will be killed, leaving Grendel free to marry her and become King of Tara. The Doctor has K9 assist him to gain access to the castle by means of the moat and tunnels. The Doctor reaches the throne room just in time to stop Reynart's coerced marriage to Romana. He then engages the Count in a deadly duel with electro-swords, eventually defeating him and forcing him to flee. Romana has meanwhile freed Strella who is finally reunited with Reynart. Having retrieved the fourth segment of the Key to Time, the Doctor, Romana and K9 depart. Production Mary Tamm designed Romana's distinctive purple outfit after the originally planned costume proved unsuitable. Although Tamm was a skilled horse-rider, she refused to do the horse-riding sequence herself because she could not wear a helmet and felt that the potential of an accident was too great. Location work was performed at Leeds Castle, Kent. In the opening credits, the episode number appears before the writer's name, contrary to the order in most Doctor Who stories. Cast notes Mary Tamm plays four roles in this story: Romana, Princess Strella and their android doubles. Peter Jeffrey previously played the colony pilot in The Macra Terror (1967). Declan Mulholland previously played Clark in The Sea Devils (1972). This is Cyril Shaps's fourth and final appearance in Doctor Who, the others being The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967), The Ambassadors of Death (1970) and Planet of the Spiders (1974). It is his only appearance in which his character is not killed. Simon Lack had previously appeared as Professor Kettering in The Mind of Evil (1971). Broadcast and reception The story was repeated on four consecutive Thursdays on BBC1 from 9–30 August 1979, achieving viewing figures of 6.2, 10.4, 10.4 and 9.6 million, respectively. The rise in figures is attributable to the ITV strike, which would continue into the seventeenth season of Doctor Who. In their book The Discontinuity Guide (1995), Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping described The Androids of Tara as "Wonderful, Doctor Who as heroic romance, with plenty of swashbuckling, wit and colour." They particularly praised the Doctor's duel at the end and the small stakes. On the other hand, David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker in The Television Companion (1998) felt that the story relied on The Prisoner of Zenda, which made it "rather less engaging than the other stories of the season,