script for the show is at the top of peoples' minds).
"Bristol Boys" Bob Baker and Dave Martin were also popular choices, as was
Malcolm Hulke. I have provided the number of stories in brackets after each
writer's name.

3. Name an episode which ends with the apparent death of the Doctor (as
opposed to, say, the imminent death of the Doctor).

7 Vengeance on Varos #1 (dehydrated)
6 Warriors of the Deep #1 (drowned)
2 Caves of Androzani #1 (shot)
2 Spearhead from Space #1 (shot)
2 The Leisure Hive #1 (dismembered)
2 The Pirate Planet #3 (walked the plank)
2 The Twin Dilemma #2 (blown up)
2 The Two Doctors #1 (asphyxiated)
2 The War Games #1 (shot)
1 Arc of Infinity #1 (shot)
1 Arc of Infinity #2 (dispersed)
1 Revelation of the Daleks #1 (crushed)
1 The Daemons #1 (frozen)
1 The Krotons #3 (buried)
Wrong
1 The Massacre #3

I had a few episodes in mind here, all of which were strong performers -
Warriors of the Deep #1, Caves of Androzani #1 and Vengeance on Varos #1 all
make a very good job of apparently killing The Doctor off. Two of these were
runaway winners, harvesting almost half the field between them.

Of course, The Doctor is not actually killed in any of these episodes so the
possibility of marginal calls exists. In the event, only one answer gave me
pause - Revelation of the Daleks #1. Very early into part two, it is
revealed that the statue which toppled over on to The Doctor was made of
polystyrene in the fictional world of Tranquil Repose as well as at the
real-world filming location in Hampshire, and so was incapable of crushing
The Doctor to death in any event (as opposed to, say, the cooling tank in
Warriors which certainly did have Doctor-drowning powers). However, the end
of part one can have no reasonable implication other than The Doctor's death
by marble effigy, and I don't think it fair or appropriate to include
material in subsequent episodes when judging the effect of a cliff-hanger
ending.

I was prepared to give The Massacre #3 a pass on a similar basis, despite it
depicting the death of The Abbot (the viewer is still not sure that the
Abbot is not The Doctor), but the murder occurs rather too early for it to
be accurately described as the ending of the episode. The guards are seen to
close murderously in on the Abbot, there is an intervening scene with
Charles IX and Teligny, then in a subsequent scene Teligny tells Steven that
the Abbot is dead, next we cut to the Louvre and then finally Steven sees
what he thinks is The Doctor's dead body which ends the episode. So, does
the episode end with The Doctor apparently dead? Sure. Does it end with The
Doctor's apparent death? No. That took place many minutes earlier.

I have included the manner of apparent demise in brackets after each answer,
and I notice that Doctors tend to get shot in episode one of stories. I have
no idea why this might be.

Nobody was silly enough to punt a regeneration story as an answer to this
question, and - in contrast to question 1 - nobody made the mistake of
naming a story instead of an episode.

4. Name an actor who has played credited speaking roles in at least one
episode of Doctor Who and at least one James Bond movie.

5 Burt Kwouk (YOLT, Four to Doomsday)
4 John Cleese (TWINE, City of Death)
3 Julian Glover (FYEO, City of Death)
2 Catherine Schell (OHMSS, City of Death)
2 George Baker (OHMSS, Full Circle)
2 James Bree (OHMSS, The Ultimate Foe)
2 Pamela Salem (NSNA, Robots of Death)
1 Colin Gordon (CR1967, The Faceless Ones)
1 Colin Salmon (TND, Silence in the Library)
1 Cyril Shaps (TSWLM, The Ambassadors of Death)
1 Earl Cameron (TB, Tenth Planet)
1 Edward de Souza (TSWLM, Mission to the Unknown)
1 Geoffrey Bayldon (CR1967, Creature from the Pit)
1 Geoffrey Cheshire (OHMSS, The Invasion)
1 Joseph Furst (DAF, The Underwater Menace)
1 Philip Locke (TB, Four to Doomsday)
1 Philip Voss (OP, Marco Polo)
1 Tom Chadbon (CR2006, City of Death)
1 Vernon Dobtcheff (TSWLM, The War Games)
Wrong
1 Timothy Dalton

This one was pretty straightforward. For convenience, Bond fans refer to the
movies by their initials (one of the advantages of devoted attachment to
20-odd movies instead of 200-odd stories) and so these initials and the
qualifying Doctor Who story have been supplied for each answer.

One or two entrants queried whether "rogue" Bond films Never Say Never Again
and the 1967 Casino Royale were allowed, but nothing in the wording of the
question rules them out and each can provide right answers. 

Many Bond films went unnamed, but I haven't had time to check whether they
include other right answers or not so this is left as an exercise for the
interested reader. However, Doctor Who stories as-yet unbroadcast don't
count (rule 4) so Timothy Dalton is a wrong answer, despite (as it happens)
being the inspiration for the question.

5. Name a character who has been possessed on at least one occasion, such
that dialogue they were seen and heard to speak should be interpreted as
articulating the thoughts of another character or entity.

6 Tegan Jovanka (The Mara)
3 Padmasambhava (The Great Intelligence)
2 Edgeworth (Mestor)
2 Lupton (The Great One)
2 Sarah Jane Smith (Eldrad)
2 The Doctor (Midnight)
2 Toby Zed (Satan)
1 Aris (Kinda)
1 Bruce (The Master)
1 Chief Caretaker (Kroagnon)
1 Chloe Webber (Demon-Dad)
1 Dr Carter (The Hand of Fear)
1 Gwyneth (Gelth)
1 Hedges (The Invisible Enemy)
1 Kamelion (The Master)
1 Kassia (The Master)
1 Rose (Cassandra)
1 Silvey (The Nucleus)
1 The Chief Caretaker (Kroagnon)
Wrong
1 Ben Jackson
1 Donna Noble

I have been wrestling with a "possession" question for a while, and thought
I'd finally got the wording right here, but I have given myself a couple of
headaches in the event.

In my eagerness to describe exactly what a possessed character looks and
sounds like (and in the interests of a reasonably brief question), I have
arguably placed too little emphasis on what being "possessed" means in plot
terms. To me, a character is "possessed" if their mind is taken over,
usually reversibly, by another intelligence. So Rose inhabited by Cassandra
or Edgeworth made to speak for Mestor are perfect examples. It's no surprise
that luckless Tegan came top here, nor that Sarah Jane Smith also performed
well.

Rather trickier to decide are the following: Bruce, Ben Jackson, Donna
Noble, Kamelion. Let's take each in turn.

Bruce is killed by The Master who then proceeds to inhabit his cadaver and
walk it about the place (and dress it up, let's not forget). This is not
really what I had in mind when I wrote the question, but the CGI snake-thing
slithering into Bruce and making him speak The Master's lines is not an
unreasonable use of the word "possession". Further, it's not entirely clear
that the same thing hasn't happened to, say, The Chief Caretaker, who
otherwise clearly seems to qualify. So, Bruce makes it in.

The entrant who submitted Ben Jackson was thinking of The Macra Terror
wherein many members of the cast are mentally conditioned to be more
enthusiastic workers, but I don't believe that this amounts to articulating
someone else's thoughts. Ben is still Ben, he is just in the grip of a
delusional belief. The entrant couldn't find another example of Ben becoming
possessed and neither could I, so Ben's out.

With Donna, the entrant and I had different episodes in mind, but I don't
believe either of them counts. I assumed that the end of Silence in the
Library is what was intended, since we certainly see what looks like Donna,
intoning words which are not her own. But here I think it's much clearer
than it is with Bruce and The Master that something other than a possession
has taken place. Donna's face has been sliced off, slapped on a piece of
granite and puppeteered by an automated system. That's not possession in any
sense of the word. As it happened, the entrant was actually thinking of
Donna's sudden technobabbling in Journey's End, but here again I don't think
this meets the criteria of the question. Part of the point of the
DoctorDonna is that she can think of things The Doctor can't. So despite all
the Time Lord knowledge that's suddenly (and dangerously) invaded her skull,
she's still her own person, not "possessed" by The Doctor.

Finally, if anyone else had been controlled by The Master and sent to kill
The Doctor and his companion, I would have no doubt that that character
would be a correct answer to this question. Kamelion gave me pause because
that's what he's built to do - take on different forms and obey instructions
from an outside force, so when this happens again it seems like a natural
part of his function, rather than an aggressive takeover. But the battle for
control in Planet of Fire ticks all the right boxes ultimately, so Kamelion
makes it in.

Names in brackets are those who are doing the possessing.

6. Name someone credited on at least one episode of Doctor Who with three
names, either because they use a middle name professionally, or because they
have a double-barrelled surname. For example, both Mary Elizabeth
Mastrantonio and Daniel Day-Lewis would be correct answers had they received
a credit on an episode of Doctor Who.

3 Robert Banks Stewart (writer, Seeds of Doom)
2 David Blake Kelly (actor, The Smugglers)
2 Dean Lennox Kelly (actor, The Shakespeare Code)
2 George Spenton-Foster (director, Image of the Fendahl)
2 Imogen Bickford-Smith (actor, Underworld)
2 John Nathan-Turner (producer)
2 Michael Leeston-Smith (director, The Myth Makers)
2 Simon Gipps-Kent (The Horns of Nimon)
1 Carole Ann Ford (actor)
1 Catrin Lewis Defis (Associate producer)
1 Cecile Hay-Arthur (Make up, Underworld)
1 Gugu Mbatha-Raw (actor, Smith and Jones)
1 Michael Napier-Brown (actor, The War Games)
1 Pamela Ann Davey (actor, Power of the Daleks)
1 Peter Forbes-Robertson (actor, Colony in Space)
1 Peter Robert Scott (actor, Timelash)
1 Roger Lloyd-Pack (actor, The Age of Steel)
1 Ronald Leigh-Hunt (actor, The Seeds of Death)
1 Sharon Duncan Brewster (actor, The Waters of Mars)
1 Sion Tudor Owen (actor, The Mysterious Planet)
1 Tim Piggot-Smith (actor, Masque of Mandragora)
1 Tom Goodman Hill (actor, The Unicorn and the Wasp)
1 Tracy Ann Oberman (actor, Doomsday)
Wrong
1 Edward de Souza

In general this was a pretty easy and straightforward question, with no-one
doing worse than 3. One issue which was raised by the entrant who tried
"Edward de Souza" is perhaps worth a brief discussion.

I was asked by this entrant
 | I've been trying to confirm if a given name followed by a surname that
 | comprises 2 words qualify as double barrelled, or do the two words in the
 | surname specifically have to be hyphenated? For example, if we were talking
 | about footballers, Shaun Wright-Phillips is definitely double barrelled, but
 | is Marco van Basten? I've checked the definition of "double-barrelled" out
 | on a few different online dictionaries, but there doesn't seem to be a
 | consensus. Many say a hyphen may or may not be used, but some specifically
 | state a hyphen is needed. When potential answers like this come down to a
 | question of which dictionary to trust in for a definition, would it be
 | possible for the judge to indicate where they would stand?

Long-time campaigners may recall that I have strong views about deciding
correctness of answers by recourse to particular dictionaries, but I didn't
feel that was an issue here, and wrote back to this entrant as follows.
 | I believe that the question is clear enough as it stands, without being
 | dependent on any one dictionary definition.

To understand this, and to understand why no dictionary is required, you
need only consider the first clause of the question which asks you for a
person with three names. Double-barrelled surnames sometimes have hyphens
(as in William Rees-Mogg, son of Mr Rees-Mogg, who at one point was
descended from both the Rees and Mogg families) and sometimes not (as in
Griff Rhys Jones, son of Mr Rhys Jones, who at one point was descended from
a family who was differentiated from all the other Welsh Joneses by the
addition of "Rhys") but in either case three names are required. The "de" in
"de Souza" is in no way a third name. Edward de Souza is the son of Mr de
Souza, and this does not imply the previous existence of a "de" family.

This is because "de" (and other such words like "von" or even phrases like
"van der") is a way of forming a surname from another word. "De" is French
for "of" and so "de Souza" means "of Souza" or "from Souza". Thus for this
question it doesn't matter at all what any dictionary says about the
presence or absence of hyphens in double-barrelled surnames, because Edward
de Souza uses only two names, despite the fact that one of those names
includes a space.

I would be interested to know which online dictionaries claim that
hyphenless surnames such as "Rhys Jones" or "Bonham Carter" are not
double-barrelled. This seems misleading at best if not actually flat wrong.

7. Name someone who has been seen to operate The Doctor's TARDIS. ("Operate"
means that their interaction with the TARDIS console was apparently required
for the ship to complete its journey, as opposed to, say, opening the doors
or activating the scanner.)

4 Mickey Smith (Journey's End)
3 Sarah Jane Smith (Journey's End)
3 Tegan (Four to Doomsday)
3 Turlough (Planet of Fire)
2 Adric (Castrovalva)
2 Martha Jones (Journey's End)
2 Nyssa (Mawdryn Undead)
2 Professor Hayter (Time-Flight)
2 Rose Tyler (Journey's End)
2 The Watcher (Logopolis)
1 Captain Jack (Journey's End)
1 Donna (Journey's End)
1 Kamelion (Planet of Fire)
1 Romana (The Androids of Tara)
1 Sally Sparrow (Blink)
1 Steven Taylor (Daleks Master Plan)
1 The Master (Time-Flight)
Wrong
1 Sutekh (not seen)

I wondered if we might get a collision here on the "clever" answer of "The
Doctor" but in the event nobody went there. Journey's End was a rich source
of answers however, with five companions all pitching in to help tow the
Earth home, and Donna also seen fiddling with the controls after the TARDIS
departs Bad Wolf Bay. A smattering of eighties companions also got schooled
in TARDIS-piloting, and Romana and The Master both were seen at the controls
more than once. Very few other examples exist, and I am not aware of any
right answers that weren't given (although I wouldn't be surprised if there
were a few).

This question has a curious parallel with question 5. It's not at all clear
what weird combination of phantom, human and Xeraphon returns the TARDIS to
the Doctor in Time-Flight and I really can't be bothered to try and work it
out. And as it happens, I don't need to. What we see is Professor Hayter
piloting the TARDIS, which is what the question requires. This also rules
out Sutekh, whom the entrant claimed was controlling The Doctor at the end
of Pyramids of Mars. Again, this may or may not have been the case, but we
didn't see Sutekh at the controls, so I have to rule this one wrong.

8. Name a story in which The Doctor calls himself John Smith, or someone
else refers to him using that name.

6 School Reunion
5 Midnight
3 The TV Movie
3 The Wheel in Space
2 Invasion of the Dinosaurs
2 The Next Doctor
2 The Time Warrior
2 The War Games
1 Human Nature
1 Inferno
1 Partners in Crime
1 Smith and Jones
1 Spearhead from Space
1 TV Movie
1 The Silurians
Wrong
1 The Claws of Axos

Opinions vary on whether David Tennant is playing two separate characters in
Human Nature / Family of Blood (as the credits suggest) or whether this John
Smith, English schoolteacher, is an aspect of The Doctor. However, The
Doctor does refer to himself as John Smith, albeit obliquely, after he has
changed back, during the climactic scene in the Family's ship, so I think
this one is fine. Much more popular examples from the Tennant era were
School Reunion and Midnight. 

Plenty of Pertwee stories also present and correct here, but real Who fans
also know that the first Doctor to be referred to as "John Smith" is
Troughton in The Wheel in Space (although he doesn't use the name himself).
Real, real Who fans also know that the first use of "John Smith" as a
pseudonym is in An Unearthly Child ("John Smith and the Common Men") but
that wouldn't have been a right answer here. Troughton uses the name himself
in The War Games #3 when challenged by Lucke and Chang Lee checks the
wounded seventh Doctor into the hospital under this name in The TV Movie.
This is the only answer given not from the Troughton, Pertwee or Tennant
eras. Is this because the first, fourth, fifth, sixth and ninth Doctors
never used the name?

I'm sure other right answer exist, but couldn't find any mention of "John
Smith" in The Claws of Axos, despite the presence of a nosy civil servant
trying to get information from The Doctor's UNIT file.

 | CHINN: All personnel must be properly screened and scrupulously filed. As an
 | elementary security precaution, I must insist upon a file for this Doctor
 | whatsisname.
 | BRIGADIER: I'm sorry, Mr Chinn. I am personally responsible for the Doctor.
 | CHINN: Typical, absolutely typical. That's the kind of high-handed attitude
 | one's come to expect from the UN recently. Now, Brigadier, what about this
 | Doctor? I gather he's not a British subject.

9. Name a story which features at least one Dalek (other than in clips from
other stories) but which does not include the word "Dalek" or "Daleks" in
its title, or in the titles of any of its episodes.

8 The Five Doctors
5 The War Games
5 The Waters of Mars
4 Frontier in Space
2 Mission to the Unknown
1 Army of Ghosts / Doomsday
1 Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways
1 The Chase
1 The Stolen Earth / Journey's End
Wrong
4 The Space Museum
1 The Mind of Evil (clip from Dalek Invasion of Earth)

And finally, another question with a pretty limited - and pretty obviously
limited - set of right answers. Whereas I normally don't care how you refer
to stories, if (as here) I ask a question about titles of stories, you have
to use the versions I give on my web page (this is also true of question 0
of course).

So, I don't care if you please to call Serial B "The Mutants" or "The Dead
Planet", as far as I'm concerned, it's "The Daleks" and a wrong answer. The
Chase on the other hand is fine, with no mention of Daleks anywhere in its
episode titles. Mission to the Unknown, which I treat as a story in its own
right, is also blessed with the physical presence of malevolent pepperpots
despite not naming them in its title. From here on, we have to wait until
Frontier in Space to get a proper Dalek story without "Dalek" in its title,
and then we move on to the modern era. Bad/Parting, Army/Doomsday and
Stolen/Journey all feature scads of Daleks, but weirdly these were only
given once each.

Your other source of answers was "guest appearances", so tick off The Five
Doctors, The Waters of Mars and The War Games - all very popular choices -
but take care you don't try and include The Mind of Evil, whose Dalek is
recycled from The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Four people opted for The Space
Museum, but while Wikipedia includes this under Dalek "minor appearances",
having viewed the episode I am less convinced. It seems to me that this
story only presents a Dalek casing which is no more a Dalek than a suit of
armour is a knight of the round table. I can't see anything in the question
to help these four entrants, so it's a WR for all of you, I'm afraid.

On the other hand, I think I would have smiled on anyone who had a go with
The TV Movie since although no Dalek is visible, they are mentioned and
clearly heard on the soundtrack, which I think qualifies as "featuring", but
apparently no-one wanted to risk it. I believe this is the only right answer
not mentioned.

That wraps up DWRE17. Thanks again to everyone who entered. I am around for
a few more days if I have made any stupid mistakes or need to make any
rulings. DWRE18 will follow early in the new year, but unless participation
levels perk back up at least a bit, I shall probably retire the contests at
that point. No sense in outstaying my welcome.

Cheers

Tom

---

As several entrants pointed out, there are live Daleks at the end of The 
Space Museum episode 4 as well as the casing in episode 1. This make The
Space Museum a correct answer. There were also a couple of other scoring
snafus. The revised scoresheet looks like this - no changes in the top echelons. 
 
RANK     SCORE    ENTRANT             Q0 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9 
 
 1          48    froo                 1  3  2  1  1  1  2  2  2  1  
 2         288    Ben Goudie           1  4  3  2  1  3  2  1  1  2  
 3         512    Nightsky             1  2  2  2  4  2  2  2  2  1  
 4         960    Mr Harry             1  2  3  2  1  1  2  4  2  5  
 5       1,120    DAL to LEKS          1  1 WR  1  5  1  2  2  2  2  
 6       3,000    Simon Kinnear        1  4  5  2  1  1  1  3  5  5  
 7       3,072    HolmesBaker          2  4  2  2  2  6  1  2  1  4  
 8       3,888    David Ainsworth      1  9  3  2  3  2  2  1  6  1  
 9       3,920    trstr                2  4  7  7  2  1  1  1  1  5  
10       6,720    Old Type 40          1  2  7  6  1  1  2  2  5  4  
11       8,064    Fortmap              1  4  3  7  1  1  1 WR WR  1  
12       9,072    Lord of Thyme        1 WR  2  7  1  1  1  3  3  4  
13      11,520    Ben Brown            2 WR  2  2  1  2  2  4  1  5  
14      14,400    Stanmore             2  9  5  2  5  2  2  1  1  4  
 =      14,400    James Munro         WR  2  1  2 WR  6  1  2  1  5  
16      18,432    Jonathan Morris      2  2  4  6  1  2  3  2  2  8  
17      27,648    magicbaboon          1  3  4  6  1  1 WR  2  4  8  
18      28,800    Mr Saxon             1  4  5  1  4 WR  1  1  6  5  
19      40,320    Regenerator          1 WR  2  7  2  2  1  2  5  4  
20      45,360    Lightrock            1 WR  7  1  2  3  1  2  6  5  
21      46,080    Trevor Gensch        1  2  2  2  5 WR  1  3  4  8  
22      48,384    Eye of Horus         2  1  7  6  2  3  1  3  2 WR  
23      61,440    Ed Rackstraw         2  4  3  2  2  2  2  4  5  8  
24      68,040    Bazza                1  9  1  7  5  6  3  1  3  4  
25      70,560    Wilf                 1  3  7 WR  1  2  1  3  5  8  
26      77,760    Binro_The_Heretic    2  9  2  2  2  2  3  3  6  5  
27      82,944    Joe Henning          2 WR  4  1  3  6  2  1  2  8  
28      94,080    DoctorBrownCoat      2  4  7  7  5  2  1  3  2  4  
29     103,680    Aquatics64           1  9  4  6  4  1  1  4  6  5  
30     181,440    delijoe79            3  9  7  2  2  2  2  3  4  5  
31     272,160    Steven Allan         1  9  5  7  3  6  1  2  3  8  
32     311,040    Barnaby Salton       3  9  5  6  1  2  2  2  6  8  
33     373,248    hcd199               3  9  3  2  4  6  2  3  4  4 

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