Tom Baker returns in Shada but is this lost Doctor Who still a plodder?
Even Douglas Adams deemed it mediocre, but four decades after it was cancelled is this Tom Baker season finale getting the "complete" version it deserves?
First published in 2017 Shada – a lost classic? I don’t think so. What!? A Doctor Who story written by Douglas Adams. Starring Tom Baker as the fourth Doctor at the height of his powers. Co-starring Lalla Ward as Time Lady companion Romana. Alongside adorable robot-dog K•9. A six-part season finale set in the hallowed halls of Cambridge and outer space, which would have been the first full story aired in the 1980s…? Only it wasn’t to be. A calamity occurred in late 1979 that even the Time Lord couldn’t overcome. Industrial action at the BBC halted Shada halfway into production. All the location filming was in the can, as well as one of three studio sessions at BBC Television Centre. But nothing more would be shot. As the news leaked out at the time, I wasn’t exactly devastated. This era of Doctor Who did not thrill me. Recently I found one of my earliest reviews, where, with great hauteur even at the age of 15, I wrote off Season 17 as “shoddy”. Cash-strapped, cheap-looking, a triumph of frivolity over compelling drama, the programme was buckling under the weight of Douglas Adams’s and Tom Baker’s propensity for silliness. (I’m one of the few who does not love City of Death from earlier that season.) Shada was shelled out in a “last-minute panic” by Adams (above), then also toiling as Doctor Who’s script editor. The cast have always raved about the project, but I suspect Adams’s reputation might have been tarnished had Shada gone out. He admitted in Doctor Who Magazine: “I didn’t particularly like it. It was rather thin – at most a mediocre four-parter stretched over six parts. So when it was cancelled halfway through production, I thought, ‘Phew!’ – because it wasn’t very good, and now at least I’m spared anybody seeing it.” He wasn’t being modest. Douglas Adams, who died shockingly young at 49 in 2001, was given to frankness and had a keen critical eye. There are pockets of magic to enjoy, but in truth Shada is a sprawling but far-from-epic serial. Skagra, one of Who’s campest baddies, in a floaty silver cape and floppy white hat, flounces around Cambridge with a brain-draining sphere in his handbag. The Doctor and Romana visit doddery Professor Chronotis, a Time Lord who’s had rooms at St Cedd’s College for many decades. (A milieu adapted by Steven Moffat for Peter Capaldi’s last series.) The humour (repetitive blather about tea and sugar) falls flat. The “action” is captured in various states of lethargy by Pennant Roberts, one of that period’s many pedestrian directors. Shada… I have never mourned its loss. But that’s me. Most Doctor Who fans are nothing if not completists. They want their Shada! Numerous attempts have been made to finish Shada in the 37 years since its cancellation. As early as 1980, incoming producer John Nathan-Turner suggested a remount for inclusion in Season 18. Tom Baker and Lalla Ward were still on contract and in charge of the Tardis. This was the optimum time but even JN-T didn’t succeed. Then the aficionados stepped in to have a bash. In the early 80s I attended a DWAS convention where they screened an edition of Shada. It was the first time most of us had seen the surviving footage. The lengthy missing tracts were replaced with a scrolling, typed narrative. Top marks for effort but it was tragically soporific. In 1992, Nathan-Turner had another stab at it, this time for a BBC Video release. He enlisted a grey but jovial Tom Baker (below) to act as storyteller and sprinkle his charisma over the missing passages. Shada still couldn’t quite spring to life. In 2003, the fan producers at Big Finish transformed Shada into an audio play, revised – efficiently but bizarrely – for Paul McGann’s Doctor and Lalla Ward’s Romana. It was also available as a rudimentary animation on the BBC website (below). Then about six years ago, überfan Ian Levine spent a fortune making his own Shada as a passion project. He is the Completist’s Completist. He cut the 1979 footage together with impressive new animation (below), and rehired almost all the surviving cast to voice their parts, including again Lalla Ward. Tom Baker wasn’t involved so a decent soundy-likey was found to voice the fourth Doctor. It was the most proficient version up to that point. But to Levine’s intense chagrin and owing to what sounds like a clash of personalities, he couldn’t persuade BBC Worldwide to release it as an official product. I have given all these versions a try across the decades. Valiant efforts all. And all have made me nod off. Now, in 2017, BBC Worldwide have produced yet another version – harnessing the talented team who last year animated The Power of the Daleks (Patrick Troughton’s debut story as the second Doctor). And perhaps this is the boldest edition so far. The surviving film and video from 1979 have been digitally remastered. Brand-new model work and visual effects have been shot, in keeping with the look of the period. Mark Ayres has recorded a delightful new score with five musicians, honouring the music that Dudley Simpson was writing for the series in the late 70s. I’m not big on animation – it’s a turn-off – but they seem to have done a reasonable job of plugging the gaps. I can’t say the style of animation is appreciably better than Ian Levine’s version. The likenesses of the principals were certainly sharper in his Shada. But that version sadly wasn’t widely available. Crucially, fans can now have their “complete” viewing experience with the voices of both original stars of the show. Lalla Ward is reprising her role for the fourth time. She must know her dialogue by heart, having first learnt it several regenerations ago. (She has since married and divorced Tom Baker; married and become “amicably separated” from Richard Dawkins.) The USP is that Worldwide have stumped up the fee for Baker to reprise his role. Now 83, he’s still engaging, that fruity timbre barely diminished by the passage of time. And, perhaps most thrilling for fans, there’s a wonderful final scene with the ancient Baker back in his 1979 togs and Tardis. For all this, much appreciated effort, I still find Shada rather plodding. For my money, if you really want to immerse yourself in Shada and enjoy its leisurely pace, track down the BBC Books novel from 2012, adapted by new series writer Gareth Roberts. Revel in his wordplay in homage to Douglas Adams and construct the pictures in your own mind. * This article was originally published on 24 November 2017 Doctor Who: Shada is available as a digital download in the UK and on DVD and Blu-Ray
In Tom Baker's sombre final story, the Doctor battles the Master to save the universe from collapse... And The Five Faces of Doctor Who
Season 18 – Story 115 "It's the end - but the moment has been prepared for" - the Doctor Storyline The Doctor decides to fine-tune the Tardis but, arriving on Earth to measure a real police box, he's unaware when an Australian air stewardess, Tegan, steps aboard, and that the Master's Tardis has also materialised on the same spot. Events move to Logopolis, a planet of mathematicians whose muttered computations are holding the collapse of the universe at bay. Nyssa arrives from Traken seeking her father, whose body the Master has absorbed. His meddling destroys Logopolis and allows entropy to erase swathes of the cosmos. The rival Time Lords must join forces to halt the damage, but back on Earth the Master betrays the Doctor, sending him plunging to his death from a radio telescope. Watched over by Adric, Nyssa and Tegan, the Doctor regenerates… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 28 February 1981 Part 2 - Saturday 7 March 1981 Part 3 - Saturday 14 March 1981 Part 4 - Saturday 21 March 1981 Production Location filming: December 1980 in London at 43 Ursula Street, Battersea; Albert Bridge and Cadogan Pier, Chelsea. BBC Receiving Station, Sonning Common, Berks. The A413 layby, nr Denham, Bucks Studio recording: January 1981 in TC3 and TC6 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Adric - Matthew Waterhouse Tegan Jovanka - Janet Fielding Nyssa - Sarah Sutton The Monitor - John Fraser The Master - Anthony Ainley Aunt Vanessa - Dolore Whiteman Detective Inspector - Tom Georgeson Security guard - Christopher Hurst Doctor Who - Peter Davison Crew Writer/script editor - Christopher H Bidmead Designer - Malcolm Thornton Incidental music - Paddy Kingsland Executive producer - Barry Letts Producer - John Nathan-Turner Director - Peter Grimwade RT review by Patrick Mulkern Even giants must fall. Over an unprecedented seven-year run - and no matter what you made of him - there's no denying that Tom Baker's Doctor had become a towering icon of British television. During that seemingly endless span, I'd graduated from resenting this eccentric loon for usurping my beloved Jon Pertwee, to realising he was rather wonderful, to feeling he'd outstayed his welcome, to surprising myself by enjoying his final season and having a lump in my throat at his passing. Who could fail to be moved as this mighty Time Lord - all teeth, curls and scarf - lies supine and expiring at the foot of a radio telescope? His life flashes before our eyes: visions of past friends calling one word, "Doctor!" Then he reaches out to the mysterious Watcher (an inchoate manifestation of his future self) and begins to regenerate… Flash back to 28 February 1981. I remember sitting in a packed, sweaty hall in Morden, south London, at one of my few Doctor Who conventions. The twin highlights that day were the hugely anticipated (and well-received) screening of Logopolis part one on BBC1, and a star turn by witty raconteur Dennis Spooner. As Who script editor in 1965, he'd given the Doctor (William Hartnell) his first proper injection of humour, and it strikes me now how different creative forces have shaped the Time Lord's character over the decades. Spooner also established Patrick Troughton's Doctor's eccentricities. Producer Barry Letts's Buddhist ideals permeated Jon Pertwee's Doctor. Tom Baker was always very much his own Time Lord, though writer Robert Holmes made him Holmesian (in two senses). By 1979, he'd found a kindred wit in Douglas Adams. But Baker's final producer, John Nathan-Turner (later to turn the Doctor into a garish ringmaster, much like himself) was still, in 1981, a control freak. He reined in his star's excesses, and Baker himself confessed he'd become "impossible" to work with. In his hilarious 1997 autobiography, Who on Earth is Tom Baker? he says: "After seven years I had come to think of it as my programme. How silly I was… It was time to go." Here in Logopolis, in his dying days under writer/script editor Christopher Bidmead, the fourth Doctor suddenly becomes a sober physicist, surrounded by juveniles yet a loner, verging on monastic. It sits well with Baker who began his adult life as a monk; here he doesn't look at all out of place contemplating entropy while pacing the hitherto-unseen Tardis cloister room. Logopolis acknowledges the past. It begins with a bobby on the beat and a police box mystery as had the very first episode in 1963. The Tardis within a Tardis recalls The Time Monster (1972). The Master's obsession with shrinking people, a denouement atop a radio telescope and dodgy CSO take us back to the Time Lords' first on-screen battle in Terror of the Autons ten years earlier. Despite all this, Logopolis gallops along and feels refreshingly modern - 1980s modern. It's pacily directed by Peter Grimwade with only one or two scenes falling flat. Not enough time is given to Nyssa and Tegan's grief over the Master having killed their loved ones. Tegan is simply shoved out of shot to sob for her Auntie Vanessa. At least Nyssa gets one profoundly moving moment when she sees entropy rapidly erasing the universe and realises, "I can't see Traken… The Master killed my stepmother, and then my father, and now the world that I grew up in, blotted out for ever." Gulp! Janet Fielding's Tegan immediately shows more promise than either Adric or Nyssa. The series needs to be grounded by companions from contemporary Earth and Tegan is the first since Sarah Jane Smith left in 1976, and the first from outside Britain. Although shrill and underused towards the end, Tegan hits you between the eyes as an independent, liberated woman: well, she spends most of her first episode berating men and changing a tyre. With hindsight it's obvious that matching Anthony Ainley's Master so closely to Roger Delgado's was a mistake. Keeping him heard (sniggering like Muttley) but unseen for two episodes engenders more tedium than tension. His panto penguin suit does him no favours and his wicked intentions are also less than clear. At least this Master is approaching a worthy foe to see off the fourth Doctor. Tom Baker is terrific throughout - completely selling grave moments such as "I've just dipped into the future. We must be prepared for the worst," and "This is something far too serious… a chain of circumstances that fragments the law that holds the universe together." He's brooding, sparky and never for a second looks ready to give up. I remember, a few years ago, cycling through London's Fitzrovia and spying this tubby, white-haired, no longer curly-haired giant, dressed in a tangerine suit and pink shirt - the straightest embodiment of Oscar Wilde imaginable. It was a 70-something yet timeless Tom Baker standing on the kerbside, impressing a young friend with his badinage. Suddenly I realised, "Ah, the fourth Doctor is still with us." And, somehow, he always will be. - - - Radio Times archive The Five Faces of Doctor Who The winter of 1981 was one of the most exciting times for British Doctor Who fans. If you lived in the USA, Australia and other countries, the chances are you could have watched umpteen repeats of episodes featuring the first four Doctors. Repeats were a very rare event for fans in the UK, where we'd only get one Christmas "complete adventure" or summer repeats of the producer's choice of that year's best story. After that, it seemed they were gone for ever, only to be relived in the pages of Target novels. Producer John Nathan-Turner thrilled fans with this five-week season, bridging Tom Baker and Peter Davison's Doctors. He could only choose from existing four-parters. So Hartnell was represented by his first serial, An Unearthly Child. Troughton by The Krotons, not a great serial but this was long before Tomb of the Cybermen had been repatriated. Carnival of Monsters represented Pertwee. The Three Doctors, then the only multi-Doctor story, was a vital inclusion. And Logopolis had the changeover from Baker to Davison. Here's how we covered the season in RT. [Available on BBC DVD]
The Master is resurrected and Nyssa is introduced in a fairy-tale piece that has withered over time
Season 18 – Story 114 "You still do not recognise me, Doctor, but soon you will know me. Soon!" - Melkur Storyline The Traken Union is renowned for universal harmony but the ancient Keeper who oversees this planetary empire is nearing his time of dissolution. Sensing the threat of "all-pervading evil", he appears in the Tardis and begs the Doctor and Adric to help his people. On Traken, they befriend Tremas, nominated as the next Keeper, and his daughter Nyssa. Kassia, Tremas's new wife, is under the influence of Melkur, a statuesque figure reanimating in the nearby grove. It intends to seize control of the Source, the bioelectronic energy behind Traken. Melkur is in fact a Tardis belonging to the Master, who is still in emaciated form. His plan is thwarted, but he absorbs Tremas's body to effect the regeneration he craves… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 31 January 1981 Part 2 - Saturday 7 February 1981 Part 3 - Saturday 14 February 1981 Part 4 - Saturday 21 February 1981 Production Studio recording: November/December 1980 in TC6, November 1980 in TC8 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Adric - Matthew Waterhouse Nyssa - Sarah Sutton Tremas - Anthony Ainley Kassia - Sheila Ruskin The Keeper - Denis Carey Seron - John Woodnutt Katura - Margot van der Burgh Luvic - Robin Soans Neman - Roland Oliver Voice of Melkur/The Master - Geoffrey Beevers Foster - Liam Prendergast Crew Writer - Johnny Byrne Designer - Tony Burrough Incidental music - Roger Limb Script editor - Christopher H Bidmead Executive producer - Barry Letts Producer - John Nathan-Turner Director - John Black RT Review by Patrick Mulkern Rediscovering The Keeper of Traken after so many years is rather like rereading a fairy tale that bewitched you as a child - only to realise that the storytelling is quite thin and that the magic has evaporated entirely. Watching it again, I almost empathised with the Melkur, likened by the Keeper to "a fly caught in honey", waiting out eternity to "calcify and pass harmlessly into the soil". Why does it fail so dismally to engage now? In 1981, I was enthralled by the mythical setting, the Golem-like Melkur in the Grove, the plot twists, the drip-feed of clues that would identity the bad guy - the blackened hand; the Tardis-like hum; the dead giveaway "Obey without question!" Of course, that tension cannot be recaptured, nor can the sense of foreboding as we approached the end of days for Tom Baker's Doctor. The production values remain impressive for that period - art nouveau-influenced sets, beautiful costumes (no one wears clothes in Doctor Who any more), luxuriant wigs (almost everyone on Traken sports one). The non-starry cast plays each scene with gravity and poise. The dialogue is strong, thoughtful, even poetic - Tremas: "If all the stars were silver and the sky a giant purse in my fist, I couldn't be happier than I am tonight." I still enjoy the concept of the wizened, benign Keeper, who can park his throne in the Tardis, but whose omnipotence is ebbing. And it's the first time we've been anywhere like Traken - "a whole empire held together by people just being terribly nice to each other". Sounds like facebook. As the Doctor explains, "They say the atmosphere there was so full of goodness that evil just shrivelled up and died." So far, so fanciful. Maybe the pacing and blocking are a tad pedestrian, the action too confined, but what most bothers me now is how The Keeper of Traken unfolds like an exercise in stoicism. Its characters steadfastly avoid emotion, and in so doing sidestep the really interesting "human" drama that should form the very heart of the story - the fate of the Keepers. The sweet old Keeper dies off-screen with a few flames blowing out. Keeper-in-waiting Tremas seems unperturbed by the prospect of sitting out millennia as a palsied codger with a distended cranium. He shows no despair at leaving Kassia and or Nyssa and, later, is unmoved when his new wife dematerialises in agony. It's odd because elsewhere Anthony Ainley brings an avuncular warmth to Tremas. Kassia, at least, hopes to save Tremas from his Keepership; it's one reason she collaborates with Melkur. Otherwise her motivation is unclear. She's such an impetuous, woolly nit, it's a wonder Tremas ever became enamoured of her and implausible anyone ever thought she had the wherewithal or "purity of spirit" to become a Consul - one of the five most exalted Trakens. Another underbaked character is Nyssa. She looks angelic in her maroon-purple, pixie-princess get-up, but the character is so dreary on the page and, played by graduating child actress Sarah Sutton, shows all the life signs of a landed mullet. It's hard to see how anyone considered Nyssa "companion material". Check out her introduction to the wonders of the Tardis by Adric, which has to be one of the most stultifying ever. Only John Nathan-Turner could have saddled Tom Baker with Matthew Waterhouse and thought it might work. Looking as etiolated as a willow in autumn, Baker is bereft without a proper female companion to offset his unsavoury demeanour. Think back to an earlier male pairing, the second Doctor and Jamie, and there's none of their easy, tactile rapport. It feels like a triumph of performance over indignation when, at the end, the Doctor turns to Adric and manages a beaming smile. Maybe, for a moment, he does see some value in this dweeb in search of a pyjama party. It was also JN-T's decision to resurrect the Master, partly to up the endgame for the fourth Doctor. This Master - though you still wouldn't want to share a bathroom with him - looks far healthier than he did in 1977. The final image of The Deadly Assassin showed the putrescent ghoul revitalising but, in 1980, JN-T's team had no such notion. More badly burned than cadaverous, their Master forgoes the previous rigid mask merely to facilitate Geoffrey Beevers' outré performance. Thus we lose the 1977 Master's ping-pong-ball eyes and gain "teeth" painted onto Beevers' lips. "With my new powers, anything is possible!" So it would seem. In the final moments, recharged with the power of the Source, the Master seizes Tremas from behind and "occupies" him. "So, a new body... at last!" (Note, the Master's clothes change too, as in the Hartnell/Troughton transformation.) I recall that in February 1981 I gaped in awe as suddenly we were presented with a salivating glimpse of a fully renewed Master in the mould of Roger Delgado. But again that coup de théâtre cannot be relived. Moreover the thrill has been entirely eclipsed and soured by memories of how mishandled Anthony Ainley's Master would be throughout the remainder of the 1980s. - - - Radio Times archive John Craven's Back Page introduced the new companion Nyssa. [Available on BBC DVD]
This is "hardcore, head-scratching, literary sci-fi" featuring time-sensitive Tharils and a farewell to Romana and K•9
Season 18 – Story 113 "There's nothing beyond those mirrors for people like us, except the reflection of what's here. Only the Tharils can enter your universe that way and that's a talent they're born with. The talent that you hunt them for" - the Doctor Storyline The Tardis arrives in a white void with zero co-ordinates - could this be the boundary between E-Space and N-Space? Nearby stands an ancient gateway, leading to a banqueting hall, as well as a marooned spaceship, captained by the cruel Rorvik. The vessel is piloted by Biroc, a time-sensitive Tharil, who aims to free the rest of his race enslaved on board. On the other side of a mirror in the hall, the Doctor learns the history of the leonine Tharils and resolves to liberate them. In trying to escape the void, Rorvik succeeds only in destroying the ship and freeing his cargo. The Doctor heads off to N-Space with Adric, while Romana and K•9 return to E-Space to assist the Tharils. First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 3 January 1981 Part 2 - Saturday 10 January 1981 Part 3 - Saturday 17 January 1981 Part 4 - Saturday 24 January 1981 Production Black-and-white photography: September 1980 at Powis Castle, Powys Studio recording: September 1980 in TC6, October 1980 in TC1 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Romana - Lalla Ward Voice of K•9 - John Leeson Adric - Matthew Waterhouse Rorvik - Clifford Rose Packard - Kenneth Cope Lane - David Kincaid Aldo - Freddie Earlle Royce - Harry Waters Biroc - David Weston Sagan - Vincent Pickering Lazlo - Jeremy Gittins Gundan - Robert Vowles Crew Writer - Steve Gallagher Designer - Graeme Story Incidental music - Peter Howell Script editor - Christopher H Bidmead Executive producer - Barry Letts Producer - John Nathan-Turner Director - Paul Joyce RT Review by Mark Braxton For a science-fiction series, Doctor Who doesn't actually "do" sci-fi all that often - not hardcore, head-scratching, literary sci-fi. When it does, it seems to bemuse as many fans as it amuses… That's certainly the case with Warriors' Gate, which has an ill-deserved reputation for being wilfully cryptic and abstruse. And on the face of it, yes, it is a perplexing potpourri, treading in the footsteps of other outlandish entertainments such as Sapphire and Steel and The Prisoner. But Steve Gallagher, already an established genre writer for radio in the early 80s, attempted something different, and the story stands out to this day for doing just that. Watched carefully, this four-parter is actually perfectly followable and has sound logical integrity. Anyway, there's something rather fun about not knowing what's going on, even into a story's latter stages. Warriors' Gate is a steam-powered ideas factory, with its temporal schisms and its reflections on life and death, freedom and captivity, sin and redemption. Its visual influences are a firecracker blend of many things, including Belle et la Bête and Orphée - a Molotov Cocteau, if you will. And the static, black-and-white world behind the mirror has a brave and beautiful innovation, even if the banqueting-hall scenes now look as dated as a Visage video. But Gallagher was also impressed by the work of American authors Joe Haldeman and Alfred Bester, not to mention Lewis Carroll. "It's like talking to a Cheshire cat," says the Doctor of our leonine lead. But this is a very warped wonderland, on a par with season six's The Mind Robber, with whom Warriors' Gate shares a minimalist aesthetic and an intellectual revelry. The story certainly seems to have left a mark on Steven Moffat, and not just with its celebration of complexity. His 2011 adventure Day of the Moon features dwarf-star alloy, the adamantine substance that effectively imprisons the Tharils. Its super-density is a little difficult to believe, when we see the Doctor pocketing a lump, and a ship made of the stuff is turned into a skeleton by a few fireworks. But we'll press on… The Tharils are not just the mane attraction of the story, thanks to Pauline Cox's wonderful make-up; they're a believably flawed and likeable species, unlike most of the humanoids. Clifford Rose, instantly recognisable to contemporary audiences as über-Nazi Kessler in The Secret Army, is very one-note as grumpy old sod Rorvik, while Kenneth Cope, also a familiar face as the ghost in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), provides perky comedy as Packard, but isn't given enough to do. It's no surprise to learn of Warriors' Gate's difficult gestation. Script editor Christopher H Bidmead believed "the drama of producing it was so much greater than the drama that actually hit the screen", and Gallagher himself lamented some of the questionable science introduced by the rewrite. It's clear the production staff were fed up to the back teeth with K•9 after three years of whining and whirring. He gets booted by Rorvik and hurled by Packard. I suspect the little gibbering noise he makes by way of an "ouch" is meant to be cute, but it's almost sick-makingly irritating. The story is a poor way to see off the Doctor's pooch and protector, but at least he's put to good use, in the service of another companion… Despite featuring one of the most majestic puns in a departure scene - if you don't check it for sense ("You were the noblest Romana of them all") - Lalla Ward's exit is one of the least emotional in the show's history. No sooner has the Doctor uttered his Shakespearean tribute than Romana is vanishing into the void. She didn't even seem to hear him. It's unlikely that such glib, "bye then" offhandedness will ever be tolerated in today's Doctor Who. Nevertheless, this "Warriors of the deep" is an elaborate experiment with striking results. Fitting snugly into the E-Space triptych, its daring existentialism takes Who into another realm. Where are we going, it asks. And as Romana says, "That's an interesting philosophical question". One that Steve Gallagher can be justly proud of addressing in such an enchanting way. - - - Radio Times archive [Available on BBC DVD]
Ancient vampires surface in a supremely atmospheric production of Terrance Dicks's inventive scripts...
Season 18 – Story 112 "We shall leave this miserable space trap for the real universe. Rich, fat worlds teeming with life. We shall suck their life blood until they are empty husks" - Aukon Storyline The Tardis lands on a planet in E-space where villagers are in thrall to three Lords who rule from a Tower. The Lords, who perform regular "Selections" from among the people, are members of an ancient Earth mission and the Tower is their Arrow-class scout ship. They were turned into vampires long ago to serve the last of the Great Vampires, a race once fought by the Time Lords. The Doctor and K•9 must rescue the kidnapped Romana and Tardis-stowaway Adric, and prevent the resurrection of the Vampire, who stirs beneath the Tower… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 22 November 1980 Part 2 - Saturday 29 November 1980 Part 3 - Saturday 6 December 1980 Part 4 - Saturday 13 December 1980 Production Location filming: April/May 1980 at Burnham Beeches, Bucks Filming: May 1980 at Ealing Studios water tank Studio recording: May 1980 at TC3 and TC6 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Romana - Lalla Ward Voice of K•9 - John Leeson Adric - Matthew Waterhouse Aukon - Emrys James Camilla - Rachel Davies Zargo - William Lindsay Ivo - Clinton Greyn Marta - Rhoda Lewis Tarak - Thane Bettany Habris - Iain Rattray Kalmar - Arthur Hewlett Veros - Stacy Davies Karl - Dean Allen Roga - Stuart Fell Zoldaz - Stuart Blake Crew Writer - Terrance Dicks Designer - Christine Ruscoe Incidental music - Paddy Kingsland Script editor - Christopher H Bidmead Executive producer - Barry Letts Producer - John Nathan-Turner Director - Peter Moffatt RT Review by Mark Braxton I never much cared for vampires as a youngster. I thought they were rather silly, to be honest. I remember going crazy for a series of glow-in-the-dark monster model kits by Aurora: Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll, The Hunchback of Notre Dame… they all took pride of place on my bookshelf. But the Dracula figure didn't. Coupled with the nascent cynicism of my late teens - I was "at the age of not believing", as Angela Lansbury once put it - State of Decay wasn't exactly bursting with elements designed to appeal to me. And yet Terrance Dicks's penultimate script for Doctor Who positively gushes with invention and wit. In fact, it's among his cleverest, and gives an already striking season 18 a tremendous shot in the arm. It's a throwback to the Hinchcliffe/Holmes golden age, played with a totally straight bat and all the better for it. And it boasts slightly smug references that actually work: the Brothers Grim and their consonant shift, a variation on the St Crispin's Day speech in Henry V etc. The story's origins lie in 1977, when the Dicks story The Witch Lords was set to kick off season 15 - but the timing couldn't have been worse. The BBC's Count Dracula serial was in the offing, and The Witch Lords was shelved in favour of Horror of Fang Rock. State of Decay is a rejigged version of that earlier tale, and although Dicks and script editor Christopher H Bidmead tussled over the story's tone, Dicks emerged with his story largely unchanged. Bidmead, however, gets the credit for turning the spaceship into a stake to kill the Great Vampire. What a eureka moment that must have been. It's a world of ritual and ceremony, gorgeously designed (Christine Ruscoe's blood-red state room is a triumph) and earnestly played. The vampiric triumvirate are all wonderfully cast. Emrys James brings unwavering gravitas to Aukon - the kind of role you can imagine Aubrey Morris having a field day with - and as the rather forward Camilla, Rachel Davies puts me in mind of Fenella Fielding in Carry On Screaming! I kept wanting her to say, "Do you mind if I smoke?" By comparison, the villagers are all a little undernourished. You might say they are Wasting away… if anyone knew what the Wasting was. So the subplot involving Ivo's revenge against Habris needs fleshing out, and Marta's adoption of Adric in place of her own son doesn't engage as it should. I like the peasant scientists, though: Arthur Hewlett is an absolute sweetheart as Kalmar. It's a strong story for the Doctor, with lovely Tardis archive scenes, Rassilon remembrance and Time Lord back story. His memories of the hermit from south Gallifrey reach back to Jon Pertwee's "daisiest daisy" and other classic quiet moments from the show's rich history. It's one of Tom Baker's finest outings, too: there's fire in his eyes as he delivers the lines, as if one old hand who knows what's good for Doctor Who is acknowledging the hard work of another (Dicks). And the reported on-set friction between Baker and Lalla Ward belies their on-screen rapport, which is charming and relaxed. Tensions also abounded between Ward and Matthew Waterhouse, and this appears to feed into the suspicion that crackles between Romana and Adric. I like the scene in which Adric makes light of his self-serving motivations, and his insistence that he was trying to rescue Romana. "But you didn't, did you?" she replies, with a frosty edge to her voice. It's clear that K•9's days are numbered: his ability to blast all-comers in the climactic raid on the Tower gives further ammo to critics of the "convenient-plot-device". The story doesn't change my opinion on vampires. Some effectively chilly location filming at Burnham Beeches notwithstanding, the bats are a bit lame, rendered by stock footage, cut-outs dangled from a string or a tinkling electronic noise. Despite their simmering menace, Aukon, Camilla and Zargo are all threat and no bite, swishing about with some bizarrely stagey movements. And the Great One is a gloved hand. But State of Decay is supremely atmospheric, solid of script and with potent production values. The demise of the blood-sucking trio is a horrific tour-de-force, almost the equal of those rapid-ageing deaths of the Indiana Jones films. The story encapsulates the serious, old-style thrills that would all but fade out as the 80s wore on. Energised, full-blooded and sharp as a pointy canine. - - - Radio Times archive The four billings and a quick update on impending cast changes. [Available on BBC DVD]
An outstanding story with the Doctor and Romana passing into E-Space, meeting Adric and Marshmen on the planet Alzarius
Season 18 – Story 111 "Why can't people be nice to one another, just for a change? I mean, I'm an alien, and you don't want to drag me into a swamp, do you? You do…" - the Doctor Storyline The Tardis passes through a charged vacuum emboitement (CVE), taking the Doctor, Romana and K•9 into E-Space - an "exo-space/time continuum outside our own universe". They materialise on lush Alzarius where the humanoid inhabitants are retreating to the safety of their Starliner, a spacecraft undergoing constant repair. It is the time of Mistfall, when the marshes give rise to supposedly toxic vapour and aggressive reptilian creatures. Assisted by rebellious teenager Adric, the Time Lords must unravel the genetic mystery behind the Marshmen and help complete the Starliner's interminable embarkation… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 25 October 1980 Part 2 - Saturday 1 November 1980 Part 3 - Saturday 8 November 1980 Part 4 - Saturday 15 November 1980 Production Location filming: July 1980 at Black Park, Fulmer, Bucks Studio recording: August 1980 in TC3 and TC6 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Romana - Lalla Ward Voice of K•9 - John Leeson Adric - Matthew Waterhouse Login - George Baker Draith - Leonard Maguire Dexeter - Tony Calvin Nefred - James Bree Garif - Alan Rowe Varsh - Richard Willis Tylos - Bernard Padden Keara - June Page Omril - Andrew Forbes Rysik - Adrian Gibbs Marshman - Barney Lawrence Marshchild - Norman Bacon Crew Writer - Andrew Smith Designer - Janet Budden Incidental music - Paddy Kingsland Script editor - Christopher H Bidmead Executive producer - Barry Letts Producer - John Nathan-Turner Director - Peter Grimwade RT Review by Patrick Mulkern On 24 October 1980, the day before Full Circle began, came the momentous news that Tom Baker would be hanging up his scarf after seven years as the iconic, internationally popular fourth Doctor. Then, halfway through the story's transmission, Peter Davison was announced as his unusually youthful replacement. It was a turbulent period when bulletins about terminated and newly cast Doctors and companions emerged thick and fast from the charged vacuum emboitement at Threshold House - the Doctor Who production office in Shepherd's Bush. And its new incumbent certainly knew how to milk the media and tease the fans. John Nathan-Turner never came out of the closet - as being a Doctor Who fan himself, that is. At least that's my long-held theory. You only have to consider all the moves he made during his tenure: rehiring the "show's" long-gone stars, reheating popular foes, scheduling vintage repeats, overindulging continuity, flirting with and falling out with fandom… Often it paid off; eventually his fan-like decisions drained the series of vitality. Nowadays, producers flash their fan badge with pride. It would turn heads if a 21st-century scriptwriter were not a lifelong devotee of Doctor Who. Heavens, even an actor playing the Doctor can be a fan. But in 1980 it came as no small surprise to see JN-T realising the dreams of two teenage aficionados - elevating Matthew Waterhouse from his post as BBC cuttings clerk to play companion Adric, and engaging Andrew Smith as writer. Incredibly, Smith was only 17 when commissioned and turned 18 during filming. Of course, his scripts needed finessing by Christopher Bidmead, but much of the credit for Full Circle still goes to Smith, a driven, imaginative, fledgling writer who understood what made the programme tick. Yes, he embellishes the dialogue with arcane nods to Gallifrey's binary co-ordinates, Leela and Andred (whom no one but fans will recall), but also provides a plot worth following, a mystery to unravel and characters to care about. There are low-key surprises. Romana, reluctant to return to Gallifrey, is seen sulking in her rather girly Tardis bedroom. Not since 1965 has a companion had a bedroom. The Tardis is commandeered and piloted by teenage rebels. And there's a Big Doctor Who Moment when the Marshmen surface in slo-mo like creatures from the Black Lagoon. In the tradition of other men-in-wetsuit successes (Cybermen, Silurians, Sea Devils…), they're the most effective monsters in ages. Some costume shortcomings may be exposed in the stark Starliner sets, but director Peter Grimwade really has a handle on the misty Black Park lakeside film sequences. The death of Decider Draith - hauled under the marsh with the cry "Tell Dexeter we've come full circle!" - always delivers a chill. The likelihood of spiders evolving into amphibians then humanoids might leave David Attenborough scratching his head, but, hey, this is an alien world with negative coordinates. The locals enjoy "rapid cellular adaptation", so why not? Perhaps less plausible is that for 4,000 generations they've been tweaking their Starliner even though it's ready for take-off, and that the secrets of the "system files" have been assiduously withheld. Smith gives Tom Baker some outstanding Doctorly material, lambasting the leading triumvirate (ironically called Deciders) for their "wilful procrastination of endless procedure" and boiling in fury when they sanction Dexeter's dissection of a Marshchild. "Easy enough to destroy. Have you ever tried creating one?" George Baker, then rather a distinguished name to appear in Doctor Who, is superb as compassionate Decider Login. Otherwise the casting is a tad lacklustre. The rebellious Outlers blend the sort of characterisation and performance guaranteed to make teenager viewers cringe. As their leader Varsh, Richard Willis (familiar from ITV children's serial, The Feathered Serpent) shows most promise but he's culled before curtain down. [Matthew Waterhouse. Photographed by Don Smith at BBC TV Centre in August 1980. Copyright Radio Times Archive] As his surviving little brother Adric… well, Matthew Waterhouse has been much maligned by co-stars for his bumptiousness and by fellow fans for his evident inexperience, but he's actually not too bad in this, his second story into production. He nails most of his lines, even if his stooped gait and stiff gestures betray a lack of drama schooling. Ultimately, though, Waterhouse's minuscule acting CV speaks for itself. There are even more important casting shake-ups ahead. "Evolution goes in quantum leaps, but it doesn't go that fast," observes the Doctor, in a story that encapsulates the new regime's will to honour past glories and build towards an optimistic future. - - - Radio Times archive [Available on BBC DVD]
Tom Baker plays cactus-villain Meglos, while Jacqueline Hill (1960s companion Barbara) returns in a new role
Season 18 – Story 110 "I think what we've got here is a good, old-fashioned doppelganger" - the Doctor Storyline Romana and K•9 accompany the Doctor to Tigella, where Zastor rules a divided population. The planet's main power source, the Dodecahedron, is malfunctioning but the religious Deons prevent the scientific Savants from investigating the fault. A cactus-like xerophyte called Meglos from neighbouring Zolfa-Thura plots to use the Dodecahedron to take over the universe. He assumes the form of the Doctor to steal it, and deploys Gaztak mercenaries to obstruct the Time Lord… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 27 September 1980 Part 2 - Saturday 4 October 1980 Part 3 - Saturday 11 October 1980 Part 4 - Saturday 18 October 1980 Production Studio recording: June 1980 in TC8, July 1980 in TC3 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Romana - Lalla Ward Voice of K•9 - John Leeson General Grugger - Bill Fraser Lieutenant Brotadac - Frederick Treves Zastor - Edward Underdown Lexa - Jacqueline Hill Caris - Colette Gleeson Deedrix - Crawford Logan Earthling - Christopher Owen Tigellan guard - Simon Shaw Crew Writers - John Flanagan, Andrew McCulloch Designer - Philip Lindley Incidental music - Paddy Kingsland, Peter Howell Script editor - Christopher H Bidmead Executive producer - Barry Letts Producer - John Nathan-Turner Director - Terence Dudley RT Review by Mark Braxton Following the imposing curtain-raiser for the new-style, tarted-up Doctor Who, Meglos features another opportunity for Tom Baker to excel under marvellous make-up. With an intriguing science-versus-religion plot, a comedy double act and a cherished former companion popping up as a guest alien, the story cannot disappoint, can it? Let's answer that the long way first. Baker is, indeed, on commanding form. We totally buy the idea of another life form inhabiting his body, not just because of the spiky-mask creation of Cecile Hay-Arthur, but also in Baker's suggestions of menace. The performance is all the more creditable considering how ill he was at the time, and he looks it, his huge, unruly hair dwarfing his gaunt face. The spine of the story is a firm one, but the fact-v-faith debate is never really entered into with any enthusiasm. The drippy Deons and wacky-wigged Savants are instantly forgettable, as are their ineffectual figureheads Zastor and Lexa. When pious, prodigiously pony-tailed Lexa is lasered in the final episode, it should be a really big deal. It certainly makes Romana cry. But no work has gone into making Lexa a real character, and that's a terrible shame for someone of the stature - and importance to Doctor Who - of Jacqueline Hill. Hill's Barbara Wright will always be one of the great companions. Her magnificently haughty turn in the guise of priestess Yetaxa in The Aztecs (1964) is perhaps what John Nathan-Turner and Terence Dudley were thinking of when they cast her as Lexa. But not even King Midas could spin gold from lines like "Resume the Concurrence" and "The oath-taking ceremony is prepared". Quite apart from the inherently silly concept of the prickly villain (if you could change shape, would a potted succulent be your default position?), Meglos is a story that's hard to care about - a problem that will bedevil 80s Who. Perhaps if the plot had opened on Christopher Owen's Earthling - the only human point of reference for the audience - Meglos might have stood a chance. As it is, there's too much jargon, too much glossary. There's passable light relief from a kind of cosmic Bootsie and Snudge, but if there were a leader board of Doctor Who double acts, with Jago and Lightfoot at the top and almost any pairing invented by Robert Holmes just below them, Grugger and Brotadac would be somewhere on the skirting board beneath. Coat-coveting and Les Dawson-esque gurning are no substitute for a judicious turn of phrase or a mot juste. Meglos is, however, a robustly realised outing. Apart from Tigella's shiny plastic jungle, the props and sets are all sturdy and the effects surprisingly good. An advancement in CSO called scene-sync allows actors to "interact" more believably with hardware that isn't there, and for tracking shots to be done within dioramas. The results - characters wandering between the giant screens of Zolfa-Thura and the Gaztak ship manoeuvring - are a definite leap forward for the show. The hi-tech approach doesn't work everywhere. After years of Dudley Simpson's mostly subtle underscoring with real instruments, the wall-to-wall synth-identals of the Kingsland/Howell era take some getting used to - I must confess I never really did. Some of the overzealous punctuations to the action feel like the equivalent of a variety-hall drum roll after a joke. So, let's answer our opening question the short way. Can a story with those enticing ingredients disappoint? Yes. It can and it does. Fortunately, Meglos is a small blot on the landscape of season 18; the ensuing E-Space trilogy revives the elegance and ambition of John Nathan-Turner's brave new worlds. - - - Radio Times archive [Available on BBC DVD]
It's the 1980s and new producer John Nathan-Turner gives the series a stylish revamp
Season 18 – Story 109 "There's something called an Experiential Grid - cells of different environments designed to produce physical, psychic and intellectual regeneration. That sounds more like it, don't you think, Doctor?" - Romana Storyline Having braved out-of-season Brighton, where K•9 blows up in the waves, the Doctor and Romana transfer their holiday plans to the more stimulating environment of Argolis, c2290. An interplanetary war has left the planet surface irradiated and its inhabitants sterile. The few surviving Argolins have retreated to the Leisure Hive, a recreation centre for alien visitors that promotes scientific endeavour and interracial understanding. But a warlike Argolin, Pangol, has a hidden purpose for the Hive's Tachyon Recreation Generator - which also becomes the focus for reptilian Foamasi saboteurs and ages the Doctor by 500 years… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 30 August 1980 Part 2 - Saturday 6 September 1980 Part 3 - Saturday 13 September 1980 Part 4 - Saturday 20 September 1980 Production Location filming: March 1980 on Brighton beach, East Sussex Studio recording: April 1980 in TC1 and TC3 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Romana - Lalla Ward Voice of K•9 - John Leeson Mena - Adrienne Corri Morix - Laurence Payne Pangol - David Haig Brock - John Collin Hardin - Nigel Lambert Vargos - Martin Fisk Stimson - David Allister Guide - Roy Montague Klout - Ian Talbot Foamasi - Andrew Lane Tannoy voice - Harriet Reynolds Generator voice - Clifford Norgate Crew Writer - David Fisher Designer - Tom Yardley-Jones Incidental music - Peter Howell Script editor - Christopher H Bidmead Executive producer - Barry Letts Producer - John Nathan-Turner Director - Lovett Bickford RT Review by Patrick Mulkern One could base a thesis around the enigmatic shot that opens the first full Doctor Who story of the 1980s - an extraordinary, minute-and-a-half pan past a parade of stripy bathing huts on Brighton beach. Does it merely signify director Lovett Bickford's desire to put an auteur's stamp on a TV script he was determined to treat as a screenplay? Cineastes could be forgiven for wondering, momentarily, if the BBC has engaged the services of Luchino Visconti. An Edwardian beachscape, an androgynous blonde in a sailor suit playing with a beach ball, observed from a deckchair by a faded old roué with death on his shoulder… It's all very Death in Venice. Perhaps the phrase "camp as a row of…" springs to mind. For many, in hindsight, this furtive crawl past a row of gaudy tents on a dreary day in Brighton foreshadows, nay crystallises, the direction in which new producer and Saltdean resident John Nathan-Turner would take "his show" during the next decade. Of course, a simple answer could be that on the first day's filming Tom Baker was too ill to work - which he was - and the crew had to get something in the can to justify their sojourn to the south coast. The Leisure Hive debuted on the last Saturday of the summer holidays in 1980, and I remember being blown away by the radical change in tone and quantum leap in quality. Understandably, many fans lamented the nixing of the freefalling Tomfoolery of the mid-Baker period, but how I'd longed for Doctor Who to take itself seriously again. Such was the intention of the incoming production team: Nathan-Turner (summarily elevated from production unit manager), who disliked how silly the series had become, and his lofty script editor Christopher H Bidmead. Both were answerable to Barry Letts, the early 1970s Who guru now ensconced as the programme's first executive producer. For all three, a more serious, scientific approach was the order of the day. Despite a nagging worry about the triumph of style over substance, I've no shame in admitting I enjoy season 18 and that I've always adored The Leisure Hive. It's up there among my top Tom Bakers with classics from season 13 and the Key to Time. It may not be the greatest story ever told, but I admire its panache. It has the wow factor. Even now it's an audio-visual blast. From the off, we're assailed by a barrage of gob-smacking innovations: Sid Sutton's starfield title sequence; Peter Howell's confident rearrangement of the theme and pervasive radiophonic score; even our hero has been remodelled. Costume designer June Hudson retains the silhouette but "rebottles" the fourth Doctor as a vintage burgundy. With the cork back in. He suddenly looks sober, or at least sobered up. Tom Baker is still allowed the odd flippant moment ("Arrest the scarf then!") but he's restrained, and remarkably effective when aged five centuries (excellent make-up by Dorka Nieradzik). Lalla Ward (who failed to charm me in 1979) plays Romana with gusto and conviction, instantly becoming the fourth Doctor's ideal partner. And she looks lovely in her Tadzio sailor suit. David Fisher invests his script with vivid characters and intriguing concepts. The Hive is a "farewell gesture" from the expiring Argolins, its ostensible purpose being, as Mena explains, "to promote understanding between life forms of all culture and genetic type". I love the reveal of the Generator's dual purpose - recreation and re-creation, "creating things again". Otherwise, the hard-science approach is indigestible. I've still no idea what a tachyon is. The Time Lords burble on about baryon shields, a Schrödinger oscillator and wafer wave inducer… Me, neither. Pangol announces to a crowd of Hive visitors: "For the next hour and a half we will examine the wave equations that define the creation of solid tachyonic images." Mmm, must book that holiday next year! David Haig, in an early role, excels as the impetuous "child of the Generator". Angular beauty Adrienne Corri is also terrific as "madam chairman" Mena. Initially imperious, she quickly elicits sympathy, accepting her accelerated ageing with stoicism: "Despair is the death of hope and all our hope died years ago." Both make us believe in them as people, despite the green/gold faces and beehives topped with pod-shedding Walnut Whips that so nearly render the Argolins ridiculous. Fisher later bemoaned Bickford's mantra: "Don't give me plots. Just give me visuals." But the direction is hugely impressive: beautiful compositions, thoughtful camera moves and shifting focus, a hand-held camera for unfamiliar angles, dazzling video manipulation… The cliffhangers stun, the pacing is urgent and, lo, there's atmosphere. The sets are superbly lit, have depth, pyramid detail and ceilings. Bickford's wish to "fill this thing with music" also allows for respites that swamp us with sound and vision. Occasionally his tight shots and rapid cutting hinder narrative clarity, but often also serve to mask design flaws. They almost circumvent one of my bêtes noires - monsters impossibly contained within human masks, as when Earth agent Brock is "defrocked" as a Foamasi. The hurried denouement - when a supposedly obliterated reptile ambassador enters stage right with "You mentioned Foamasi?" - is just heinous. But then the Doctor hands over a rejuvenated Pangol with the line "Have a baby" - subverting his by-now-tedious "Have a jelly baby" (which he'd never say again). In the next breath he ditches the Tardis randomiser, signally bringing a haphazard period of Who to a close. A new path has been forged. And for John Nathan-Turner, hereinafter affectionately known as JN-T, the honeymoon period begins. Radio Times archive Season 18 was launched with a two-page interview with guest star Adrienne Corri. She was photographed at her home in 1981 by RT's Don Smith. (Rare photos below, copyright Radio Times Archive) Later, there was a piece on Tom Baker's ageing make-up and his entry into Madame Tussaud's. Photos and billings for The Leisure Hive [Available on BBC DVD]
First published in November 2017 Shada – a lost classic? I don’t think so. What!? A Doctor Who story written by Douglas Adams. Starring Tom Baker as the fourth Doctor at the height of his powers. Co-starring Lalla Ward as Time Lady companion Romana. Alongside adorable robot-dog K•9. A six-part season finale set in the hallowed halls of Cambridge and outer space, which would have been the first full story aired in the 1980s…? Only it wasn’t to be. A calamity occurred in late 1979 that even the Time Lord couldn’t overcome. Industrial action at the BBC halted Shada halfway into production. All the location filming was in the can, as well as one of three studio sessions at BBC Television Centre. But nothing more would be shot. As the news leaked out at the time, I wasn’t exactly devastated. This era of Doctor Who did not thrill me. Recently I found one of my earliest reviews, where, with great hauteur even at the age of 15, I wrote off Season 17 as “shoddy”. Cash-strapped, cheap-looking, a triumph of frivolity over compelling drama, the programme was buckling under the weight of Douglas Adams’s and Tom Baker’s propensity for silliness. (I’m one of the few who does not love City of Death from earlier that season.) Shada was shelled out in a “last-minute panic” by Adams (above), then also toiling as Doctor Who’s script editor. The cast have always raved about the project, but I suspect Adams’s reputation might have been tarnished had Shada gone out. He admitted in Doctor Who Magazine: “I didn’t particularly like it. It was rather thin – at most a mediocre four-parter stretched over six parts. So when it was cancelled halfway through production, I thought, ‘Phew!’ – because it wasn’t very good, and now at least I’m spared anybody seeing it.” He wasn’t being modest. Douglas Adams, who died shockingly young at 49 in 2001, was given to frankness and had a keen critical eye. There are pockets of magic to enjoy, but in truth Shada is a sprawling but far-from-epic serial. Skagra, one of Who’s campest baddies, in a floaty silver cape and floppy white hat, flounces around Cambridge with a brain-draining sphere in his handbag. The Doctor and Romana visit doddery Professor Chronotis, a Time Lord who’s had rooms at St Cedd’s College for many decades. (A milieu adapted by Steven Moffat for Peter Capaldi’s last series.) The humour (repetitive blather about tea and sugar) falls flat. The “action” is captured in various states of lethargy by Pennant Roberts, one of that period’s many pedestrian directors. Shada… I have never mourned its loss. But that’s me. Most Doctor Who fans are nothing if not completists. They want their Shada! Numerous attempts have been made to finish Shada in the 37 years since its cancellation. As early as 1980, incoming producer John Nathan-Turner suggested a remount for inclusion in Season 18. Tom Baker and Lalla Ward were still on contract and in charge of the Tardis. This was the optimum time but even JN-T didn’t succeed. Then the aficionados stepped in to have a bash. In the early 80s I attended a DWAS convention where they screened an edition of Shada. It was the first time most of us had seen the surviving footage. The lengthy missing tracts were replaced with a scrolling, typed narrative. Top marks for effort but it was tragically soporific. In 1992, Nathan-Turner had another stab at it, this time for a BBC Video release. He enlisted a grey but jovial Tom Baker (below) to act as storyteller and sprinkle his charisma over the missing passages. Shada still couldn’t quite spring to life. In 2003, the fan producers at Big Finish transformed Shada into an audio play, revised – efficiently but bizarrely – for Paul McGann’s Doctor and Lalla Ward’s Romana. It was also available as a rudimentary animation on the BBC website (below). Then about six years ago, überfan Ian Levine spent a fortune making his own Shada as a passion project. He is the Completist’s Completist. He cut the 1979 footage together with impressive new animation (below), and rehired almost all the surviving cast to voice their parts, including again Lalla Ward. Tom Baker wasn’t involved so a decent soundy-likey was found to voice the fourth Doctor. It was the most proficient version up to that point. But to Levine’s intense chagrin and owing to what sounds like a clash of personalities, he couldn’t persuade BBC Worldwide to release it as an official product. I have given all these versions a try across the decades. Valiant efforts all. And all have made me nod off. Now, in 2017, BBC Worldwide have produced yet another version – harnessing the talented team who last year animated The Power of the Daleks (Patrick Troughton’s debut story as the second Doctor). And perhaps this is the boldest edition so far. The surviving film and video from 1979 have been digitally remastered. Brand-new model work and visual effects have been shot, in keeping with the look of the period. Mark Ayres has recorded a delightful new score with five musicians, honouring the music that Dudley Simpson was writing for the series in the late 70s. I’m not big on animation – it’s a turn-off – but they seem to have done a reasonable job of plugging the gaps. I can’t say the style of animation is appreciably better than Ian Levine’s version. The likenesses of the principals were certainly sharper in his Shada. But that version sadly wasn’t widely available. Crucially, fans can now have their “complete” viewing experience with the voices of both original stars of the show. Lalla Ward is reprising her role for the fourth time. She must know her dialogue by heart, having first learnt it several regenerations ago. (She has since married and divorced Tom Baker; married and become “amicably separated” from Richard Dawkins.) The USP is that Worldwide have stumped up the fee for Baker to reprise his role. Now 83, he’s still engaging, that fruity timbre barely diminished by the passage of time. And, perhaps most thrilling for fans, there’s a wonderful final scene with the ancient Baker back in his 1979 togs and Tardis. For all this, much appreciated effort, I still find Shada rather plodding. For my money, if you really want to immerse yourself in Shada and enjoy its leisurely pace, track down the BBC Books novel from 2012, adapted by new series writer Gareth Roberts. Revel in his wordplay in homage to Douglas Adams and construct the pictures in your own mind. * This article was originally published on 24 November 2017 Doctor Who: Shada is available as a digital download in the UK and on DVD and Blu-Ray
Despite drawing on Greek myths, this tatty, embarrassing production is lowest-calibre Doctor Who.
Season 17 – Story 108 "Did you know that someone's building a black hole on your doorstep?" - the Doctor Storyline The Tardis collides in space with a vessel from Skonnos, which is transporting Anethan youngsters and radioactive hymetusite as final tribute to the Nimon. In his labyrinthine complex on Skonnos, this bull-like creature has promised power-crazed Soldeed help to rebuild a galactic empire. In truth the planet is but one stepping stone across the universe in the Nimons' "great journey of life"… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 22 December 1979 Part 2 - Saturday 29 December 1979 Part 3 - Saturday 5 January 1980 Part 4 - Saturday 12 January 1980 Production Studio recording: September 1979 in TC3, October 1979 in TC6 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Romana - Lalla Ward Voice of K•9 - David Brierley Soldeed - Graham Crowden Sorak - Michael Osborne Pilot - Bob Hornery Co-pilot - Malcolm Terris Teka - Janet Ellis Seth - Simon Gipps-Kent Sezom - John Bailey Nimons - Robin Sherringham, Bob Appleby, Trevor St John Hacker Voice of the Nimons - Clifford Norgate Crew Writer - Anthony Read Designer - Graeme Story Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Script editor - Douglas Adams Producer - Graham Williams Director - Kenny McBain RT review by Patrick Mulkern Picture the scene: two Time Loves aboard their rickety Tardis. "Come on, old girl," says the Doctor. "There's quite a few millennia left in you yet." Romana's bosom swells. "Thank you, Doctor" - until he snaps back, "Not you - the Tardis." She looks daggers at him, before her hoity-toity air dissolves into a rare, beaming grin. It's a moment to charm. Unfortunately, it comes right at the end of this four-parter and almost everything preceding it is Doctor Who of the lowest calibre. When The Horns of Nimon first aired, how our hearts sank, my sisters' and mine, as we spied the programme achieving a new low - a turgid quagmire of vapid characters, amateur dramatics, mirthless antics and clattering sets. Whatever happened to the enthralling, creditable drama we'd once loved? We could only snigger in discomfort at the tatty production and terrible performances - from the extras as council members apathetically extolling, "The Nimon! Skonnos!" right up to Graham Crowden as villain of the month, Soldeed. His egregiously OTT portrayal obliges even Tom Baker to play the straight man. The first two episodes are, by turns, punishingly dull and tooth-achingly embarrassing. The "gravity whirlpool" situation facing the Tardis and the Skonnon cargo ship is so feebly directed it lacks any peril. The Pilot and Co-pilot look like two old duffers manning a sewer works. The pyjama-clad Anethans - lettuce-limp Seth and Teka, and their catatonic comrades - are a singularly wet bunch. We're tempted to side with the Co-pilot who constantly derides them as "weakling scum!" At one point the Doctor sees value in giving K•9 the kiss of life, then, in an execrably directed cliffhanger, he grabs the robodog's head in mock terror as a planet - more of a dog biscuit - tumbles towards the Tardis scanner. Good grief. Lurking behind all this are a promising script and interesting concepts from Anthony Read. Like Underworld (the first serial he script-edited), this adventure borrows from Greek mythology: Seth/Theseus brings a tribute from Aneth/Athens to Skonnos/Knossos and faces the Nimon/Minotaur in his complex/labyrinth… Crinoth=Corinth; Soldeed=Daedalus, perhaps… And the notion of the Nimons migrating from world to world like locusts could, in better hands, have been quite disturbing. As it is, the man/bull aliens are absurd. Way back in 1987, the delightful costume designer June Hudson told me the ballet dancers playing the Nimons "had to try to move gracefully in these dreadful hooves we'd given them". She'd sourced from Germany a "strange stretch material that looked sweaty and black" for the creatures' heads. The result is a top-heavy, arm-flailing stagger, only partially compensated by resonant voices - which sound like the Nimons gargle on their own bile. Shards of pace and atmosphere pierce through in the latter stages. Tom Baker approaches his part in earnest, while Lalla Ward becomes momentarily impassioned, at last breathing life and truth into the second Romana. Certainly, she has plenty to do, with a solo trip to Crinoth, befriending Sezom (actor John Bailey played companion Victoria's father in 1967) and zapping Nimons. She looks chic in her red horse-riding outfit and has even made her own sleeker sonic screwdriver, which the Doctor tries to purloin. The Horns of Nimon may bring the 1970s to a dismal pass, but it had a toehold on the 1980s, where a flood of changes lay in store. And if it feels like a case of "out with the old", one has to bear in mind how young some of the production personnel were. Graham Williams, then 34, "absolutely shattered" by three years in the producer's seat, vacated it. Douglas Adams, 27, also moved on, having made his mildly successful mark on Who. The largely disappointing season 17 should have ended with Adams' six-part Shada, but an industrial dispute left the production half-finished. Valiant efforts have been made to resurrect it, but I believe his reputation would be all the poorer had Shada been aired. Adams himself confessed it was thin and mediocre. He told Doctor Who Magazine, "I thought, 'Phew! - now at least I'm spared anybody seeing it." The collapse of Shada also marked the end of Dudley Simpson's sterling 16-year run composing incidental music. In 1985, he told me how much Doctor Who had meant to him: "I loved it. I think it was the greatest challenge of my life, because every story was different and every episode gave me a challenge. Every moment. It came as quite a blow." Most significant of all, The Horns of Nimon sees the retirement of Delia Derbyshire's arrangement of the theme music and Bernard Lodge's vortical title sequences, which together had worked their spooky, hypnotic magic on viewers for 17 years. - - - Radio Times archive The episode billings and a letter and final response from outgoing producer, Graham Williams. [Available on BBC DVD]
Stimulating ideas, barrel-scraping antics and the Mandrels – Doctor Who's least frightening monster...
Season 17 – Story 107 "Would you please listen? Vraxoin is the biggest killer drug in existence and it's on this ship!" - the Doctor Storyline In space above Azure c2116 interstellar cruise liner the Empress comes out of warp drive and collides with a private vessel, Hecate. As the Doctor, Romana and K•9 strive to separate the ships, complications arise with passenger Tryst and his CET machine. An "electric zoo", it has gathered samples of habitats from numerous alien worlds, but unstable interfaces caused by the collision allow savage Mandrel creatures from planet Eden to escape and run amok on the Empress. The Doctor also discovers that someone on board is smuggling a fatally addictive drug called vraxoin… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 24 November 1979 Part 2 - Saturday 1 December 1979 Part 3 - Saturday 8 December 1979 Part 4 - Saturday 15 December 1979 Production Studio recording: August 1979 in TC6 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Romana - Lalla Ward Voice of K•9 - David Brierley Tryst - Lewis Fiander Captain Rigg - David Daker Dymond - Geoffrey Bateman Della - Jennifer Lonsdale Secker - Stephen Jenn Stott - Barry Andrews Waterguard Fisk - Geoffrey Hinsliff Landing Officer Costa - Peter Craze Crewmen - Richard Barnes, Sebastian Stride, Eden Phillips Passengers - Annette Peters, Lionel Sansby, Peter Roberts, Maggie Petersen Crew Writer - Bob Baker Designer - Roger Cann Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Script editor - Douglas Adams Producer - Graham Williams Director - Alan Bromly (& Graham Williams uncredited) RT Review by Mark Braxton In a "transitional" season 17, whose charms always eluded me and continue to do so, Nightmare of Eden is something of a flawed diamond. In story terms it bursts with stimulating, even courageous ideas, and this from Bob Baker, a writer going solo for Doctor Who after many years' successful association with Dave Martin. What makes it work is the coupling of a mind-bending sci-fi paradox (a collision that hasn't physically happened yet) with a perennial problem that is very much of our world and our time (the easy acquisition of an addictive drug that kills). Bob Baker's ability to vary approaches and treatments is invigorating. The playfulness of the opening, with the Doctor viewing the collision as a car-prang insurance wrangle ("I'd say it was knock for knock"), is in stark contrast with the grave tone of the climax ("Vrax is destroying people by the millions!"). And the CET (Continuous Event Transmuter) is a pleasing contrivance, putting one in mind not only of Irwin Allen's pulp series The Time Tunnel but also the disastrous Miniscope device from Carnival of Monsters. That the production lets the story down is nothing new to classic Who, and something it would be flint-hearted to criticise in overmuch detail. After all, the spaceship and jungle sets are perfectly decent, for the most part. I particularly like the outsized Venus flytrap that attacks the Doctor on Eden. But the flare-legged, knuckle-dragging Mandrels have to be the least frightening monster the show ever produced. No wonder David Daker's manic laughter sounds so convincing when the creatures half-heartedly set about the passengers on board the Empress. And considering the effort that goes into the Nightmare of Eden effects, some surprising "borrowing" goes on. Of the four planet-scapes projected by the CET, three were created for Gerry Anderson's Space: 1999 - not just one, as many reviews point out. For those who are interested they are, in order, the jungle-like planet Retha from The Full Circle, the sphere-covered Piri from Guardian of Piri and windswept Terra Nova from Matter of Life and Death. Of the guest cast, the indomitable David Daker stands out, just as he did as Irongron in 1973-4's The Time Warrior. Actors like Daker impress me no end. He's never the star, but he lends lusty support to any project he signs up for. He makes Rigg's rapid descent into drug-addled hysteria credible, but is written out with casual alacrity. The remaining bit-parters aren't in the same league. Lewis Fiander's atrocious accent wouldn't be out of place in 'Allo 'Allo! A comedic rival for Hugh Laurie's Mad Prince Ludwig in Blackadder II, it's maddeningly distracting. Maybe in the upheaval of Graham Williams taking over directing duties from Alan Bromly, it was one of those errors of judgement that crept through. Another misstep is the galactic excise men Fisk and Costa - poorly characterised in any case - dressed in ridiculous sparkly black stripagram-style slacks. Tom Baker is on robust form, although some of his horseplay should have been tamed in an adventure that's otherwise refreshingly serious. His off-screen mangling by Mandrel and Pied Piper-esque luring of the shambling beasties are barrel-scrapingly poor. Overall, this sobering, sideways take on Paradise Lost deserves respect, in conception and narrative if not always in the finished product. - - - Radio Times archive [Available on BBC DVD]
A patchy effort with electrifying Lady Adrasta and Erato – "a giant green blancmange with a four-foot phallus"
Season 17 – Story 106 "You know it really doesn't eat people, don't you? But you know what it does eat and you haven't been letting it get any, have you? No, you just stuck it in a pit and threw people at it" - the Doctor Storyline Lady Adrasta has a stranglehold on power on Chloris, a jungle planet scarce in metal: she owns its only mine - the Pit - into which she throws all who oppose her. A gigantic green blob lurks at the bottom, which the Doctor learns is Erato, an ambassador from Tythonus. He arrived 15 years earlier hoping to trade metallic ores for chlorophyll. The Doctor, Romana and K•9 must thwart Adrasta, free Erato and avert retaliation from his fellow Tythonians - a neutron star aimed at Chloris's sun… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 27 October 1979 Part 2 - Saturday 3 November 1979 Part 3 - Saturday 10 November 1979 Part 4 - Saturday 17 November 1979 Production Filming: March 1979 at Ealing Studios Model filming: April 1979 at BBC Visual Effects Workshop Studio recording: April 1979 in TC6 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Romana - Lalla Ward Voice of K•9 - David Brierley Lady Adrasta - Myra Frances Karela - Eileen Way Organon - Geoffrey Bayldon Torvin - John Bryans Edu - Edward Kelsey Ainu - Tim Munro Doran - Terry Walsh Tollund - Morris Barry Huntsman - David Telfer Guardmaster - Tommy Wright Guard - Philip Denyer, Dave Redgrave Crew Writer - David Fisher Designer - Valerie Warrender Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Script editor - Douglas Adams Producer - Graham Williams Director - Christopher Barry RT Review by Patrick Mulkern Whatever else a Doctor Who story offers, it can stand and fall on the effectiveness of its monsters. A feeble effect or tatty costume will attract ridicule and opprobrium - a fact Graham Williams appreciated only too keenly. Hence his ploy to keep monsters largely incidental, a trend that slackened towards the end of his tenure as producer. If you commission a serial called The Creature from the Pit, then you have to show that creature, more's the pity, even when it turns out to be a "giant green blancmange with a four-foot phallus", to quote Williams's own horrified internal BBC memo. You may spot that Erato's offending appendage undergoes a design tweak between episodes two and three, but there's no erasing the image of Tom Baker grasping the Tythonian's protuberance and giving it a damn good blow. The bouncy-castle/sickbag-with-willy that is Erato aside, I'd completely forgotten, in the decades since I sat through this four-parter, how visually impressive the rest of the production is. The pit itself is sturdy and atmospherically lit, while the jungle set at Ealing Studios has a filmic sheen and depth, lush greenery contrasting with the locals' burgundy costumes. Christopher Barry achieves a great deal with very little. Which shouldn't come as a massive surprise: he directed the more effective episodes of the first Dalek story in 1963/4, was entrusted with Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker's debut stories, and helmed such classics as The Daemons and The Brian of Morbius. Sadly, this production was not a happy memory for him and would also be his last. His authority was challenged by Tom Baker, who'd become a domineering force since their previous collaborations. Barry disliked the silliness that undermined dramatic impetus. The fear factor and violence had been toned down drastically, in compliance with new BBC drama department edicts, since the gory days of Morbius. And while Barry was a master of video trickery (and there are some neat CSO shots here), the demands of the plot were beyond the budget and visual effects department. Model shots of the police box and giant egg in space had to be remounted and there was an interdepartmental inquest into the most wretched underachievement - the rendering of Erato. David Fisher's story trots along with a simplistic but workable premise, and a clutch of vivid characters. Eileen Way, who played a cave-dwelling crone in An Unearthly Child, is cast as a similarly vindictive misery here. Geoffrey Bayldon has had a bath since Catweazle and is great fun as the charlatan stargazer Organon, working well alongside Baker. Myra Frances is simply terrific as Adrasta, lifting her above the one-dimensional bad girl on the page. She's electrifying in the bizarre, villain-in-peril part three cliffhanger (surely the most dramatic moment of the entire season). After her early demise in part four, the energy plummets. The bandits are a tedious bunch, impossible to take seriously and, as figures of fun, hopeless. Their leader Torvin, a sort of fat Fagin, gets zapped by K•9 and looks for somewhere comfortable to fall down - common practice in this period. Other minor roles smack of desperation or jobs for mates. Two of Adrasta's advisers are played by stuntman Terry Walsh (accomplished in his own field but not a gifted actor) and Morris Barry (a distant relative of Christopher and a director of 1960s Who). Despite its position at the mid-point of a curtailed season, The Creature from the Pit was actually first into production, which probably explains why a little more money has been spent. And also why Romana doesn't quite seem herself. The scripts were written for Mary Tamm's blend of glamour and grandeur, and Lalla Ward looks uncomfortable in a floaty maternity dress, liberal eye-shadow and lippy, and over-fussy hairdo. K•9, too, has undergone a perceptible change. In narrative terms, he's overcome a bout of laryngitis! Off camera, voice artist John Leeson has been replaced by David Brierley. So the petulant but endearing class swot tones make way for those of a rather effete, querulous schoolmaster. In concert with the fourth Doctor at the fag-end of his era, this set of Tardis occupants is arguably the least appealing to date. - - - Radio Times archive [Available on BBC DVD]
Filmed in Paris, co-written by Douglas Adams and with a John Cleese cameo... is this fan-favourite smug and overrated?
Season 17 – Story 105 "The centuries that divide me shall be undone!" - Scaroth Storyline The Doctor and Romana are enjoying a sojourn in Paris, 1979, until they experience two time slips and stumble upon a plot by Count Scarlioni to steal the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. He already has six authentic copies, all painted by Leonardo Da Vinci, which will finance his temporal experiments. Hopping back to Florence 1505, the Doctor learns that Scarlioni is in fact Scaroth, an alien splintered across time. The last of the Jagaroth, he is determined to travel back 400 million years and prevent his ship exploding - an event that triggered the birth of the human race… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 29 September 1979 Part 2 - Saturday 6 October 1979 Part 3 - Saturday 13 October 1979 Part 4 - Saturday 20 October 1979 Production Location filming: April/May 1979 in Paris at the Eiffel Tower; Dupleix, Trocadéro & Boissière Métro stations; Rue de Rivoli; Le Notre Dame Brasserie, Place du Petit Pont; Denise René Gallery, Blvd St Germain; 47 Rue Vieille du Temple Studio recording: May 1979 in TC3, June 1979 in TC6 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Romana - Lalla Ward Count Scarlioni - Julian Glover Countess Scarlioni - Catherine Schell Duggan - Tom Chadbon Kerensky - David Graham Hermann - Kevin Flood Louvre guide - Pamela Stirling Soldier - Peter Halliday Art gallery visitors - John Cleese, Eleanor Bron Crew Writer - David Agnew (a pseudonym for Douglas Adams and Graham Williams) Designer - Richard McManan-Smith Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Script editor - Douglas Adams Producer - Graham Williams Director - Michael Hayes RT Review by Patrick Mulkern I don't much care for City of Death. Tantamount to sacrilege in the Doctor Who world, but there, I've said it. I've outed myself. It's often placed in fandom's top ten. There's no doubting it stands head and shoulders above its season 17 bedfellows in terms of production values. Viewing figures were extraordinary: part four drew in 16.1 million punters (largely due to "the other side", ITV, being on strike and still an unbeaten record). The script sings with Douglas Adams's wit and intellect. And no one can decry the unheard-of fillip of filming in Paris. So what's not to like? Well, Doctor Who bottled in 1979 is just not my favourite vintage. "More of a table wine, shall we say?" to quote the Doctor out of context. And I doubt I ever will acquire a taste for it. Of course, I admire Douglas Adams, the eternal hitchhiker who foresaw the internet and mobile phone. I can see why producer Graham Williams and Tom Baker were only too delighted to have the celebrated humorist on board. But his vision for the series bothers me. As script editor he hasn't the discipline to tighten other writers' scripts, but lards them with silliness. As a writer, he eschews suspense and gravity, the dramatic heart of characters and situations that will make you care and want to tune in next week. Humour has its place in Doctor Who, in the right measure. I adore the light-hearted interplay of Dennis Spooner (Adams' mid-60s predecessor); the bumbling and mugging of Patrick Troughton's Doctor; the laughs engendered by Jon Pertwee's acid tongue and swagger. But I remain resistant to the self-indulgent flippancy that would plunge the fourth Doctor to his nadir during this season. In 1979, Tom Baker entered his sixth furlong, eclipsing the tenures of all his predecessors, and I recall longing for the almost unthinkable - a change in lead. I was also less than enamoured of Lalla Ward as the snooty second Romana - perhaps the least charismatic companion since Dodo. She's a Time Lady (a term coined in City of Death) and brilliant with it (finessing Scaroth's time machine), but has the bearing of a class swot - an image reinforced by Romana's school uniform. The 27-year-old Ward intended to hearten younger viewers fed up with their own itchy school gear, but the sight of Tom and "ooh" Lalla lolloping along boulevards hand in hand conveys "uncle and niece" on a saucy weekend. It's impossible now to view their gay dash across Paris - bantering about bouquets, bouillabaisse and art, generally showing off - without the knowledge that the couple eventually became one. The surge of romance and a patina of innocence are expertly bridged by one of Dudley Simpson's most elated themes. (He once described it to me as "a city skyline".) City of Death exudes confidence, which is not a bad thing, and an air of sophistication, which is not equal to possessing sophistication itself. Like the multiple Mona Lisas behind which the Doctor scribbles, "This is a fake", there's an underlying sense of pretension and phoneyness. Count and Countess Scarlioni embody the two sm's - smug and smarmy. The notion that Julian Glover's expressive face is a mask concealing a bulbous, rigid cyclops is patently ridiculous (cf Foamasi and Slitheen). Evidently, Their Excellencies have never shared a bed or bathroom, but how on earth did Scaroth's splintered selves produce the same mask in ancient times? Meanwhile, detective Duggan (bluster, fisticuffs, Marlowe/Columbo mac) and Professor Kerensky (stoop, accent, grimace) take stereotypes to new levels of tedium. Too harsh? Maybe. City of Death is far from meretricious tosh. Sets, costumes and effects are better than average for this budget-strapped period. Director Michael Hayes strives to give movement and interesting framing to both studio and location shots. It was also Hayes' idea to cast Eleanor Bron and John Cleese as the art gallery pseuds pontificating on the "exquisite" afunctionality of the Doctor's police box. Perversely, even though this scene crystallises the Cambridge Footlights mentality (Bron, Cleese and Adams were all alumni) that I so object to, I'd have to be a complete misery not to enjoy the moment. So I cannot be entirely averse to Adams' influence. I chuckle at the wit when the Doctor fools around in the Countess's drawing room ("You're a beautiful woman, probably") and says of Hermann, "What a wonderful butler! He's so violent." I also relish the serial's cheeky top and tail on the Eiffel Tower. In part one Romana considers, "Shall we take the lift or fly?" and then in part four, they're on the same high platform, but a moment later appear on the Champ de Mars far below. Can these Time Loves really fly? In the Whoniverse of Douglas Adams, the drive for improbability seems infinite. - - - Radio Times archive [Available on BBC DVD]
Davros returns and Lalla Ward is the new Romana in this fun, tatty and unintentionally hilarious Season 17 opener...
Season 17 – Story 104 "There is much to be done. You must tell me of all the victories the Daleks have won whilst I have slept. And all the defeats. I shall learn from your mistakes. The Daleks shall be made into perfect creatures" - Davros Storyline The randomiser sends the Tardis to Skaro. Romana, adopting a new form, and the Doctor discover Daleks mining the planet, using humanoid slaves. They seek their creator, Davros, hoping he will give them the upper hand in a war against the robotic Movellans. Their enemies, meanwhile, have sent a detachment to foil the Dalek mission. Davros revives, his life support having held him in stasis for centuries. As the Dalek and Movellan battle computers are locked in a stalemate, Davros sends a suicide squad to destroy the Movellan ship… First transmissions Episode 1 - Saturday 1 September 1979 Episode 2 - Saturday 8 September 1979 Episode 3 - Saturday 15 September 1979 Episode 4 - Saturday 22 September 1979 Production Location filming: June 1979 at Winspit quarry, Worth Matravers, Dorset; Binnegar Heath sandpit, Wareham, Dorset Studio recording: Studio recording: July 1979 in TC3 and TC1 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Romana - Lalla Ward Tyssan - Tim Barlow Commander Sharrel - Peter Straker Davros - David Gooderson Agella - Suzanne Danielle Lan - Tony Osoba Jall - Penny Casdagli Veldan - David Yip Movellan guard - Cassandra Dalek operators - Cy Town, Mike Mungarvan Dalek voices - Roy Skelton (& David Gooderson uncredited) (Interim Romanas - Lee Richards, Maggy Armitage, Yvonne Gallagher) Crew Writer - Terry Nation Designer - Ken Ledsham Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Script editor - Douglas Adams Producer - Graham Williams Director - Ken Grieve RT Review by Mark Braxton Daleks! Davros! Skaro! New aliens! In what was to be Terry Nation's final script for the show, the Doctor encounters his most implacable foes on their own "turf". Unfortunately Nation undoes much of the good work of his epochal Genesis of the Daleks. Back then we had free-thinking, dangerously autonomous Daleks and a creepily charismatic leader, the former severing the knot by apparently exterminating the latter. So why now does the buckled, battered and blinking rabble that is supposed to be the superior force of the universe return on metaphorical bended knees? After their clinical deposition of their Hitlerian father figure, chanting, "We obey only Davros" just doesn't ring true. And that's not the only absurdity peddled by Nation's story… The mutated terrors and vicious struggles of the Daleks' last outing seem light years away now. Robert Holmes's muscular influence as script editor is long gone, and there's a much lighter hand on the tiller - evident from the outset. It's hard to know which idea is the clumsier: K•9 having laryngitis or Romana trying out a few bodies before settling on that of Princess Astra from the preceding adventure. Of course, such levity is precisely the sort of thing Douglas Adams was brought in for, but neither of these cracker-joke diversions shows much respect for the audience. In spite of her shaky introduction, Lalla Ward makes a fun "new" companion, retaining the know-it-all poise of Mary Tamm's incarnation but injecting some girlish glee. She seems misdirected here, however. Whining and crying under Dalek questioning might be what companions of yore were expected to do, but Romana is a Time Lord, for goodness' sake! Of the guest characters, Tim Barlow's Terrence Stamp-like Tyssan is the standout, but the production is hamstrung by a huge disappointment: Michael Wisher's unavailability. David Gooderson does what he can behind the obviously damaged Davros mask, but Wisher was an impossible act to follow. And the sight of this ruthless megalomaniac jigging up and down along the corridor (his feet clearly going like the clappers under his Dalek skirt), or being pushed around by the Doctor like a wheelie bin, is unfortunately hilarious. The Movellans in their Persil-ised tunics and beaded dreadlocks are very much a product of their disco-influenced era. The revelation of their robotic composition is a neat twist, but how can they possibly be the equals of the Daleks when they are overcome in such pathetically easy fashion - either by a blast on a dog whistle or the removal of their Duracell pack? The story is rammed with silliness of this kind. The sight of a cobwebby Davros suddenly awaking, senses and health intact, after hundreds of years, is beyond idiotic. And after the many Dalek stories he'd masterminded, would Terry Nation honestly have penned the line "One race of robots fighting another"? As any fule kno, the Daleks aren't and never were robots. AND YET. For all its flapping flaws and patched-up aesthetic, Destiny of the Daleks is clattering good fun; the type of tale children would have lapped up from the pages of TV Century 21 comic. It moves along at a decent lick and much of the action is well handled, from the initial burial of the Movellan ship to the climactic siege, plus the optical effects for the Dalek lasers throughout. But the enjoyment doesn't just derive from the straightforward, knockabout antics. The unease that the Doctor feels in upsetting the balance of power lends the caper surprising heft (paper-scissors-rock nonsense notwithstanding). And if it leaves the viewer with nothing else, three decades later, the image of the Daleks as suicide bombers has horribly disturbing resonance. - - - Radio Times archive We kicked off the 17th season with an interview with costume designer June Hudson. A few rare shots from RT's 1979 photoshoot outside the BBC Rehearsal Rooms with Acton, west London. Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, a Movellan and costume designer June Hudson pose for photographer Barry Lewis. The four episode billings and an ode from Roger Woddis. June Hudson talking to Radio Times in 2015 about her work on the early days of EastEnders [Available on BBC DVD]
Atrios and Zeos face oblivion in this disappointing season finale, saved mostly by a magnificent villain – the Shadow
Season 16 – Story 103 "Astra, remember, you're the sixth princess of the Sixth Royal House of the Sixth Dynasty... And we're looking for the sixth segment of the Key to Time. Oh, you're in greater danger even than we imagined" - Romana Storyline The Doctor, Romana and K•9 arrive on Atrios during the final stages of its war against twin planet Zeos. Armageddon is being orchestrated by a third party, the Shadow, who has the Atrian Marshal, Princess Astra and battle computer Mentalis all in his power. But the Shadow is also an agent of the Black Guardian. He knows the whereabouts of the sixth and final segment of the Key to Time and has been waiting for the Doctor to arrive with the other five… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 20 January 1979 Part 2 - Saturday 27 January 1979 Part 3 - Saturday 3 February 1979 Part 4 - Saturday 10 February 1979 Part 5 - Saturday 17 February 1979 Part 6 - Saturday 24 February 1979 Production Model filming: October 1978 at Ealing Studios Studio recording: November/December 1978 in TC3 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Romana - Mary Tamm Voice of K•9 - John Leeson The Marshal - John Woodvine Princess Astra - Lalla Ward The Shadow - William Squire Major Shapp - Davyd Harries Merak - Ian Saynor Drax - Barry Jackson The Black Guardian - Valentine Dyall Pilot - Pat Gorman Hero - Ian Liston Heroine - Susan Skipper Crew Writers - Bob Baker, Dave Martin Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Designer - Richard McManan-Smith Script editor - Anthony Read Producer - Graham Williams Director - Michael Hayes RT Review by Patrick Mulkern So we've been following the Time Lords' quest for 20 weeks now, the Key to Time season arc is drawing to a close and we're all geared up for a satisfying denouement with the Black Guardian in a finale excitingly entitled The Armageddon Factor. What could possibly go wrong? Well, quite a lot actually. This is late 70s Doctor Who, remember. Planning-meeting minutes (imagined): um, budget almost exhausted. So minuscule cast, please. No big names. No location filming. Not much dosh for effects, either. Planets under nuclear bombardment? Let's use distant crumping sound effects. Spaceship battles? Simple: flashes on a screen. This will have to be Armageddon on the scale of Space Invaders (a rudimentary 70s video game). And, umm, where was this Key to Time saga heading anyway? Oh well, let's prepare ourselves for another six weeks of sapping entertainment… Too mean? Well, even the Doctor, in fruitless-runaround part five, sums events up: "Very crude, technically. Like all this amusement arcade rubbish." And there's no denying that Doctor Who's last six-parter hugely disappoints, yet it's not an unmitigated disaster. The meandering plot fails to grip but does feed tiny surprises just as boredom sets in: the Marshal is communicating with a skull through his mottled mirror… "There are no Zeons on Zeos"… The opposition is run by a computer… The Shadow is so formidable even K•9 calls him Master… A rock wall opens and a comedy Time Lord pops out… Astra's preordained "transcendence"… Director Michael Hayes achieves the best he can from limited resources. Decent camera moves maximise basic, gloomy sets (sometimes they double up or call for characters to run the long way around pillars). He uses CSO judiciously and numerous clever optical effects. Tom Baker and Mary Tamm enjoyed working with Hayes and work their socks off to enliven each situation - no matter how static. The guest actors sadly have little to chew on. John Woodvine was asked to channel Churchill as the one-dimensional Marshal. Playing buffoonish Shapp, Davyd Harries seems to be asking himself: how would Bernard Cribbins approach this wretched scene? And poor Ian Saynor is saddled with Merak, for ten minutes an impassioned surgeon then for hours a lovesick drip bleating for Astra. Lalla Ward, the daughter of a viscount, is well cast as the imperious princess, and is peculiarly adept at playing passion with minimal conviction. Of course, it's impossible to watch Ward now without the knowledge she'd become the next companion (and, for a blip, Mrs Baker); and it's disconcerting to see the two Romanas side by side on screen. The Shadow lifts the story for me. Yes, his name and guise would befit a second-division Marvel Comics villain, but William Squire's vocal delivery is magnificently eerie. He gets the best dialogue by far, denigrating the Doctor's "jackdaw meanderings", freely revealing his allegiance to the Black Guardian - "He who walks in darkness." Their aim for the Key to Time is to set "the two halves of the entire cosmos at war, and their mutual destruction will be music in our ears. Unlike others, it is not power we seek, but destruction that we glory in." We learn little else about the Shadow, nor his creepy henchmen, the Mutes. It's still unclear whether the name refers to their disfigurement, lack of speech or both. The pervasive gloom and agonising time-loop footage of the third act are fortunately leavened by Drax, the cheeky-chappy Time Lord played so winningly by Barry Jackson. A sorta sarf London wheeler dealer, he and the Doctor met in "the class of 92", a tech course some 450 years earlier. Amazingly, Drax at long last utters the Doctor's name, or at least his academy designation: Theta Sigma. If, in 1973, we accepted the Greek name Omega for another Baker/Martin Gallifreyan, surely we should also buy Theta Sigma or "Theet" for the Doctor… Along with Garron, Professor Rumford and Grendel, Drax ("Remember me to Gallifrey!") is a vivid creation from season 16 I'd have gladly seen more of. He's arguably the last bright idea from writing duo Bob Baker and Dave Martin, who peppered 1970s Who with Axos, the Solonian lifecycle, Omega's black hole, crystalline Eldrad, K•9 … (Note: they give their robot dog plenty of action here.) A shoestring Armageddon was never going to impress, and sources differ over whom to credit for making the sixth segment Astra. But the final somewhat garbled sequence - in which the Doctor goes eye-rollingly berserk, thwarts the Black Guardian and disperses the hard-won segments - was penned by incoming script editor Douglas Adams. It leaves the audience, who have invested 26 weeks in the Key to Time, gasping for answers. In Adams' hands, will the universe - or indeed Doctor Who - be plunged into eternal chaos? - - - Radio Times archive The six RT billings and a letter with a reply from producer Graham Williams. [Available on BBC DVD]
A soggy off-day for writer Robert Holmes delivers a giant squid and green, loincloth-clad Swampies
Season 16 – Story 102 "Great One, we ask only that the dryfoots and their abominations be crushed by thy mighty power! Master, this is thy servant!" - Ranquin Storyline The Doctor and Romana become separated on the marshy third moon of Delta Magna while seeking the fifth segment of the Key to Time. Escaping Earth colonists on a methane refinery, the Doctor rescues Romana from indigenous Swampies about to sacrifice her to their water deity, Kroll. The natives plan to attack the Earthmen, using weapons from Rohm-Dutt. The gunrunner is later killed by Kroll, an enormous squid-like creature, which colonist leader Thawn prepares to destroy with a rocket… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 23 December 1978 Part 2 - Saturday 30 December 1978 Part 3 - Saturday 6 January 1979 Part 4 - Saturday 13 January 1979 Production Location filming: September 1978 at the Maltings, Snape and Iken Cliff (near Snape) in Suffolk Filming: October 1978 at Bray Studios water tank Studio recording: October 1978 in TC6 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Romana - Mary Tamm Thawn - Neil McCarthy Rohm-Dutt - Glyn Owen Fenner - Philip Madoc Ranquin - John Abineri Varlik - Carl Rigg Dugeen - John Leeson Harg - Grahame Mallard Skart - Frank Jarvis Mensch - Terry Walsh Crew Writer - Robert Holmes Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Designer - Don Giles Script editor - Anthony Read Producer - Graham Williams Director - Norman Stewart RT Review by Mark Braxton It's terribly hard to summon much enthusiasm for some stories. And, sadly, this soggy four-parter is one such. Robert Holmes's reported dislike of the commission ("Bob, give us the biggest monster ever!") is pretty transparent. In place of his trademark wit and scorching two-handers are tepid dialogue and dull characters. There is no interest here for Holmes, so it seems he dashed off an uncharacteristically humdrum potboiler. The sniggers induced by methane discharges and loincloth-clad Swampies are barely stifled by the titular terror, and the general silliness of the whole enterprise. The enjoyment of seeing old troupers (The Mind of Evil's Neil McCarthy, Philip "Solon" Madoc) is diluted by their unsuitability for their respective roles. Even Glyn Owen seems unsure whether Rhom-Dutt is Irish or Australian. But illness and drop-outs necessitated last-minute cast changes, and that did at least promote John "Voice of K•9" Leeson to his first on-screen appearance as Dugeen. Maybe the actors were given a lot of latitude in delivering their lines. It's certainly hard to imagine Holmes typing: "He's a Swampie lover… he's in with them" or "It's probably a deep-water thing". To be fair, there are serious subtexts about racism and imperialism that lend an extra dimension, but they're not developed beyond tantalisingly chewy morsels such as "Progress is a very flexible word; it can mean anything you want it to mean". Quite aside from their vivid-green wigs and appalling sense of rhythm in the King Kong-inspired tribal dancing (listen to how mismatched their chants of "Kroll" are with the drum beats), the Swampies are farcically unconvincing. And with nary a woman in sight, how does this society perpetuate? The tittersome effects don't really help, either. The methane refinery looks like a table in a pond - clearly no lessons have been learnt from Terror of the Zygons - and although the Kroll puppet is a detailed one, the split-screen technique by which the creature is integrated with the action is unforgivingly linear. However, the mushy proceedings are enlivened by Tom Baker's sprightly performance. For long periods he's the only one with any visible belief in the project, striding through the marshes with his amazing reappearing waders. There are some charmingly comic bits of business from the Doctor. Among them: playing Bach's Badinerie note-perfectly on a carved reed, asking his captors if there will be strawberry jam for tea, shrieking in order to break a window, and the flying ducks on his lapels - something Tom Baker was delighted with. But I can easily imagine an equal number of viewers being irritated by such frivolities. The Power of Kroll isn't a complete write-off. Effort has gone into furnishing the adventure with colour and interest. It's unusual to see the Tardis choked in reeds, for instance, and characters moving about in canoes and hovercraft. But instead of the tentacular spectacular that script editor Anthony Read intended, we have a barely moist squib that flails about ineffectually. You do wonder what gave rise to such a monstrosity. Of course, "It could just be a gas build-up." - - - Radio Times archive [Available on BBC DVD]
A summery romp in which the Doctor and Romana must stop Count Grendel from becoming King of Tara
Season 16 – Story 101 "Crown an android King of Tara? Never!" - Farrah Storyline Arriving on Tara, the Doctor enjoys a fishing break while Romana quickly sources the fourth segment of the Key to Time - a piece of statuary. But the two Time Lords are soon drawn into a web of intrigue surrounding the succession to the Taran throne. The Doctor is recruited to complete an android copy of Prince Reynart, who is threatened with assassination by Count Grendel of Gracht. Romana, meanwhile, falls into the clutches of the wicked count, who is delighted to see she's the identical double of Strella, the princess second in line to the throne… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 25 November 1978 Part 2 - Saturday 2 December 1978 Part 3 - Saturday 9 December 1978 Part 4 - Saturday 16 December 1978 Production Location filming: July 1978 at Leeds Castle, Kent Studio recording: August 1978 in TC6 and TC1 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Romana - Mary Tamm Voice of K•9 - John Leeson Count Grendel - Peter Jeffrey Prince Reynart - Neville Jason Swordmaster Zadek - Simon Lack Swordsman Farrah - Paul Lavers Madame Lamia - Lois Baxter Archimandrite - Cyril Shaps Kurster - Martin Matthews Till - Declan Mulholland Crew Writer - David Fisher Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Designer - Valerie Warrender Script editor - Anthony Read Producer - Graham Williams Director - Michael Hayes RT Review by Patrick Mulkern With splashes of sunlit location filming, ample greenery, vibrant costumes, a castle, hunting lodge, even a pavilion, The Androids of Tara achieves the feel of a summer pageant. And the Doctor gets into the spirit himself, for once forgoing adventure to fish and doze in the sun, before engaging with alien royalty for the third time this season. He adjusts to every twist and turn with bonhomie and looks the part in a russet velvet coat. It's a great vehicle for Tom Baker. Such was writer David Fisher's success with The Stones of Blood, he was swiftly recommissioned (in the 1970s it was rare for someone to pen consecutive serials). His narrative is clear, the dialogue occasionally sparkling and there's a frisson of satisfaction for the minority of viewers who suss the pastiche of Anthony Hope's novel, The Prisoner of Zenda. New director Michael Hayes takes to Doctor Who with alacrity. One or two of the horseback scenes are fudged, but Romana's woodland wander, the android coronation and the swordfight are all expertly handled. He even manages some unusual moves in the Tardis set at the start. Hayes' casting is classy, too. As Reynart, Neville Jason has a touch of the mature matinee idol (John Gilbert, say, or Ronald Colman). Simon Lack and Paul Lavers convince as his swordsmen, wily Zadek and impetuous Farrah. The latter has the temerity to sever the Doctor's scarf with his electric rapier. (The Time Lord is mortified: "If you don't stop burning my scarf, you're going to have to kill me.") Lois Baxter is suitably sour as Lamia, "Count Grendel's woman" and a surgeon-engineer content to "leave politics to my betters". Almost stealing the show from Tom Baker is Peter Jeffrey. With his heavy features and warty complexion, he had become a familiar TV face since playing the Pilot in The Macra Terror (1967). He's clearly having a ball as Grendel of Gracht - perhaps the most courteous and courtly Who villain ever. While imprisoning Romana and threatening to "disassemble her", he calls her "my dear" exhaustively. He tells Reynart, "And now, my friend, I must go to your coronation. It's a pity you will miss it." And later, "Oh, Doctor. I was glad you managed to escape safely." Their final swordfight is excellently choreographed, albeit in a fittingly offhand Doctor Who manner. The Time Lord joins in half-heartedly, deflecting advances, mugging with bemusement, before really lunging into it and leading Grendel, "the best swordsman on Tara", up onto his castle battlements. You can't help but smile when the thwarted count declares, "Next time I shall not be so lenient", before diving into his moat, fleeing to fight another day. Although there's little discernible difference between her performances as Princess Strella, the android version or Romana, this story is appreciably Mary Tamm's finest outing in Doctor Who. She looks fabulous in the purply, green-trimmed hat and tunic ("It's what everyone on Tara's wearing this year") - a striking, almost peculiar design that Tamm herself had a hand in. Independent from the Doctor, Romana locates the next segment within the first eight minutes of part one. She stands up to Grendel, and remarkably manages to escape his castle, only momentarily flummoxed by a horse: "Go, charger. Start. Start! Go, you stupid creature. Go!" It's easy to overlook that it's Romana who gallops into the pavilion ambush and rescues the Doctor on horseback. "Do you know, I'll be quite sorry to leave Tara," she says at the end. And yes it has been a jolly, colourful romp. A more than competent production. But after all this praise, I have to say I've never exactly loved The Androids of Tara. It strays too far into the "adventure serial" territory of Sunday teatime telly. The concepts of androids and/or doppelgangers bore me in any drama. There's no real urgency or jeopardy and, truth be told, I don't give a monkey's who ends up on the Taran throne - be it Reynart, Grendel, George the android or the ludicrous beast that waggles at Romana in the woods. - - - Radio Times archive Marc's view cartoon [Available on BBC DVD]
The 100th story offers a Celtic goddess, blood-sucking Ogri, fabulous Beatrix Lehmann and a Sapphic undertone...
Season 16 – Story 100 "Until recently, the land the circle stands on has always been owned by a woman. Haven't you noticed?" - Romana Storyline Romana has her first taste of the Doctor's "favourite planet", Earth, when the quest for the Key to Time brings them to the Nine Travellers, a stone circle on Boscombe Moor. They befriend Professor Rumford and Vivien Fay who are surveying the circle, but soon fall foul of a Druidic sect worshipping a Celtic goddess, the Cailleach. K•9 deduces that several stones are silicon-based globulin-deficients - blood-sucking Ogri who obey Miss Fay. She has been posing as the Cailleach, but is in fact Cessair of Diplos, a criminal who came to Earth 4,000 years ago. Aboard a hyperspace vessel near the circle, the Doctor unwittingly releases justice machines called the Megara, who proceed to put him on trial… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 28 October 1978 Part 2 - Saturday 4 November 1978 Part 3 - Saturday 11 November 1978 Part 4 - Saturday 18 November 1978 Production Location recording: June 1978 at Rollright Stones and Little Rollright, Oxfordshire; Reed College, Little Compton, Warwickshire Studio recording: July 1978 in TC3 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Romana - Mary Tamm Voice of K•9 - John Leeson Professor Emilia Rumford - Beatrix Lehmann Vivien Fay/Cessair of Diplos - Susan Engel Leonard De Vries - Nicholas McArdle Martha - Elaine Ives-Cameron Campers - James Murray, Shirin Taylor Megara voices - Gerald Cross, David McAlister Crew Writer - David Fisher Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Designer - John Stout Script editor - Anthony Read Producer - Graham Williams Director - Darrol Blake RT Review by Patrick Mulkern There's fresh blood in the chalice as Doctor Who clocks up its 100th story: it's a confident debut from writer David Fisher and an impressive one-off engagement for director Darrol Blake and designer John Stout. But while we appreciate what these new boys can do, The Stones of Blood is - refreshingly - a tale concerned primarily with women, as Graham Williams and Anthony Read make a concerted effort to bolster female roles in the series. With this edict in mind, David Fisher draws inspiration from the fearsome aunts of his childhood (a pattern he'd repeat in 1979's The Creature from the Pit) and takes us headlong into Daphne du Maurier territory: the Cornish coast, a plot traversing time, ominous birds and, of course, wicked ladies. The last two elements are closely intertwined. The Cailleach is embodied as a resplendent crow. Vivien Fay speaks with a coo, moves stealthily and "used to be a Brown Owl". Even the short-lived Druid, Martha, has raven hair and an aquiline profile. The most magnificent old bird is Professor Emilia Rumford, the craggy historian "conducting a topographical, geological, astronomical, archaeological survey" of the stones. Beatrix Lehmann's performance is an indelible highlight and… breathtaking. There's no other word for it. We hold our breath as she bumbles gamely through screeds of name- and date-laden dialogue. [Tom Baker, Beatrix Lehmann and Mary Tamm. Photographed by Don Smith at BBC TV Centre in July 1978. Copyright Radio Times Archive] Even Tom Baker is visibly in thrall to this veteran actress, who turned 75 during the production. Gloriously gung-ho, on spying the Ogri, Emilia cries, "In the cause of science I think it our duty to capture that creature!" She shares numerous delightful two-handers with the Doctor, Romana and K•9. What a wonderful companion Emilia might have become. The story goes that Beatrix Lehmann accepted the part because, as a dog lover, she was fascinated to see how K•9 worked. She may not have been a household name but her theatrical and literary pedigree reached back to the 1920s. In 30s Berlin, she found a soulmate in Christopher Isherwood, who dedicated his classic novel Good-bye to Berlin to Lehmann. Some kudos. He later wrote that they were "much alike in temperament"; as with much of Isherwood's prose, this comment seems ripe with hidden meaning. I'd like to think the same could be said for The Stones of Blood. It doesn't need an archaeologist to uncover a Sapphic substratum. Silver-haired, weather-beaten Emilia wears masculine attire, not a speck of make-up and no bra - this old lady lets her nipples show through her blouse. She rides a bicycle, carries a truncheon, and is the only person we'll ever see Romana kiss. All could be subtle pointers as to Rumford's sexuality. She also shares a cottage with fellow spinster, pink-suited Vivien Fay (note the double meaning). When Miss Fay coos, "I've been so many things, Emilia, for so many years," it's suffused with suggestion. Vivien is but one identity Cessair has assumed over the millennia: reclusive Mrs Trefusis; husbandless Señora Camara; wicked Lady Morgana Montcalm who "murdered her husband on her wedding night"; the Mother Superior of the Little Sisters of Saint Gudula; and perennially the Cailleach, the Celtic goddess of war, death and magic… Men played little part in the lives of these formidable females. The sexual ambiguity extends to the Megara, twinkling fairy lights that sound like Round the Horne's Julian and Sandy cast as the Ugly Sisters. Even ultra-feminine Romana is butched up with a Burberry flat cap. The Stones of Blood offers nothing gratuitous to mark its place as the 100th story. A cake-cutting scene was dropped, and the plot covers all-new territory. In an assured production, Darrol Blake opts to shoot location scenes on OB cameras not film, ensuring a seamless join with the studio action. It was years before I realised the nocturnal Nine Travellers sequences were recorded inside TV Centre. Other sets (the cottage, De Vries's mansion) look authentic and lived in. There's an astoundingly evocative score from Dudley Simpson; even a memorable theme for the Doctor as he strides through the countryside. Mercifully, the initial concept of the Ogri as lumbering figures was overruled at design stage, and the gliding, pulsating megaliths are the eeriest monsters for some time. The scene where they reduce two campers to skeletons provides a glorious frisson of horror. The switch to a glossy hyperspace ship provides contrast, and the Doctor's trial by the Megara is well scripted and gives Tom Baker chance to shine. There are few shortcomings: De Vries and Martha seem a tad overwrought, even for blood-spilling occultists. Some questions go unanswered. What was Cessair doing on Earth so long? Why pose as the Cailleach? Was she indeed an agent of the Black Guardian? How did Mr De Vries know the Doctor's name and that he was coming to his house? He warns, "Beware the raven or the crow, Doctor. They are her eyes" - but do these birds have a deeper significance? (Four years later, when the Guardian reappears, he'll have a crow fixed to his head.) I rather like that we will never know but can ever ponder. This 100th story doesn't need to be big and blowsy; it's an intriguing yarn with small stakes and vivid characters. It transports us with élan from an atmospheric English setting into a dazzling new dimension - just as An Unearthly Child had done nigh on 500 episodes and 15 years earlier. Above all, The Stones of Blood gives Beatrix Lehmann a role to crown her career. She died nine months after transmission, but as Professor Emilia Rumford gained immortality. - - - Radio Times archive [Available on BBC DVD]
"Revered writer Douglas Adams embraces the show's new comedic approach with buccaneering vim"
Season 16 – Story 99 "This must be one of the great engineering feats of all time: a hollow, space-jumping planet" - Mr Fibuli Storyline Seeking the second segment of the Key to Time on Calufrax, the Doctor, Romana and K•9 instead land on Zanak. This, they discover, is merely a shell powered by engines that enable it to materialise around other planets - including Calufrax - in order to extract their mineral wealth. Behind the piratical plunder is the cyborg Captain, who with each conquest announces a new age of prosperity to his duped subjects. The time travellers, aided by roaming telepaths called Mentiads, manage to board the Bridge, from where the Captain plots to take over the Earth… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 30 September 1978 Part 2 - Saturday 7 October 1978 Part 3 - Saturday 14 October 1978 Part 4 - Saturday 21 October 1978 Production Location filming: May 1978 at Coity Mountain; Monmouthshire golf course, Llanfoist; Daren-felen disused railway tunnel; Bwlch y Garn, Ebbw Vale; and Big Pit, Blaenavon - all in Gwent. Cathedral Cave, Dan-yr-Ogof in Powys. Berkeley Power Station, Gloucestershire Studio recording: May/June 1978 in TC6 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Romana - Mary Tamm Voice of K•9 - John Leeson The Captain - Bruce Purchase Mr Fibuli - Andrew Robertson Kimus - David Warwick Balaton - Ralph Michael Mula - Primi Townsend Pralix - David Sibley Nurse - Rosalind Lloyd Citizen - Clive Bennett Guard - Adam Kurakin Mentiad - Bernard Finch Crew Writer - Douglas Adams Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Designer - John Pusey Script editor - Anthony Read Producer - Graham Williams Director - Pennant Roberts RT Review by Mark Braxton All aboard the Tardis, me hearties! The debut Doctor Who script from revered writer Douglas Adams embraces the show's new comedic approach with buccaneering vim. The title tells you everything you can expect from this fizzing four-parter - unscrupulous fortune-hunters, scattered jewels, a disfigured captain, a "parrot", even a walk on the plank - but with its playful sci-fi furnishings, it becomes a gleaming chest of treasure. There have been other attempts to marry piracy with science fiction, both within and without the domain of the Doctor, but none is a patch on this one. Ahem. Earlier the same year, Adams had displayed his credentials with the first radio series of The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, and he brings much of the same skewed, surreal humour and conceptual genius to the Key to Time saga. In many ways he was a perfect match for Graham Williams' less scary, more light-hearted Whoniverse. But there was a downside - and not one that Adams can be blamed for. He seemed to live by the motto "Think big". A world-swallowing planet, super-compressed matter, anti-inertia corridors, psychic interference transmitters… it's all vast and wonderful stuff. But in TV terms it would be another 27 years before the show had the budget to cope with such mind-blowing conceits. The universe-on-a-shoestring ethic is admirably adhered to, however. The hard graft by the FX and props teams, canny location filming and enthusiastic playing all lend credence to Adams' fantastical outpourings, and ensure that the adventure is never less than a rip-roaring watch. Best just to ignore the converted-speedboat air cars and ropey flying sequences. Despite his split lip - caused by an angry dog but explained in story terms by a fall against the Tardis console - Tom Baker is on unstoppable, swashbuckling form, wading through the "bafflegab" and squaring up to the evildoers with toothy glee. The Doctor's relationship with upstart Time Lady Romana goes on a pleasing little journey in this story, from initial dismissiveness ("Good looks are no substitute for a sound character") to hearty acceptance ("Come on, Romana, we've got a job to do"). For her part, Mary Tamm is shaping up well. Ultra-posh and smug though Romana may be, Tamm launches herself into the fray with command and froideur, managing to carry off a pink-shirt-and-tight-white-trews combo with ease while providing effervescent banter with Baker. K•9 is still the Doctor's "best friend", though, and The Pirate Planet is an eventful outing for inspector gadget. I love the moment he offers his master the zapped carcass of the Polyphase Avatron as a hunting dog would surrender a downed pheasant. Among the guests, Bruce Purchase (a cross between Gan from Blake's 7 and Tommy Cooper) goes at it hammer and tong as anger-management failure the Captain. His pairing with Andrew Robertson's meek and Smee-ish Fibuli is a delightful one - over-ripe, perhaps, but perfectly in keeping with the overall tone. Certain questions occur while watching the story. Why do the inhabitants of Zanak never question why their mines keep replenishing themselves, or why their night skies periodically change? And was the line "I can't get over the Mentiads" written specifically for Pseuds Corner? Nevertheless, I see it as a sprightly success. Adams wrote just three stories for Doctor Who - including the ill-fated Shada - but for a brief spell at the twilight of the 1970s, this King of Concepts shot jets of colour and sparks from his wand-like pen. He died in 2001, aged just 49, and his loss is still keenly felt. Just think what magic The Mill would conjure with his gargantuan imagination today… - - - Radio Times archive [Available on BBC DVD]
The White Guardian sends the Doctor on a season-long quest for the Key to Time and gives him Time Lady companion Romana
Season 16 – Story 98 "Please don't panic, Romana. Come and sit down… when you've faced death as often as I have, this is much more fun" - the Doctor Storyline The Tardis is stopped in flight by the god-like White Guardian, who commands the Doctor to collect the six segments of the Key to Time. They've been scattered and disguised throughout the cosmos, but must be reassembled to avert eternal chaos. A reluctant Doctor is also saddled with a new assistant, Romana, a haughty graduate from the Time Lord Academy. First stop: the city of Shur on Ribos. It's an inhospitable, feudal world in the grip of an Icetime. Earth-born conman Garron and sidekick Unstoffe are conspiring to sell Ribos to the Graff Vynda-K, a deposed despot from Levithia. They reel him in with a lump of blue jethrik, "the rarest and most valuable element in the galaxy" - which no one yet realises is the first segment of the Key to Time… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 2 September 1978 Part 2 - Saturday 9 September 1978 Part 3 - Saturday 16 September 1978 Part 4 - Saturday 23 September 1978 Production Studio recording: April 1978 in TC4 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Romana - Mary Tamm Voice of K•9 - John Leeson The White Guardian - Cyril Luckham Garron - Iain Cuthbertson Unstoffe - Nigel Plaskitt Graff Vynda-K - Paul Seed Sholakh - Robert Keegan Captain - Prentis Hancock Binro - Timothy Bateson The Seeker - Ann Tirard Shrieves - Oliver Maguire, John Hamill Crew Writer - Robert Holmes Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Designer - Ken Ledsham Script editor - Anthony Read Producer - Graham Williams Director - George Spenton-Foster RT Review by Patrick Mulkern Season 16 acts for me like comfort TV. Its six stories provide a rich and varied degustation menu, some dishes more appetising than others, but each a tantalising taster of new humanoid societies (Ribos, Zanak, Diplos, Tara, Delta Magna, Atrios) - all of which could be, but never have been, savoured again. Violence, horror and chills have ceded to humour, fun and adventure. Royalty and rogues replace maniacs and monsters; if the latter do appear, they're a sideshow and usually rubbish, but no matter. And in the quest for the Key to Time, we have an umbrella theme that engenders a sense of purpose lacking from Doctor Who for many moons. It's easy now to forget the impact of the Tardis being stopped in flight by the hitherto-unheard-of Guardian, a deity above the level of Time Lord. To a magnificent organ fanfare, the doors are forced open, our hero is bathed in a golden light and a god-like voice booms, "Doctor, your presence is required." That this moment is neatly followed by the depiction of the Guardian as a twinkly colonial gentleman, perhaps on his way to Raffles, is typical of the deftness script editor Anthony Read brings to the series. It was Read, not Robert Holmes, who crafted this opening scene, which elegantly sets up the premise for the season. One could almost imagine it as a reiteration of a meeting between Graham Williams and Tom Baker, as producer laid out his plans to reluctant star. (Doctor: "And if I don't? …Nothing? You mean nothing will happen to me?" Guardian: "Nothing at all. Ever." And later: "An assistant? Please, sir, on an assignment like this I'd much rather work alone.") Ice maiden Romana is radically different from noble savage Leela. A rapid progression from the previous story's wet Rodan, she reminds us that, yes, women do exist and command respect in Time Lord society. Beneath the permafrost Mary Tamm suggests currents of warmth and looks stunning in a floor-length frock and snowy fleece that Marlene Dietrich would kill for. Romana's poise, intellect and hauteur sharply counterpoint the Doctor's scruffy, disreputable persona, and we sympathise with him when she claims he's "suffering from a massive compensation syndrome," and "We have a negative empathy." As a side note, Romana is specifically introduced as "assistant", only the third in the series' history (after Liz and Jo). Also, despite succinct Gallifreyan names in recent outings, Williams/Read have decided to call her "Romanadvoratrelundar", even if Tamm pronounces it "Romanadvoratnalundar". Tom Baker also uses "…nalundar" in The Stones of Blood, and we will only hear it spoken "correctly" once - by Lalla Ward in Warriors' Gate. By now, a pattern is in place for K•9's involvement: to feature early on in humorous Tardis exchanges then be summoned halfway into the plot - and, for me, he begins his transition from irritation to icon. Rather than growling at intruders, he bleats, "Sentient life forms approaching." What's not to love? Even mistress Romana warms to him: "There's a good computer." The Ribos Operation is one of a small band of Doctor Who stories (many written by Holmes) that, despite a handful of sets and characters, manages to suggest an entire society. Beyond the relic room, Graff's quarters, concourse and catacombs, we believe there is a city called Shur, surrounded by a forbidding tundra with "several settlements to the north". It may be, as Garron says, beyond the comprehension of the "primitive, brutish peasants", but we also accept that Ribos is part of the Greater Cyrrhenic Empire and protected by the Levithian Alliance. Such is the scope and precision of Holmes' drip-feed dialogue. "He's a terrible ham at heart," says galactic conman Garron of his protégé Unstoffe - a sentiment applicable to almost every member of this overripe cast. Even without his voluminous furs, Iain Cuthbertson is a screen-swamping presence. Such a shame Garron ("I don't sell mines, Doctor. I sell planets") never returned to the series. Challenging him for prize-winning prosciutto are Nigel Plaskitt with Unstoffe's tall tale of scringe stone told in a cod Somerset accent; Paul Seed visibly salivating over the Graff's warmongering diatribes; and Ann Tirard as the delirious, daubed, bone-rattling Seeker. All good stuff. But now I must hold up my hand to heresy: against popular opinion, I confess I cannot abide Binro the Heretic. His subplot may offer better-than-average filler, but Timothy Bateman's wheezing and gurning surpass even my appetite for gammon. And Unstoffe's line "One day, even here, in the future, men will turn to each other and say, 'Binro was right' " really tests my gag reflex. The show's star, of course, can more than hold his own among such outré personalities. Tom Baker begins his fifth year in confident mood, even as the fourth Doctor is chastened by the arrival of the Guardian and Romana. He delights in Garron's company and is unfazed by the Graff's threats. Baker's mugging during the second cliffhanger may destroy the tension but the pay-off in part three ("Get up, you cringing cur/Don't hit the cringing cur", slapping the Graff with his own gloves) is comedy gold. The risible Shrivenzale and its floppy claws aside (as I said earlier, no matter), this is an assured production, recorded entirely within Studio 4 at Television Centre. There are few effects, gorgeous costumes and fine sets, be they well-lit "exteriors" or the candlelit Hall of the Dead. Dudley Simpson provides one of his most entrancing scores in years. A commendable start to a season but no pause for breath… Back in the Tardis the Doctor lets his comely new assistant transform the jethrik. "The first segment," he murmurs. "Simple, wasn't it? Only five more to go…" Can't wait. - - - Radio Times archive The magazine looked back over the changing role of the companion in "Who's girls". Here's a clean version of the lovely close-up shot of Tom Baker and Mary Tamm, by photographer John Timbers. RT billings [Available on BBC DVD]
In a very silly, shoddy six-parter set on Gallifrey, Sontarans arrive, Leela departs and the Tardis has brick walls
Season 15 – Story 97 "Don't you care about your world being invaded by alien warmongers? These are Sontaran shock troops… a few, still, but soon there'll be thousands, millions, threatening time itself" - the Doctor Storyline An out-of-character Doctor arrives on Gallifrey claiming presidency of the Time Lords. In apparent collusion with the telepathic Vardans, he expedites their arrival by making K•9 deactivate the planet's defences. His behaviour is intended to deflect Vardan suspicion; he even banishes Leela from the citadel in case she derails his plan. As Leela joins a fighting force of exiled Time Lords, K•9 helps the Doctor eject the Vardans, only to lay the way open for a Sontaran influx. When the newcomers' offensive is repelled, Leela stays behind with Chancellery guard Andred, and K•9 joins her. Departing in the Tardis, the Doctor unboxes a new version of the robot. First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 4 February 1978 Part 2 - Saturday 11 February 1978 Part 3 - Saturday 18 February 1978 Part 4 - Saturday 25 February 1978 Part 5 - Saturday 4 March 1978 Part 6 - Saturday 11 March 1978 Production Location filming: November/December 1977 at British Oxygen, Hammersmith; St Anne's Hospital and Beachfields quarry in Redhill, Surrey Filming: November 1977 at Bray Studios OB recording: November/December 1977 at St Anne's Hospital, Redhill, Surrey Studio recording: November 1977 in TC8 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Leela - Louise Jameson Voice of K•9 - John Leeson Borusa - John Arnatt Andred - Chris Tranchell Castellan Kelner - Milton Johns Rodan - Hilary Ryan Lord Gomer - Dennis Edwards Lord Savar - Reginald Jessup Gold usher - Charles Morgan Ablif - Ray Callaghan Jasko - Michael Mundell Nesbin - Max Faulkner Presta - Gai Smith Vardans - Stan McGowan, Tom Kelly Stor - Derek Deadman Sontaran - Stuart Fell Bodyguard - Michael Harley Guard - Christopher Christou Castellan guard - Eric Danot Crew Writer - David Agnew (a pseudonym for Graham Williams and Anthony Read) Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Designer - Barbara Gosnold Script editor - Anthony Read Producer - Graham Williams Director - Gerald Blake RT Review by Mark Braxton A return to Gallifrey, feral Time Lords, Sontarans on the march, new aliens and a departing companion… classy ingredients certainly, but the result was a dog's dinner. The reasons for such a disappointment are manifold, and it's no surprise to find the writers hiding under an invisibility cloak. Had Robert Holmes accepted an invitation to write a sequel to his bracing 1976 thriller The Deadly Assassin, The Invasion of Time might have been a classic. But he didn't, a set of David Weir scripts about killer cats proved unusable, and producer Graham Williams and script editor Anthony Read had a white-knuckle ride scraping something together before the deadline. And that wasn't the end of the nightmare. At the pre-production stage, Louise Jameson declared that she would be hanging up her leathers at the end of the season (more on that later), and an industrial dispute mangled the shooting schedule. It would be mercenary to appraise the story without taking all these factors into account. But such horrors have befallen the show before, with a vastly more favourable outcome. Sweet are the uses of adversity, you might say. Sadly, not on this occasion. Inept sequences abound, dampening any drama with impressive regularity. Here are my favourites: 1 The flapping cloaks worn by the Chancellery guards tangle in their legs as they walk. 2 The tin-foil invading force is weedy in sound and vision - the Vardans' ultimate configuration of three blokes in Action Man fatigues is appropriately anticlimactic. 3 Everyone who walks along corridors has to negotiate the insane architecture, reducing an impassioned stride to a nervous zigzag. Quite who the dwarf plastic chairs are supposed to provide comfort for is anyone's guess. 4 A Chancellery guard, using thick gauntlets, tries to unlock the Tardis with an assortment of perspex Play School shapes. 5 A Sontaran stumbles on one poolside chair and, when another is thrown at him, he falls and places himself down a step next to the pool with weird deliberation. The Invasion of Time got off to a poor start with the casting: for every example of a canny yin, there is a jarring yang. John Arnatt's Borusa is a triumph of old-school disapproval and grizzled rectitude, but the Vardans look like they've been pulled in off the street. As the unctuous Kelner, Milton Johns fits like a glove, being suitably… Milton Johns-ish, but Derek Deadman's asthmatic Stor is a fiasco. I've enjoyed Mr Deadman's work elsewhere, but I won't accept a cockney Sontaran ("force feeyoowd"; "the uwtimate goaw"). His jaundiced fright-mask heightens the misery. It's a shame because the Sontarans' shock entrance is an ace up the sleeve. The idea of one alien race riding on the coattails of another is an excellent one. As is the Doctor's apparent duplicity, and his rejection of a companion. For two episodes we wonder what our hero is playing at. And that's good for the show, even if Tom Baker's Doctor in shouty mode is deeply unattractive. Let's also give praise to the models and space shots, taking Doctor Who visual effects into uncharted areas of sturdy respectability. But back to that infamous departure. Louise Jameson often expressed her wish for Leela to go out in a blaze of glory. Instead her fiery savage, a woman who lives for the hunt, hooks up with a glorified security man with unseemly haste and stays on Gallifrey. For this we can lay the blame squarely at the door of Graham Williams, who'd been irked by the timing of Jameson's announcement. "I'm afraid that was me in a tiff for which I can only apologise," he once said. Tiff or not, it reduced one of the show's greatest companions to undeserving ignominy. Apart from one excellent line ("Discussion is for the wise or the helpless, and I am neither"), Leela is underwritten throughout. Skipping gamely around in tiny bleached skins, Jameson must have been horribly self-conscious on set. And the Doctor is so dismissive of her that we end up being glad she rejects him. Leela was so much more than a sidekick; she was an assertive, gung-ho heroine in her own right. If only Williams had gone down the Adric route and written her into self-sacrificing immortality. To think that fans criticised The Deadly Assassin for its prosaic demystification of the Doctor's people. In The Invasion of Time the wastelands of Gallifrey are a sandpit, the Time Lords are camp tittle-tattlers ("Aren't you due for regeneration?") and the voluminous bowels of the Tardis are reduced to one brick warehouse and a hospital. The parting shot of Baker smiling at the camera (there are other examples of fourth-wall demolition) encapsulates the story's silliness and signals the comedy territory into which Doctor Who would soon plunge headlong. Radio Times archive [Available on BBC DVD]
"Thud! The sound of my head hitting the keyboard after this unremitting exercise in tedium..."
Season 15 – Story 96 "None of us likes it, but the Quest is the Quest" - Jackson Storyline At the edge of the cosmos the Tardis lands aboard the R1C, a spaceship crewed by four weary Minyans who've been on a quest for 100,000 years. Led by Captain Jackson, they've stayed alive using Time Lord powers of regeneration, while tracking the P7E, a ship containing the race banks of their lost civilisation. Jackson's ship plunges into a spiral nebula, at the heart of which a new planet is forming around the P7E. In tunnels at its core, their fellow Minyans have evolved into Trogs, Guards and Seers, whose lives are controlled by a megalomaniac computer, the Oracle. The Doctor, Leela and K•9 must help the Minyans escape this oppressive underworld and set course for Minyos Two… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 7 January 1978 Part 2 - Saturday 14 January 1978 Part 3 - Saturday 21 January 1978 Part 4 - Saturday 28 January 1978 Production Studio recording: October 1977 in TC3 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Leela - Louise Jameson Voice of K•9 - John Leeson Jackson - James Maxwell Herrick - Alan Lake Orfe - Jonathan Newth Tala - Imogen Bickford-Smith Rask - James Marcus Tarn - Godfrey James Idmon - Jimmy Gardner Idas - Norman Tipton Guard Klimt - Jay Neil Ankh - Frank Jarvis Lakh - Richard Shaw Naia - Stacey Tendeter Voice of the Oracle - Christine Pollon Crew Writers - Bob Baker, Dave Martin Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Designer - Dick Coles Script editor - Anthony Read Producer - Graham Williams Director - Norman Stewart RT Review by Patrick Mulkern Thud! Sorry, that wasn't the Minyan spaceship impacting another new world, but the sound of my head hitting the keyboard after this unremitting exercise in tedium. All sorts of excuses could be (and have been) made for Underworld: chiefly, inexperienced personnel struggling with budget constraints and edicts from BBC executives to tone down the programme's violence, horror and fear factor. But there's really no defence for such vapid characterisation, dodgy science and a dearth of anything dramatically engaging. Nothing compels the viewer to keep watching or come back next week. It's as if anything that was ever good about Doctor Who has crawled deep under ground and died. Seeing Underworld again, I rather empathised with actress Imogen Bickford-Smith (Tala) who drifts through the entire drear-fest like a sour-faced somnambulist. Wake up dear, it's Doctor Who. Oh, all right then, don't bother. I'll nudge you when it's finished. But wait, hasn't your agent put it about that you're replacing Louise Jameson as the new companion…? Not on the strength of this zestless audition, you're not. And as for your crewmates, they look as if they'd be happier in a serial about long-distance haulage (The Brothers, perhaps). What's really on their minds when they trot out their mantra "the Quest is the Quest"… a better part maybe? At least, Alan Lake (Mr Diana Dors) shows bursts of energy as the pent-up, bouffanted Herrick. Whereas the Trog under-dwellers look like extras rejected by the usually unfussy Crossroads casting director; their "panic" during the skyfall scene is execrable. And who doesn't snigger/cringe/jeer when the leaden Seers lift their cowls to reveal the ball-studded bollards beneath? The confrontation between the Doctor and the Oracle ("nothing but a mass of superheated junk with delusions of grandeur") provides a fleeting frisson, lifted by the performances of Tom Baker and Christine Pollon. She makes the Oracle sound rather like the Animus from The Web Planet (1965). Or should that be an irate brothel keeper on fifty fags a day? The tension wavers when the Doctor rams home that the Oracle is "just another machine with megalomania. Another insane object, another self-aggrandising artefact." Yes, we've yawned at mad computers before in Doctor Who (as recently as Face of Evil), as well as in Star Trek and the rest. The quest for humour seems beyond this team. At the top, primitive Leela is seen capable of piloting the Tardis while the Doctor is busy decorating. He strides in wearing artist's smock, brandishing a paintbrush, his face flecked in paint. But the scene is directed with little flair for comedy. The only section that amuses me is when Leela is pacified by the Minyans, only to be brought to her senses by the Doctor: "You're primitive. Wild, warlike, aggressive and tempestuous, and bad-tempered, too." "Who did it? I'll kill them. I'll kill them!" she fumes. "You're all laughing at me!" - expertly conveyed by faultless Louise Jameson. I also rather love the spiral nebula looming on the Tardis scanner (although this may have more to do with Dudley Simpson's sombre underscore). "A gas cloud coalescing to form a whole new star system," explains the Doctor. "We're on the edge of the cosmos, the frontiers of creation, the boundary between what is and isn't, or isn't yet, anyway." Ooh, I'm almost getting excited. The BBC Visual Effects Department pulls the stops out. The opening starfield, the nebula, the Minyan spacecraft crash-sploshing into the molten surface of the new planet are all beautifully executed. Even the interminable CSO cave sequences are for the most part a technical triumph. But good fx - while a relief - cannot compensate for dismal drama. Some of Doctor Who's all-time classics contain heinous fx, but nobody minded because those serials were the televisual equivalent of page-turners. 1970s Who plundered good ideas, be they from Nigel Kneale and John Wyndham (the early Pertwees) or gothic horror (early Bakers). Now the classic texts are fair game. Etymologists may have readily spotted the links to Greek mythology: Orpheus/Orfe, Heracles/Herrick and Atalanta/Tala. Just as Persephone descended to Hades, the P7E lies at the core of "the realm of Hedas". Calling your story Underworld is one key pointer, but if viewers have missed that, at the end the Doctor calls Jackson Jason. He tells Leela, "Jason was another captain on a long quest… He was looking for the Golden Fleece." And then a rather deft touch: "Perhaps those myths are not just old stories of the past, you see, but prophecies of the future." It's extraordinary how sometimes the stories with the grandest ideas turn out to be the dullest to watch. Underworld may not be hell on earth but there's a worry that the BBC Drama Department has, like Demeter's daughter, feasted on pomegranate seeds - and sent Doctor Who spiralling into a pit from which it may not return any time soon. Underwhelmed. Radio Times archive [Available on BBC DVD]
Robert Holmes's ingenious, witty spoof of bureaucracy and the tax system – set on Pluto
Season 15 – Story 95 "Grinding oppression of the masses is the only policy that pays dividends" - the Collector Storyline Landing on Pluto in the distant future, the Doctor, Leela and K•9 find a habitable world and a working population taxed by "the Company" on everything under the six suns. Its human representative, Gatherer Hade, answers to the mysterious Collector, one of a race of Usurians who suppress civilisations by economic means. The travellers foment an underground rebellion in a bid to overthrow the Company… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 26 November 1977 Part 2 - Saturday 3 December 1977 Part 3 - Saturday 10 December 1977 Part 4 - Saturday 17 December 1977 Production Location filming: June 1977 at WD & HO Tobacco Factory, Hartcliffe, Bristol; and Camden Town deep tube shelters, London Studio recording: July 1977 in TC3 and TC6 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Leela - Louise Jameson Voice of K•9 - John Leeson Gatherer Hade - Richard Leech The Collector - Henry Woolf Bisham - David Rowlands Marn - Jonina Scott Cordo - Roy Macready Mandrel - William Simons Goudry - Michael Keating Veet - Adrienne Burgess Synge - Derek Crewe Nurse - Carole Hopkin Commander - Colin McCormack Guard - Tom Kelly Crew Writer - Robert Holmes Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Designer - Tony Snoaden Script editor - Robert Holmes Producer - Graham Williams Director - Pennant Roberts RT Review by Mark Braxton If anger can be said to have a good side, it is this: occasionally it is muzzled, shaped and channelled into a work of art. Robert Holmes was clearly angry when he wrote The Sun Makers. A sour experience with the British taxation system spurred him to savage its bureaucracy, arbitrariness and dismissiveness. That he does so with such delicacy, even beauty, says much for his control and his imperious way with words. Everything about the production is playful, witty, ingenious. The story is easily one of the most successful in the canon - not necessarily with the public, but in terms of the writer's objectives. There's so much meat and richness to the scripts that the viewer almost needs a strong antacid afterwards. One can only imagine the delight with which director Pennant Roberts first leafed through the pages; his feel for and understanding of Holmes's tar-black humour and excoriating satire translate beautifully. Holmes's little jokes - corridor P45, the Inner Retinue, Usurians - were lost on me as a teenager, but I still enjoyed its action (a full-scale uprising, underground brawls and laser guns that actually fire from where they're meant to). The multi-level approach in drama is a singular skill, and Holmes was a master. The Sun Makers is imaginatively cast across the board, but driven by a brace of formidable performances. As the pompous, fawning, hilariously erudite Gatherer Hade, Richard Leech gives one of the towering guest performances. It's an immaculately written part and Leech seizes the opportunity with gusto. His string of ridiculous, endlessly varied superlatives ("Your amplification"; "Your globosity"); the swagger with which he tosses out scraps of knowledge ("…of a kind called MA-HO-GA-NAY"); and the bloated satisfaction with which he basks in his exalted position all add strata of humour to his ludicrous popinjay of a character. Villainous, certainly, but far too amusing to be truly detestable, Hade is an illustrious creation and his death at the hands of the rebellion is truly shocking. Almost his equal is Henry Woolf as the Collector. Poring over fiscal tickertape and obsessing over profitability, the snivelling statistician seems to exist only in a financial sense. With his steamed eyebrows and neckless pinstripe, this "fish-blooded sadist" reduces all conversation to the subject of material gain - a metaphor for our times way more deserving of a comeback than Gordon Gekko - and delivers it in a maniacal nasal monotone. But let's not forget Roy Macready's downtrodden foundry worker Cordo (the story's Holmes figure) and William Simons' sneering but cowardly Mandrel. The Sun Makers is Louise Jameson's favourite story, and that's no surprise. Leela is first and foremost a fighter and Holmes never forgets it. Facing execution at the hands of Mandrell and his Undercity skivvies, for example, she squares her shoulders and unleashes this little beauty: "Before I die, I'll see this rat hole ankle deep in blood. That is a promised thing." She would never return to these feisty heights again. Designer Tony Snoaden is on top form, too: the Aztec-inspired centrepiece, the entrance to the Gatherer's office via what looks like the ribcage of a dead dinosaur, the Metropolis-style control room, the magnified circuitry panels and the impressively thick door to the Collector's safe. They're matched by Paddy Kingsland's canny sound design: especially the wittering electronica of the Collector's hub and the swirling flush of his demise. Even the mournful little "wooo" that K•9 makes is rather sweet. There are also lovely flourishes from composer Dudley Simpson. He even gives Marn a slinky little leitmotif, although whether her rather dull character really deserves one is another matter. On the subject of faults, it's extraordinary that the Plutonians have never questioned the status quo - it takes the Doctor to ask what The Company is for, and who gets the profit. The "false" ending to part two is very naughty - see how it affects the start of part three. And the rooftop view of the Megropolis is nothing more than a photograph, and a poor one at that. But in a season that's as uneven as the Grampians, The Sun Makers is a snow-capped pinnacle. As outgoing script editor, Holmes was determined to leave an impression. He did so with a lasting legacy. It's as relevant as it ever was, it's the best "humorous Who" by light years, and it's an exquisite flight of the imagination. Galileo would indeed have been impressed. Radio Times archive [Available on BBC DVD]
The Doctor and Leela encounter an ancient skull with a terrifying power in a spooky English mansion
Season 15 Story 94 "The Fendahl absorbs the full spectrum of energy, what some people call a life force or soul. It eats life itself" - the Doctor Storyline The Tardis is dragged off course by a sonic time scan emanating from Fetch Priory in the English countryside. A team of scientists led by Dr Fendelman are experimenting on a fossilised skull thought to be 12 million years old - a date that confounds their knowledge of human evolution. The Doctor realises the skull is a remnant of the Fendahl, a creature from the Fifth Planet that "grows and exists by death". Over eons it has engineered humanity to re-exert itself in the present day using energy from Fendelman's time scanner… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 29 October 1977 Part 2 - Saturday 5 November 1977 Part 3 - Saturday 12 November 1977 Part 4 - Saturday 19 November 1977 Production Location filming: August 1977 at Stargrove Manor, East End, Hampshire Studio recording: August/September 1977 in TC6 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Leela - Louise Jameson Thea Ransome - Wanda Ventham Martha Tyler - Daphne Heard Dr Fendelman - Denis Lill Ted Moss - Edward Evans Jack Tyler - Geoffrey Hinsliff Maximillian Stael - Scott Fredericks Adam Colby - Edward Arthur David Mitchell - Derek Martin Hiker - Graham Simpson Crew Writer - Chris Boucher Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Designer - Anna Ridley Script editor - Robert Holmes Producer - Graham Williams Director - George Spenton-Foster RT Review by Patrick Mulkern I recall meeting the Doctor, for the second time, in September 1978 quite vividly. Well, you would, wouldn't you? I'd won a local newspaper competition, along with maybe a dozen other young fans, for an audience with "Tom Baker" at the Bull Inn, Gerrards Cross. A towering figure, he turned up with trademark scarf and flouncy hair, and in benevolent Gallifreyan mode fielded such demanding questions as "What's your favourite story?" "Ooh, erm, I really can't remember them all," stalled the Doctor, then inspiration: "I know! What was that one set in the big mansion?" "Pyramids of Mars," suggested one acolyte. "Seeds of Doom," ventured another. "Eh? No, no, no," he puffed, dismissing these treasured classics. "That one last year. At Mick Jagger's house." "Image of the Fendahl?" I piped up. The Doctor beamed at my 13-year-old self. "Yes, that's it. That was a good one." I don't remember him justifying his choice, but Image of the Fendahl is indeed a "good one", if not quite great, and a highlight of a dodgy season. Tom Baker evidently enjoyed it. You can see that on screen. He's fully engaged with the drama, providing a pleasing balance of gravitas and flippancy. He conveys wads of potentially awkward exposition about the function and intent of the Fendahl almost without blinking. And there are comedic ad-libs: the Doctor offers the skull a jelly baby; he reminds Colby to flee in three minutes, but holds up four fingers. There's even an address to camera ("Time's running out") that for once doesn't irk me. Baker also seems more responsive to Louise Jameson. In rehearsals, between themselves, they've worked out small moments of "business". In part three he falls bodily across her and rests there without a hint of anything untoward. "You are very heavy," Leela moans. In part four, after she's tumbled to the floor, he assists her, his hand fleetingly caressing her left breast. In several respects Leela has been toned down. She's still brave, ever ready for battle or exertion, but the juicy threats of violence barely surface and her knife seems more of an emblem than a weapon now. And have we skipped a harrowing adventure in which Leela's skin was bleached and her lustrous hair was singed off? (In reality, Jameson had to pin her hair up after a BBC coiffeuse hacked off six inches.) Somehow Leela has also sourced a new pale-skin outfit, which drains her of colour. On the BBC DVD, Jameson reveals she still owns this costume and takes it to conventions - "Not on me, I hasten to add!" Young viewers anticipating any K•9 action would have been sorely disappointed. A late addition to the cast and therefore these scripts, he's inactive in the Tardis while the Doctor fixes "a little corrosion in its circuits". The control room set itself looks wretched with beige walls, an unconvincing metallic finish to the console and a dilapidated central column. But on with the story. Image of the Fendahl is often cited as the last gasp of the horror sub-genre prevalent in earlier seasons. But punches are pulled. The hiker's decomposing corpse isn't shown, and both Fendelman's murder and Stael's suicide occur off camera. With its spooky mansion, slithering menace in the woods, occult coven and spectre of the Fendahl, this actually reads more like a tale of the supernatural. There's atmospheric night filming and an unusually eerie soundscape. Musician Dudley Simpson takes a back seat, while Dick Mills lets rip with some pervasive radiophonic reverberation. Chris Boucher's scripts are his strongest for the series, pairing colourful dialogue with a small band of broadly drawn characters. Each serves a purpose, most of them genetically predicated over eons to be at Fetch Priory by the Fendahl. Daphne Heard is magnificent as the "loony old trout" Mother Tyler, dishing out charms full of rock salt and murmuring, "In my mind, it called me… Hungry… It were hungry for my soul." The white-coated archaeologist/scientists fare less well perhaps: Fendelman with his cod Germanic accent, Stael suddenly becoming a villain, his motives unclear, and Colby puffed up with wearisome sarcasm. The performances are so arch, I don't really believe in any of them as people. Boucher has freely admitted he borrowed from Quatermass. And the concepts of an ancient artefact being dug up and an alien influencing evolution aren't new to Doctor Who. But there's something innately creepy about the glowing skull with its embedded pentagram. "A form of neural relay," says Fendelman. "This is where the energy is stored. It is interesting, is it not, that for as long as man can remember, the pentagram has been a symbol for mystical energy." The complexity of the Fendahl as a gestalt creature, comprising a core and 12 Fendahleen, is highly unusual and imaginative - even if its individual parts pose little credible threat. The core (Thea transformed into a golden goddess) is strikingly beautiful but she just swivels on a dais swishing her gown. It's easy to spot that her "eyes" are painted over Wanda Ventham's own closed eyelids. The full-size caterpillar Fendahleen is borderline laughable, too, with its ungainly wobble and foreskin-like hood. The lasting image of the Fendahl is of a serial that is the sum of its admirable parts, of a production that was one of the least fraught behind the scenes in season 15, and of a happy band at work. No wonder Tom Baker remembered it fondly. Radio Times archive [Available on BBC DVD]
A change in tone for Who – less horror, more humour and the arrival of K•9
Season 15 – Story 93 "It is the right of every creature across the universe to survive, multiply and perpetuate its species. How else does the predator exist?" - the Nucleus Storyline An intelligent virus - the Nucleus of the Swarm - infects the Doctor aboard the Tardis, which lands on Saturn's moon Titan around the year AD 5000. The personnel of a refuelling station, and a shuttle relief crew arriving there, are also contaminated. Before lapsing into a coma, the Doctor instructs Leela how to pilot the Tardis to a local hospital asteroid. Here Professor Marius, assisted by his "personal data bank", K•9, clones the time travellers and injects them into the Doctor's blood stream to fight the parasite… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 1 October 1977 Part 2 - Saturday 8 October 1977 Part 3 - Saturday 15 October 1977 Part 4 - Saturday 22 October 1977 Production Filming: April 1977 at Bray Studios Studio recording: April 1977 in TC6 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Leela - Louise Jameson Voice of K•9 - John Leeson Professor Marius - Frederick Jaeger Lowe - Michael Sheard Safran - Brian Grellis Meeker - Edmund Pegge Silvey - Jay Neill Parsons - Roy Herrick Marius's nurse - Elizabeth Norman Ophthalmologist - Jim McManus Cruikshank - Roderick Smith Hedges - Kenneth Waller Medic - Pat Gorman Reception nurse - Nell Curran Crewman - Anthony Rowlands Nucleus - John Scott Martin Nucleus voice - John Leeson Crew Writers - Bob Baker, Dave Martin Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Designer - Barry Newbery Script editor - Robert Holmes Producer - Graham Williams Director - Derrick Goodwin RT Review by Mark Braxton After the fog and corpses of the Hinchcliffe throwback Horror of Fang Rock came a sharp contrast, and a new direction: a kidified, Poundland Star Wars. Under unequivocal instruction from on high, new producer Graham Williams was told to tone down the programme's violence and to increase its humour. Perhaps also influenced by the global sensation of Luke Skywalker and co at the cinema, Williams went out all guns blazing. If only the guns looked like they worked… An effects-heavy outing, The Invisible Enemy opens in such a way as to demonstrate the drawbacks of such an approach on budget-compromised drama. The first shot of a colourful starfield is an impressive one; unfortunately the second is of a spaceship wobbling its way through an asteroid field. To be fair, many of the effects are excellent. Such were the requirements of this mini space opera that two VFX designers were needed instead of one. While Tony Harding had just three weeks to create K•9 for the first studio session, Ian Scoones used Bray Studios rather than the BBC's own stages to film the model sequences. Which may explain why the excellent Titan base sequences resemble the sort of thing Brian Johnson was creating for Space: 1999. Unfortunately, for every scene of a shuttle descending smoothly below ground, there's a ship twirling out of control that looks like a loo roll pushed down some string. And there you have it: success and failure in precarious juxtaposition. It's evident not just in the special effects but in the ambition of the serial as a whole. A space station, shuttle interior, space hospital, a new Tardis control room, the inside of a brain… Baker and Martin's romping yarn brings out the best in veteran designer Barry Newbery, who does a splendid job. I especially like the linguistic corruption that has resulted in signs saying "ISOLAYSHUN" and "EGSIT". But some of the action that takes place within the sets is unbelievably incompetent. In one scene, an infected human shoots his gun, point-blank and yet still ineffectually, at K•9, who in return fires a partially visible laser-beam at the man's genitals. The man clasps his groin, accidentally dislodges a supposedly rigid marble column and collapses, kicking the column a few more inches for good measure. Just six seconds long but a total disaster from start to finish. Thankfully the programme welcomes back a couple of old hands to anchor proceedings. Frederick Jaeger, so excellent in Planet of Evil, here plays the endearing Professor Marius. He sounds like Heinz Wolff and looks like an art curator from an episode of Wallander. And Michael "Mr Bronson" Sheard returns for his fourth story to date, this time in the thankless role of foremost human infectee Lowe. Under harsh lighting and against pristine white sets, Louise Jameson has lost her tan as Leela and, back in her loincloth, looks unsurprisingly ill at ease. Not that she gives anything less than her usual 100 per cent as the sassy savage ("I am not ashamed of what I am"). The Doctor, once again, rubbishes Leela's sixth sense (with what sounds like a certain vehemence from Baker, too), and doesn't acquit himself with any great heroism. Destroying an entire life form, something that would once have been anathema to him, he chuckles at his own mischief: "That was a good idea of mine, K•9, to blow it up." On the subject of K•9, the birth and operation of the metal mongrel was blighted with mechanical distemper. "Many retakes were necessitated by problems with K•9," Barry Newbery has said. "It was a right pain because it hardly ever worked." But for Graham Williams, the opportunity to corral a younger audience was too good to miss. K•9's overhaul for the rebooted Doctor Who has gone a long way to curing me of my cynophobia. And in any case, Williams was proved right: K•9 has his own series now, for goodness' sake! A provisional and better title for this traumatic four-parter was The Enemy Within. The Nucleus of the Swarm may initially have been microscopic, but not invisible: the Fantastic Voyage-style technology makes it a level playing field for hero and foe. Many say the creature should have stayed out of sight, but I'm rather fond of the ferocious prawn and the way it has to be trolleyed around by its minions after being extracted from the Doctor's brain. With The Invisible Enemy, Graham Williams bit off more than he could chew. The show didn't yet bear his distinctive stamp, and in the very next serial he even reverted to a tried-and-trusted formula… Radio Times archive [Available on BBC DVD]
Season 15 kicks off in a Victorian lighthouse beset by an eerie shapeshifting Rutan
Season 15 – Story 92 "Gentlemen, I've got news for you: this lighthouse is under attack and by morning we might all be dead. Anyone interested?" - the Doctor Storyline Arriving on a small, craggy island off the English coast around the dawn of the 20th century, the Doctor and Leela enter a lighthouse that becomes shrouded in fog. As its inhabitants Ben, Reuben and Vince struggle with power failures, a steam yacht runs aground on the rocks. The high-society passengers seek shelter in the lighthouse, but a creature from a crash-landed spaceship begins to kill them one by one. The monster, whose Rutan race is at war with the Sontarans, can assume different forms at will. How can the Doctor find the killer…? First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 3 September 1977 Part 2 - Saturday 10 September 1977 Part 3 - Saturday 17 September 1977 Part 4 - Saturday 24 September 1977 Production Filming: May 1977 at Ealing Studios Studio recording: May/June 1977 at Pebble Mill, Birmingham Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Leela - Louise Jameson Reuben - Colin Douglas Vince Hawkins - John Abbott Ben - Ralph Watson Lord Henry Palmerdale - Sean Caffrey Colonel James Skinsale - Alan Rowe Harker - Rio Fanning Adelaide Lessage - Annette Woollett Voice of Rutan - Colin Douglas Crew Writer - Terrance Dicks Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Designer - Paul Allen Script editor - Robert Holmes Producer - Graham Williams Director - Paddy Russell RT Review by Mark Braxton Turning a corner in the show's development, and marking the start of Graham Williams's time as producer, Horror of Fang Rock was a serial absolutely dripping with the most abject difficulty. The 11th-hour withdrawal of a vampire story compelled a speedy replacement by Terrance Dicks, and with no space available at Television Centre, recording had to be transferred to BBC Pebble Mill in Birmingham, with all the associated transportation of sets and equipment. Despite, or perhaps because of, the all-hands-to-the-pump nature of the production, a scintillating diamond was created. But then again, there are… FIVE FACTORS IN FANG'S FAVOUR 1. Writer under pressure Asked to name his or her favourite writer for the show, the average fan will often cite Moffat or Holmes. Yet Terrance Dicks's contribution to Doctor Who was immeasurable and, in the case of this story, little short of astounding. Whether or not he was aided by script editor Robert Holmes - who had already proved adept at period detail and language - Dicks came up in a very short time with a thick stew of intrigue: sharply encapsulated sense of time and place, a hard-to-pinpoint enemy and a claustrophobic setting… 2. Beacon of hope The curved walls of the lighthouse set were cursed by the crew for the limitations it afforded in terms of camera movement, but in story terms the cramped quarters and the trapping of the creature within them made for an eerie atmosphere, full of dreadful possibility. Designer Paul Allen did his research with a couple of field trips beforehand, and it really shows. The set dressing is lovely, too (generator, lamp room, speaking tube, wireless telegraph), as are the extraneous props (I love the cumbersome, cardboard-y life jackets). The "exterior" scenes are well filmed and the visual-effects seascapes and shots of the lighthouse are nicely blended in, on the whole, although the less said about the balsa-wood yacht crumpling on the rocks, the better. 3. Lighthouse family Dicks breathes life into the potentially perfunctory Ten Little Indians scenario with minor-league yet still indelible characters. Chief amongst them are gruff, whiskery Luddite Reuben ("T'aint natural"), cunning silver fox Colonel Skinsale, and naive but principled John Gordon Sinclair-alike Vince. I remember being horrified at the sight of Vince accepting Palmerdale's bung, but then mollified when he torches the £50. Perhaps Dicks recognised that a shred of decency amid the corruptible Rutan fodder wouldn't go amiss. Not all the characters fare so well, however - it would be 32 years before a writer would restore some honour to the name Adelaide (Russell T Davies and Phil Ford in The Waters of Mars). 4. Feet of clay We're used to the notion of the flawed hero these days, but back in 1977, the Doctor's admission that he's "made a terrible mistake" was a genuine shock. Trapping a murderer inside and giving him/it every opportunity to strike again makes it doubly appalling. But it's a brave writer that can take such a liberty; in any case, making the hero imperfect helps us relate to him. It worked then and it works now. 5. A smile says it all The smile is used, powerfully, in two devastatingly different ways. The first is by Colin Douglas as Rutan-possessed Reuben. Descending the stairs towards Harker in the generator room, his grotesque gurn takes the prize for the most disgustingly creepy expression the programme has ever known. In merciful contrast comes an infectious dazzler from Louise Jameson as Leela. Her character was often made to feel stupid by the Doctor. So the moment she pre-empts him with a solution to their dilemma, prompting her mentor to say, "That's a beautiful notion", causes a smile as warm and brilliant as a carbon arc beam. Interviews with both Jameson and Tom Baker indicate a slight thawing in their relationship around this time. There may be more in that smile than we'll ever know… It's not Jameson's only lovely moment. There are many, including her endearing manglings of the English language ("Teshnician"!), her lack of qualms about changing clothes in front of a stranger, and the way she interrupts her flight from the doomed lighthouse to tuck a knife in her boot. Horror of Fang Rock is a peculiar mixture of Upstairs, Downstairs and creature feature. The new monster - all crackling phosphorescence and radiophonic bubbling - slots right into the Doctor Who panoply, especially with that morsel of Sontaran-hating back story. The Rutan's spat-out boiled sweet look isn't the series most imaginative, but no matter. With its attention to detail and its ability to shock, educate and unnerve, Horror of Fang Rock is classy, cosy, autumnal Who. Radio Times archive [Available on BBC DVD]
Mr Sin, Magnus Greel, giant rats... A grisly pastiche of all things Victorian makes for a Grand Guignol classic
Season 14 – Story 91 "Have I ever, in my 30 years in the halls, seen such a dazzling display of lustrous legerdemain? So many feats of superlative, supernatural skill? The answer must be never, sir. Never" - Jago Storyline In fogbound Victorian London, a trail of disappearing women and gruesome murders points to the Palace Theatre music hall. Chinese stage magician Li H'sen Chang and his lethal dummy, Mr Sin, are allied to the Tong of the Black Scorpion and in the service of their lord, Weng-Chiang, a disfigured maniac lurking in the sewers. The Doctor and Leela befriend the theatre owner Mr Jago and pathologist Professor Litefoot. They realise that Weng-Chiang is in fact Magnus Greel, a foe from the future using the missing women to recharge his life force and determined to recover his precious time cabinet… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 26 February 1977 Part 2 - Saturday 5 March 1977 Part 3 - Saturday 12 March 1977 Part 4 - Saturday 19 March 1977 Part 5 - Saturday 26 March 1977 Part 6 - Saturday 2 April 1977 Production Location filming: December 1976 at Ealing Studios, Wapping, St Katherine's Dock and Southwark in London; 24 Cambridge Park, Twickenham OB recording: January 1977 at Northampton Repertory Theatre; St Crispin's Hospital, Duston, Northampton Studio recording: January 1977 in TC1 and February 1977 in TC8 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Leela - Louise Jameson Li H'sen Chang - John Bennett Henry Gordon Jago - Christopher Benjamin Professor George Litefoot - Trevor Baxter Weng-Chiang/Magnus Greel - Michael Spice Mr Sin - Deep Roy Casey - Chris Gannon Joseph Buller - Alan Butler Ghoul - Patsy Smart Sergeant Kyle - David McKail PC Quick - Conrad Asquith Lee - Tony Then Coolie - John Wu Teresa - Judith Lloyd Cleaner - Vaune Craig-Raymond Singer - Penny Lister Ho - Vincent Wong Crew Writer - Robert Holmes Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Designer - Roger Murray-Leach Script editor - Robert Holmes Producer - Philip Hinchcliffe Director - David Maloney RT Review by Patrick Mulkern "It's a floater, all right. You've got it, guv." A Dickensian crone (Patsy Smart with her teeth out - "Ghoul" in the credits) strains to see as a constable fishes a corpse from the Thames with a boat hook. "On my oath!" she gasps. "You wouldn't want that served with onions. Never seen anything like it in all my puff. Ugh! Make an 'orse sick, that would." Grotesque, gratuitous, absolutely hysterical… So very Robert Holmes. But then The Talons of Weng-Chiang as a whole is a scriptwriting tour de force. With its theatrical milieu, florid dramatis personae and high horror quotient, it makes for Doctor Who at its most blatantly Grand Guignol. A fantabulous feat of "legendary legerdemain", as Jago might put it. Name a slice of Victoriana, and Holmes has blithely bunged it in: his namesake Sherlock, Jack the Ripper, Fu Manchu, Sexton Blake, Pygmalion, The Good Old Days… Amazingly, the resultant scripts are a triumph of pastiche over cliché. And all brought to life by a sparkling cast under the accomplished direction of David Maloney. The evocation of Victorian London is immaculate, as Maloney uses an authentic theatre (albeit in Northampton) and films along eastern stretches of the Thames that in the 1970s remained dismal middens (since redeveloped almost beyond recognition). His shots at night and in pallid, misty daylight are incredibly atmospheric. It's galling to reflect that this would mark Maloney's final curtain call on Doctor Who. Holmes creates yet more indelible guest characters. Jago, the buffoonish theatre owner who marries the bluster of Nigel Bruce (the 1930s/40s Dr Watson) to the grandiloquence of Good Old Days' host Leonard Sachs. His every line from "Corks!" to "I'd have propelled him onto the pavement with a punt up the posterior" is perfectly pitched by Christopher Benjamin. Fusty Professor Litefoot is perhaps a truer Watsonian figure - although as the serial progresses and he responds with gentlemanly kindness to Leela's barbarism, he shows closer links to Colonel Pickering from Pygmalion/My Fair Lady. We'll gloss over the implausible coincidence that, as the pathologist investigating the Tong murders, Litefoot should also own the sought-after time cabinet. Roll up, roll up! Three villains for the price of one! John Bennett is terrific as stage magician Li H'sen Chang, even if today it would be unthinkable to give a British actor oriental make-up and bandy about the term "yellow". Mr Sin is a hideous ventriloquist's doll turned eviscerating, porcine pygmy. Last but by no means least, Weng-Chiang, aka Magnus Greel, is another of Holmes's Phantom of the Opera indulgences (indeed his second disfigured dungeon-dweller in season 14). The maniacal cackling and talon-flexing veer perilously towards panto, but there's no disputing the impact of the glimpse of Greel's molten face when Leela tears at the Velcro securing his mask. It's "rip-off" made literal in a cliffhanger. Without doubt, this story is Leela's finest hour. She's startling: knifing Mr Sin in the throat, then bouncing on Litefoot's dining table and flying through his window. Ferocious and hilarious: pouncing on Greel with the cry "Die, bent face!" Fearless: "Kill me any way you wish. Unlike you, I am not afraid to die." Greel dubs her a she-devil and tigress. Sadly, Leela has shed her usual costume: why wear skins when Victorian curtain fabric will suffice? Similarly, had he not swapped floppy hat and scarf for cloak and deerstalker, this would be an iconic fourth Doctor adventure. He's authoritative (effortlessly commanding respect from the police, Litefoot and Jago), heroic (hunting rats in the Fleet and pursuing Greel through the theatre flies) and deliciously flippant (to Greel: "Never trust a man with dirty fingernails"). Holmes laces the dialogue with incidental detail, not only evoking the Victorian period, but also alluding to events in the future: World War Six; the pig-brained Peking Homunculus and the Icelandic Alliance; Greel's doomed Zigma time experiments and his war crimes as the "Butcher of Brisbane". Glancing references to time agents and the 51st century would be developed three decades later by Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat while fleshing out Captain Jack Harkness. As the drama transfers to the East End, described by Litefoot as a "place of appalling vice and squalor", adult material gets in under the radar. Prostitution: a "contemptible slattern", evidently heading home after a hard night, is hypnotised by Chang. Narcotics: Chang smokes opium to ease the agony of his rat-gnawed stumps. The production's single failing (inevitably) is the wretched realisation of the giant rat. I bitterly recall from 1977 my sisters hooting at footage of an un-ferocious "gerbil" and, later, as Leela writhed in sewage in filthy bloomers while a tufty "sleeping bag" chomped on her ankle. I strongly suspect these shots have been "regraded" for the BBC DVD. Holmes is renowned for his deft character pairings. In The Talons of Weng-Chiang, we have the Doctor/Leela, Doctor/Jago, Doctor/Litefoot, Leela/Litefoot and eventually Litefoot/Jago, as well as on the dark side Chang/Sin, Chang/Greel and ultimately Greel/Sin. But the most impressive partnership of all, coming to an end here, is that of Holmes and producer Philip Hinchcliffe. In three seasons, they've raised the standard of storytelling - and level of horror - to heights that would rarely be achieved again. Radio Times archive The big thrill for fans at the end of Season 14 was the first full-length documentary about the programme. The Lively Arts: Whose Doctor Who, fronted by Melvyn Bragg, aired comments from viewers and psychologists, and best of all presented loads of then extremely rare archive clips. It took me years to identify an excerpt of William Hartnell belting a man with his walking stick down in a sewer. Incoming producer Graham Williams answered a reader's concerns on the letters page (RT 5 March 1977). There was a follow-up letter (RT 26 March 1977) [Available on BBC DVD]
Robots attack their masters aboard a Sandminer in this immaculately crafted whodunnit – "my Desert Island Who"
Season 14 – Story 90 "Your orders are to find and destroy all remaining humans. Secrecy is no longer necessary" - SV7 Storyline The Tardis lands on Storm Mine 4, a sandminer vessel quarrying an alien world. When members of its robot-assisted human crew are killed, the Doctor and Leela become the prime suspects. Does Commander Uvanov know more than he is saying? Why is an undercover agent aboard? And could the unthinkable be true: that robots have been programmed to commit murder? First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 29 January 1977 Part 2 - Saturday 5 February 1977 Part 3 - Saturday 12 February 1977 Part 4 - Saturday 19 February 1977 Production Visual effects filming: November 1976 at BBC Visual Effects Dept, west London Studio recording: November/December 1976 at TC1 and TC8 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Leela - Louise Jameson Uvanov - Russell Hunter Toos - Pamela Salem Dask - David Bailie Poul - David Collings Borg - Brian Croucher Zilda - Tania Rogers Cass - Tariq Yunus Chub - Rob Edwards SV7 - Miles Fothergill D84 - Gregory de Polnay Crew Writer - Chris Boucher Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Designer - Kenneth Sharp Script editor - Robert Holmes Producer - Philip Hinchcliffe Director - Michael E Briant RT review by Mark Braxton Long-term viewers would have been forgiven for yawning at the prospect of more tin-pot foes: The Dominators, The Krotons and Robot all clanked and stank in varying degrees. But it's clear within seconds that this streamlined, immaculately crafted whodunnit is a very different batch of circuits. The titular tinheads here are arguably the best pieces of design the show has ever seen. (They clearly made an impression on Russell T Davies, if the golden Host in Voyage of the Damned are anything to go by.) With their clean lines, graceful choreography and perfect diction, the robots are utterly beautiful. The fact that they are dispassionate killers makes one's admiration all the more confused. The voices, too, are wonderful. The calm and cultured tones of SV7 are in brutal contrast with the content of his statements ("Our controller orders that you will die slowly if you not surrender"), while the apologetic timbre of D84 is both adorable and amusing ("Please do not throw hands at me"). The hiring of Miles Fothergill and Gregory de Polnay to play the above are just two examples of the greater-than-average lengths the casting director went to. Russell Hunter is classy as the pragmatic but profit-obsessed Uvanov, his eyes blazing with don't-mess-with-me authority and avaricious zeal. Not all the casting is canny. Brian Croucher seems to believe he's in The Sweeney ("Why don't you SHUTCHYOURMOUTH!") and Tania Rogers's breakdown scene… er, lacks conviction, shall we say. And while we're picking… just a few seconds' work would have corrected some basic errors. The moment the capsizing sandminer levels off with a real-time jerk destroys all the good work of the modelmakers and special-effects team. Just a touch of slow-mo is all that's needed. A close-up of a damaged robot's thrashing hands clearly shows the Marigold emblem on its gloves. And who thought the Chucklevision-standard "whoosh-doink" sound effect of Leela's knife flying into V5's chest was a good idea? But it's a multidimensional script, full of thematic punch (class, greed, the perils of automation) and referential heft (Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, Karel Capek). And considering the crew is so objectionable, they are individually fascinating. All human foibles are here. Maybe the impractical headgear drove them over the edge. Dudley Simpson excels himself via the lightest of touches: his electronic pulse to convey robotic menace is as simple but effective as John Williams's Jaws motif. And I love the sassy little rattle of a tambourine when Leela skips down a corridor. In only her second adventure as the Sevateem savage, Louise Jameson comes into her own. Naive but quizzical, untutored but instinctive, Leela is an inspired introduction. For one thing it gives viewers ingenious explanations of baffling concepts such as trans-dimensional engineering. And it sets up a Higgins/Doolittle dynamic - more fully expressed in the next adventure - that works wonderfully. I particularly love the way Leela speaks, without the contractions of modern-day English ("I do not think I like this metal world"). The shame is that Tom Baker's oft-reported irritation with the character of Leela, and prickliness towards Jameson, is all too apparent. Leela asks the Doctor if he is all right but he doesn't reciprocate. It's a tribute to Baker that in spite of this, the Doctor still comes across as funny, mentally sharp and very much the man in charge. From the establishing shots of episode one, The Robots of Death means business. That low view of the rumbling sandminer, the semi-aerial introduction to the crew in the recreation area, the robots criss-crossing on deck… all immerse us in the situation with alacrity. And as both a plot tip-off and capsule review, Dask's comment about their metallic servants ("They're unbeatable, commander") is a perfect statement of intent. Director Michael E Briant has described The Robots of Death as a dreadful script. I find this extraordinary. Either the story just wasn't to his taste or the rewrite - by script editor Robert Holmes or perhaps Briant himself - must have been absolutely award-winning. If I were forced to pick one Desert Island Who, I'd have no shame in naming this one. It's as subtle as a mouse in the wainscoting, and as powerful as a fist-sized laser-blast through armour-plating. Radio Times archive Compilation repeat billings [Available on BBC DVD]
Louise Jameson is a "stonking success" as Leela in an otherwise lifeless tale about power-mad computer Xoanon...
Season 14 – Story 89 "It thought I was itself. Then it began to develop another separate self, its own self. And that's when it started to go mad" - the Doctor Storyline The Doctor's solitary travels end abruptly when he arrives in an alien forest and befriends an intelligent primitive called Leela. She has been outcast from her tribe, the Sevateem. Beset by phantoms, Leela's kinsmen are determined to release their god Xoanon from an enemy tribe, the Tesh, and the Evil One - who has the same face as Doctor. The Time Lord realises the Sevateem and Tesh are the descendants of space explorers and that Xoanon is a computer he tried to mend long ago, which since has developed multiple personalities… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 1 January 1977 Part 2 - Saturday 8 January 1977 Part 3 - Saturday 15 January 1977 Part 4 - Saturday 22 January 1977 Production Filming: September 1976 at Ealing Studios Studio recording: October 1976 in TC3 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Leela - Louise Jameson Neeva - David Garfield Andor - Victor Lucas Tomas - Brendan Price Calib - Leslie Schofield Sole - Colin Thomas Lugo - Lloyd McGuire Jabel - Leon Eagles Gentek - Michael Elles Guards - Tom Kelly, Brett Forrest Acolyte - Peter Baldock Xoanon voices - Rob Edwards, Pamela Salem, Anthony Frieze, Roy Herrick Crew Writer - Chris Boucher Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Designer - Austin Ruddy Script editor - Robert Holmes Producer - Philip Hinchcliffe Director - Pennant Roberts RT Review by Patrick Mulkern New Year's Day 1977 ushered in a "New Series" of Doctor Who… at least Radio Times seemed justified in billing it so, as the programme had been off air for six weeks. Indeed, as I watched The Face of Evil on its first transmission, it felt like the start of a whole new era… and how clearly I recall the sinking sensation that my favourite TV show was no longer being made for me. Doctor Who was looking tired and insipid: no tension, no fear factor… Instead leaden storytelling, uninvolving characters, underdeveloped psychodrama and a dearth of originality. We'd seen invisible monsters in alien jungles at least three times before and numerous computers running amok. New writer Chris Boucher does introduce some subtlety. Xoanon is not a boring old megalomaniac. He is, as the Doctor says, "a living creature - the first of an entirely new species… an old mission computer with schizophrenia" resulting directly from the Time Lord's tampering long ago. He realises Xoanon is conducting "an experiment in eugenics" to breed "a race of superhumans". Xoanon tells Leela, "I created a world in my own image. I made your people act out my torment." That the barbaric Sevateem are remnants of a planetary survey team and the Tesh were once ship technicians is an intriguing puzzle for younger viewers to work out. So a handful of intriguing ideas but percolating through four episodes that are stagnant at best and for the most part knuckle-gnawingly dull. The entire production limps along. Even Dudley Simpson's music is uninspired, parping away in the background trying to lift one lifeless tract after another. Part two is arguably the most abysmally plotted episode of the 1970s so far. Its woeful cliffhanger sees Sevateem leader Andor expiring (gassed by Tom Baker/Xoanon's mouth odour?), and ends on a close-up of Tomas discharging his weapon. Now Brendan Price is a comely lad but we don't care about his character. There are saving graces. The two other cliffhangers work well. Part one leaves us with the discovery of the Doctor's face carved into a rock face. It's an arresting image that throws up a quandary: has this fourth incarnation really existed long enough to forget an earlier visit? Part three's disturbing cliffhanger shows the Doctor/Xoanon's face on huge panels, babbling in mental torment then resolving eerily on the voice of a child: "Who am I? Who am I?" (The line was recorded from a young fan visiting BBC TV Centre - how cool must that have been!) The other stonking success is Leela. Golden-skinned, gorgeous and barely contained in leathers, she's a companion to lure in adolescent lads and their dads. A dab hand with a knife, crossbow and toxic Janis thorns, Boucher's "intelligent primitive" is a radical departure from all her predecessors, and appears to be the first alien sidekick since Susan. (The Doctor makes vague references to the Mordee expedition; only months later would Leela's Earth ancestry be clarified.) And Louise Jameson is a wonderful find. Exuding commitment and conviction, she makes Leela earnest, warm and funny, elevating her far beyond Robert Holmes's desire for a "Rachel Welch in the jungle". Quite simply, she's one of the most naturally gifted actresses ever to play a companion. It makes it all the more ludicrous that the Sevateem would expel their one fit female from the tribe. Indeed, Leela seems to be their only female. Leela's mother is never mentioned and her dad, Sole, is fed to the piranha-like Horda in the opening scene. She overcomes her bereavement almost instantly. It might have been dramatically rewarding had she seen the Doctor as a surrogate father but Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe take the duo down the Eliza Doolittle/Henry Higgins path they'd originally intended. There's none of the chemistry Tom Baker shared with Elisabeth Sladen. He disliked Leela's character, years later revealing he was "appalled at her aggression". Their first encounter, filmed at Ealing, is so poorly lined up you sense the presence of the camera. It's hard to know whether to blame the cameraman, film editor or director Pennant Roberts - making an inauspicious debut and incapable of massaging any life into these scripts. Demonising the Doctor as the Evil One (the face in the rock, of the phantoms and at the centre of Xoanon) is both clever and unsettling. But, for me, it also unwittingly signals a tipping point in the era, an evolution in the Doctor's character that emerges in his first scene here. The solitary Time Lord emerges from the Tardis, looks straight to camera and addresses the audience: "I think this is not Hyde Park… Put a knot in my hanky. I wonder what that was for… Little look round, Doctor? Why not!" It's done without charm, shatters illusions and marks the moment when the egos of the fourth Doctor and of the programme's emboldened star become untethered. Radio Times archive Leela (Louise Jameson) was introduced with this small article and an illustration. [Available on BBC DVD]
The Master's putrid skull and split bangers for fingers have to be the most revolting images presented on teatime TV
Season 14 – Story 88 "The Master. He'd have destroyed Gallifrey, the Time Lords, everything, just for the sake of his own survival" - the Doctor Storyline The Doctor is summoned to Gallifrey on Presidential Resignation Day. Framed for the assassination of the outgoing president, he evades execution by offering himself as a candidate for the post. An old enemy is at large in the Capitol - a cadaverous version of the Master who has reached the end of his regeneration cycle. He plans to unleash ancient powers at the heart of Time Lord civilisation to revitalise himself… First transmissions Part 1 - Saturday 30 October 1976 Part 2 - Saturday 6 November 1976 Part 3 - Saturday 13 November 1976 Part 4 - Saturday 20 November 1976 Production Location filming: July 1976 at Betchworth quarry, Surrey; Royal Alexandra and Albert School, Merstham, Surrey; and Wycombe Air Park, High Wycombe, Bucks. Studio recording: August 1976 in TC3 and September 1976 in TC8 Cast Doctor Who - Tom Baker Chancellor Goth - Bernard Horsfall The Master - Peter Pratt Castellan Spandrell - George Pravda Co-ordinator Engin - Erik Chitty Cardinal Borusa - Angus Mackay Commander Hilred - Derek Seaton Commentator Runcible - Hugh Walters The President - Llewellyn Rees Gold Usher - Maurice Quick Solis - Peter Mayock Time Lords - John Dawson, Michael Bilton Voice - Helen Blatch Crew Writer - Robert Holmes Incidental music - Dudley Simpson Designer - Roger Murray-Leach Script editor - Robert Holmes Producer - Philip Hinchcliffe Director - David Maloney RT Review by Patrick Mulkern The Deadly Assassin is iconoclasm writ large. As an entire story unfolds on the Doctor's home planet, Robert Holmes remoulds Gallifrey in a form peculiarly his own, and whatever we thought we knew about the Time Lords, we are forced to revise. The truth is the Time Lords were only omnipotent beings in their debut story (The War Games, 1969). Then they could simply stare intruders out of existence. In subsequent glimpses they've been hawkish, pompous, meddlesome. Holmes had fun with a levitating messenger dressed as City gent as far back as 1971, but now, for fear of boring us rigid, he re-invents them wholesale. There's no mention of the Time Lords observing (or occasionally interceding) in space/time events. Theirs is now a closed, inward-looking society, a Vatican-like state stuffed with cardinals and obsessed with ceremony. And, intriguingly, they're no longer a species. "Time Lord" denotes a scholastic or political achievement on Gallifrey, an accolade that can be attained and lost. The Master was a Time Lord "a long time ago". Runcible, a commentator for the Public Register Video, reports on them as an outsider and he failed Cardinal Borusa at the Academy. The Chancellery guards don't enjoy Time Lord status, while their Castellan usually watches over "more plebeian classes". Plus, their Lordships alone highlight their faces with silver. On Holmesian Gallifrey women have no place at all (bar one female computer voice). This intensifies a period of Doctor Who that, appallingly, has become a misogynist's playground. We can only surmise how Gallifreyans procreate. In this men-only domain, we miss Sarah terribly. Companionless episodes occurred in the distant past (Mission to the Unknown and Enemy of the World part 4), but this is a radical departure. Tom Baker seizes his moment, at times awkwardly speaking to himself, but mostly unshackled, proactive, unusually athletic. The Master's return came out of the blue in 1976, albeit spoilt by the Radio Times cast list. A respectful three years have passed since the death of Roger Delgado, and who better to resurrect the Doctor's nemesis than Holmes? He introduced the character in 1971, and now Holmes gives free rein to his fixation with the Phantom of the Opera. Thankfully, we never once consider the cowled ghoul lurking under the Capitol to be the Delgado Master in a state of decomposition. His putrid skull and split bangers for fingers have to be the most revolting images presented on teatime TV. "Only hate keeps me alive. Why else should I endure this pain?" While the Master clings to life, other Gallifreyans exhibit all-too-human frailty and expire easily from staser blasts. Surely the President could have regenerated? Crucially, Holmes introduces a limiting factor to their lifespan. "After the 12th regeneration," says Engin, "there is no plan that will postpone death." Best forget then that we saw the Doctor was on his 12th face in The Brain of Morbius earlier that year. Holmes bombards us with fascinating, incidental detail: the Panopticon, Time Lord chapters, Rassilon, the Eye of Harmony, the fact that the Tardis is one of 305 Type 40 TT capsules, the amplified panatropic computer net… I've always had an issue with the Matrix sequences. I'll concede they're efficiently filmed and the concept is way ahead of its time. But we're supposedly transported to a virtual reality borne from "trillions of electrochemical cells… the repository of departed Time Lords". Yet all the horrors the Doctor faces are the earthly nightmares of Robert Holmes: an alligator, a cliff fall, a samurai, a surgeon wielding a syringe, a Great War battleground, feet trapped in the points of a railway, a clown, a sniper… none of them remotely alien. Also I don't relish a half-hour of Tom Baker sweating, grimacing, cavorting around a chalk pit in a grubby chemise and bleeding red blood. It's most un-Doctorly. What a relief to cut back to that decrepit duo, Spandrell and Engin. Czech actor George Pravda is often unintelligible and it's a marvel the tortoise-like Eric Chitty (acting on TV since the 30s!) made it through the show without regenerating - but their characters are a joy. Angus Mackay hogs the best lines ("We must adjust the truth") as lemon-sucking dowager Borusa, while Hugh Walters as Runcible seems to be doing groundwork for Charles Hawtrey (a part he'd play 24 years later). He knows the Doctor of old and asks, "Have you had a facelift?" Sadly, no one reveals the Doctor's original name. Everyone on Gallifrey has unremarkable names. Goth is played by Bernard Horsfall, but there's nothing to indicate it's the character he played in The War Games. Both key Time Lord stories had the same director and, for David Maloney, it's another tour de force. He assembles a magnificent cast and all the top talent from the BBC design departments. If there's one trick the team misses, it's that we don't fully appreciate that the Master is revitalised by the Eye of Harmony. In the final shot of his dematerialising Tardis, it's easy to miss that his face is supposed to be reconstituting. Ultimately, this is Robert Holmes's baby. He puts an indelible stamp on Time Lord lore, which has endured to The End of Time (2010) and beyond. If The Deadly Assassin is a travesty - as some fans thought in 1976 - it's an elaborate, gorgeous, seminal travesty. As Borusa says, "Nine out of ten." Radio Times archive [Available on BBC DVD]