The Talons of Weng-Chiang

Deep in the darkest depths of Victorian London, the Doctor (Tom Baker) and Leela confront a series of bizarre and horrible mysteries in this feature-length adventure: A cabbie is viciously slain by agents of a secret Chinese cult; a young woman disappears quietly and suddenly; and the sewers are infested by giant, deadly abominations.  Helped only by a local pathologist and the cowardly Henry Jago, the Doctor finds himself battling for his life against the hideously deformed Magnus Greel, who is pretending to be the ancient Chinese god, Weng-Chiang.  But Greel is not the only menace: The Doctor must also contend with the illusionist Li H’sien Chang and a murderous dwarf called Mr. Sin before Leela falls victim to THE TALONS OF WENG-CHIANG.

• This is becoming a bit cliched, but "Talons of Weng-Chiang" is another example of classic Doctor Who.  However, the BBC did receive a number of complaints over the show's portrayal of the Chinese.

• Christopher Benjamin (playing the memorable character of Henry Gordon Jago) had appeared once before on Doctor Who in the Pertwee classic "Inferno."

• A spinoff series was briefly considered for the characters of Henry Gordon Jago and Professor Lightfoot.  Ultimately the idea was abandoned.

• This is the final story for producer Philip Hinchcliffe.  The conflict was over the amount of violence in the program.  BBC execs wanted it toned down with more humor brought out, but Hinchcliffe disagreed.  Whether the departure was a mutual agreement or a bit more forced is unknown.

• **Omnibus Format**  Unfortunately, this story was originally released in an edited "movie" (or Omnibus) format.  This means that individual episodes have been cut and pasted together into one viewing.  The BBC released Doctor Who videos like this until the early 90's.  Since then they have gone back and issued "re-releases" of virtually all of their omnibus versions.   Unfortunately, the U.S. (i.e. CBS/Fox at first, and then later Warner Home Video) hasn't been eager to follow suite, as they have only done two re-releases "The Brain of Morbius" back in 1997 and  "Terror of the Zygons" in 2000.  Additionally, many stories first released in the late 80's and early 90's are seeing re-release on DVD.  Unedited titles such as "Spearhead from Space," "The Ark in Space" and "Robots of Death" are all available now in their unedited formats.

• The U.K. released "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" in its unedited episodic format on DVD in April 2003.

• There is an unedited version available on DVD.