Survival

The final story in the show’s first 26 years, before a break of seven years, is quite a good one written by Rona Munroe, one of a select group of women to have ever written for Doctor Who. When you look back through the first 26 years to find a female writer for Doctor Who is not easy. There’s Jane Baker, part of the husband and wife team, Barbara Clegg, there aren’t many others which is really disappointing. It could ask the question – is Doctor Who a male-only domain. Verity Lambert was the first producer, but again the only female in that role too. It is definitely disappointing.

Hale and Pace guest star,

Nevertheless, here’s a writer that created a story somewhat simpler than the other three in season 26, and that certainly didn’t harm the story. But it’s not that it’s not complex, just compared to ‘The Curse of Fenric’ it unravels in a far more straight forward way. Add the use of great music (Dominic Glynn) and special effects, great dialogue, the show finishes at least on a high.

It features the return of Anthony Ainley to the series as the Master, a more base and desperate Master, which worked rather well. He was certainly less camp than in the past which was obviously a good thing.

The Master's new look.

The use of modern (at the time obviously) Perivale as a location was great too. It’s very rare Doctor Who goes into domestic lives, if ever, but it did here. We go back and forth from the planet of the Cheetah people to Perivale.

I liked and was intrigued by the idea that the cheetah people were connected to their planet. I wanted to learn a bit more about that relationship and how it came about. The idea that the fighting would destroy the world, whilst literal in the sense of the storyline I think was also meant metaphorically to the human race (and I guess also a little literally as well, fighting will destroy the Earth).

Near the end we have a huge explosion on top of a hill as a supposed result of two bikes crashing into each other (when of course that never happened) and that looks great from the effects team. The cheetah-people costumes have copped a fair bit of criticism though from fans. I can see why in some respects, the heads, although the mouths move rather well, are bulky and fluffy and the actors couldn’t move smoothly in them like real cheetahs. To be honest I didn’t mind them and had a hard time picturing what else they could have done. I guess they expected them to be more human and less cheetah, but that would have aroused criticism as well I suspect.

26 years of Doctor Who, And I have got through it all since February! The only ‘cheat’ in all that time was watching the condensed versions of Marco Polo and Galaxy Four, although Galaxy Four was much closer to full length. Since then I have also seen Enemy of the World and Web of Fear, returned to the BBC recently in their entirety. It’s been a great ride, BUT it is not yet over. I think by the end of the year I can cover ever televised adventure, so it’s on to the TV movie next, and then the new series.

To see it all as a whole is interesting, in the order intended. In some ways the

final season of the show was really starting to produce some interesting television, however the stories were very complicated and I suspect the casual audience may at times have felt alienated and unable to follow. The show had its ups and downs through the years, but was strongest and most stable through the Pertwee and Tom Baker years. But most fans would say as much. The John Nathan-Turner Years, from season 18 through 26, had great highs and lows. Most seasons, save season 24, had at least one really

good story, but always there was dud or two where the production team dropped the ball. Now things change, budgets increase, and for a one-off movie, we head to America…

8.5/10

The Doctor and Ace walk off for the final time...

Mark of the Rani

Pip and Jane Baker contributed this story, with an historical setting set in the Luddite Riots and including George Stevenson, the man who invented the steam train. We see the introduction of a new villain (ess) in the Rani, a Time Lady played by Kate O’Mara, and the return of the Master from what appeared to be certain death in ‘Planet of Fire’.

The story is very solid, and has the feel of a more traditional story than those of recent times. It has its issues and its embarrassing moments – principally in the second episode where Luke Ward is turned into a tree which then saves Peri by moving its dodgy rubber branch from the dame fate – but it is basically a tight and enjoyable tale. Pip and Jane Baker, a husband and wife team, seem to write well for the time its set, no doubt Eric Saward also had a strong hand in parts of the script too.

Anthony Ainley and Kate O'Mara

Having said that, the Master was definitely superfluous to requirements in this one. We do get a great dynamic between Anthony Ainley and Kate O’Mara, that’s for sure. It’s even a little bit humorous at times, but it does prevent the writers from exploring the Rani character further. As a new villain, I as an audience member would have liked to know more about her and see more scenes with her opposite Colin Baker.

Thankfully the Doctor-Peri relationship has cooled down somewhat by this stage, and they clearly care a lot about each other. The use of George Stevenson as a character was well written and realised, thankfully because it was possible that it just would turn out cheesy and pointless. The direction is strong, and the location, in a sort of open-air museum I think, was just perfect. You couldn’t asked for a better place to shoot and hence it all feels very authentic.

The cast help sell that too, it’s solid all the way across and features some pretty special beards too! I really enjoyed seeing the interior of the Rani’s TARDIS, which I thought was well done. What wasn’t well done was the dinosaurs. They were fine when stuck in a jar with some sort of green liquid, but the final scene when the TARDIS is hurtling through time and they fall and grow was, along with the tree-incident, the main effects-failure of the show.

The story features a large amount of location filming, which is what makes the setting so convincing. To be able to use the trolleys and train tracks, and to see the whole town functioning, is the highlight of this story.

7.5/10

Planet of Fire

Nicola Bryant as Peri, with Dallas Adams.

And the irony of it all is, Tegan left in the previous story to little fanfare or interest from the writer, and here we have Turlough’s final story and it truly is HIS story. Two companions getting very different treatment.

‘Planet of Fire’ is Peter Grimwade’s final story for the show as director or in this case writer. It’s very solid. It features the best use of Anthony Ainley’s Master bar none. It was well directed by Fiona Cummings and shot partially in Lanzarote. Turlough ends up meeting up with his own people in the end, and saving a small settlement from dying when the planet Sarn explodes. It’s a good way to finish for Turlough and was written by the writer who introduced him.

Peter Davison climbs the hot hills of Lanzarote

It’s interesting that a line had been put through Peter Grimwade as a director more than a year before this story, thanks mostly to his autocratic style. When you consider the stories he directed are some of the strongest from seasons 18 and 19, sometimes you have to think ‘it’s the result that counts’. Still, he was able to give us this story with his type-writer.

Lanzarote was a perfect place to film. It features as Lanzarote at the start, and then as the location for Sarn with amazing alien looking landscape and the feel of volcanoes being present. Despite some of the costumes somehow looking very 80s (strange when you consider the costuming had a distinctive middle eastern feel), it’s all fairly convincing. Add the star Peter Wyngarde as Timanov to the mix, and it’s looking great.

The sublime Peter Wingarde

Turlough in shorts, though, is somewhat dubious to say the least! Then Nicola Bryant enters as American student Peri, and to be fair to her she was very young at the time (possibly 19) but the accent is not consistent. If an American companion in waiting wasn’t bad enough, we have the return of Kamelion, the crazy non-functional robot introduced in ‘The King’s Demons’ and completely ignored for every story since. That’s five stories he’s been in the TARDIS without appearing on screen or being talked about! There was, however, a scene in ‘The Awakening’ which didn’t make the final cut.

Despite these things, the story turns out pretty

Peri discovers the Master's control box.

strong with some lovely effects work to create the different coloured fires from blue to red. Very well mixed in. I watched the original version again of this as the omnibus version, which my good friend Andre tells me is excellent, was far shorter than the original thing and I felt I might miss something. The effects in the shortened ‘director’s cut’ are apparently very good and the pacing excellent.

Not that this one gets particularly slow at all. The Master brings Kamelion (and the Doctor, Turlough and Peri) to Sarn because an

Is this the end of the Master? Probably not.

experiment has gone wrong and he is now an inch tall, operating things from a small control box in his TARDIS. Kamelion changes from robot to silver man to Howard, Peri’s step-father to the Master throughout the tale. He makes a strange request when freed from the Master’s power of the Doctor – to kill him. Stranger still, the Doctor obliges which left me a little concerned because it barely affecting him.

Grimwade has given us a far more linear plotline than before, and it certainly helps. Sad to see Turlough go, Mark Strickson did a great job with the part despite the dodgy shorts. Cummings’ direction is excellent, you can never fault her at all.

7.5/10

The King's Demons

Gerald Flood as bad King John

Some stories don’t need as many words to sum up as others. This is one of those stories. ‘The King’s Demons’ is Terence ‘it’s only Doctor Who’ Dudley’s last script for the show thankfully. It’s starts well enough, King John (Gerald Flood) is visiting a castle in the north of England somewhere even though he is also in London. The King is in fact Kamelion, a robot the Master found of Zeraphax who can change his appearance. Hence the name.

Can you see through the disguise?

It’s a two-parter, which don’t appear to work very well in the Davison era. Come the 15-minute mark of the second episode the writer seems to realise that there’s very little time left and everything gets wrapped up as quickly as possible. The Master spends most of the first episode disguised (badly) as a the King’s (French) champion. So far in every Davison story he’s appeared in he’s had a disguise. Groan. Gerald Flood hams it to the max. Tegan complains how cold it is for pretty much the entire story. The locals hate then like then hate the Doctor again. But no connection with any character is made by the Doctor or his companions. Turlough does very little.

The Doctor and Master grapple for control over Kamelion.

It’s not the worst of the season, it has a good look, sets are solid, costumes fantastic, but at two episodes and a very weak plotline – the Master wants to change history by preventing Magna Carta from being signed, so he’s trying to discredit King John by having Kamelion do wacky things, this story falls far short of what it could have been. In fact it still has me going until the reveal of the robot, which was a real robot, albeit one that didn’t work very well.

Characters are somewhat one-dimensional, but solidly played except for flood who goes too far

camping it up like crazy. As the Master’s only appearance this season, and his previous story ‘Time-Flight’ (which this story references without explaining how the Master escaped) I would have hoped for better for Anthony Ainley. Very hard it seems to tell a good story over two parts.
4/10

Time-Flight

The Doctor and the Master in disguise

And then there was ‘Time-Flight’. Yes. Look, being a Time Lord I am lucky enough to understand the plot – and no, it doesn’t make it any better. The Zeraphin combined all their power together and became one incredibly powerful entity. Inside this entity is good and bad. They were individuals at one point, they wished to be so again, but the Master came along and as individuals were made he destroyed them (or should I say shrunk them with the TCE). He then battles for the power which the Zeraphin hold as a huge collective entity inside a sarcophagus. The good and bad side of the Zeraphin fight each other, and the bad wins agreeing to side with the Master (this is at about the end of episode three).

However, the Master tries to rematerialise his TARDIS at Heathrow and the Doctor blocks him with his TARDIS and boots him off to Zaraphax, the home world of the Zeraphin where they will deal with him. He’s stuck there because of something the Doctor has done to the part of the TARDIS he gave him.

CSO on the tarmac.

Does it all make sense in the end? I don’t know. Peter Grimwade decided to have a crack at writing and Saward probably wishes he didn’t. It is seriously convoluted and there are some bizarre elements to the script such as the Master disguising himself. The disguised Master seems to die a horrible death only to rise again back to normal. Why he decided such a bizarre form I have no idea.

Then his main plan to get to the Zeraphin. Import a whole lot of people by opening a time tunnel to 1983 to smash through the wall of the room that housed the sarcophagus. They’ve been there for a day or two at least and haven’t made the slightest impact but the Doctor asks them and suddenly they break through in minutes. That turn of events isn’t as stupid as the scenes of a host of passengers from the first Concorde bashing on the wall in the back ground continuously.

The Master reveals himself

One of the better effects shots of the story.

Look, episode one is ok, because none of the complexities of the plot are entered into really. Episodes 2-4 are just some of the weakest Doctor Who ever produced. Or directed. The sets appear to be 10 metres across and very matte, very cheap. Concorde is represented by one solitary wheel. This is the classical of everything that doesn’t work in Doctor Who being rolled into one story. It’s a dead-set shocker. It’s almost impossible to follow, dull and slow, appears to have been directed on the fly by Ron Jones, it is full of one-dimensional characters (at least most of the actors seem to enjoy it I guess even if the characters they had to play are rubbish) and I haven’t even started on the Plasmatons. They appear to be magic rocks with legs. LEGS. One of the most pathetic things to appear in the series. They rival the Fourmasi and are worse than the giant Prawn in ‘The Invisible Enemy’.

Nice that they were able to use Concorde. Not so nice that the Doctor and Nyssa without a second thought left Earth and Tegan behind. Bad scripting there because on JNT’s idea to split them up and reunite them at the start of the next season. And really, we didn’t need another Master story so soon after ‘Castrovalva’.

So yeah

1/10

Castrovalva

A new Doctor at last - Peter Davison

So at long last we have a new Doctor. Peter Davison appears on screen properly as the Doctor for the first time in ‘Castrovalva’, however this is in fact the fourth story that he has recorded. The second story chronologically, ‘Four to Doomsday’, was the first recorded and he has much shorter hair in that one.

Again, Christopher H. Bidmead has written the story, and sadly it makes less sense than Logopolis. I can’t say I was very taken with the tale. It’s not very exciting, it’s a concept piece perhaps, and as the opening story to a new Doctor it was a very poor choice. Doctor Who at this point moved to a twice-weekly slot over two nights a week, the first day-shift the programme has experienced. Although Season 17 rated its socks off, the ratings for Season 18 were as bad as the series had seen in 12 years, and as an overall season I think the lowest average.

The Doctor tries to prevent the destruction of the TARDIS.

Quite a shift from the (admittedly aided by strikes at ITV) ratings of Season 17 which contained ‘City of Death’, the highest rated story of all time, at around 17 million for one episode. In contrast 4-6 million was more the norm for season 18, season 19 saw those figures pretty much double in the new time slot.

BUT I digress, again. Christopher H. Bidmead comes across as being very full of himself on the DVDs, and quite frankly I don’t know why. He had a vision for the show, but after only one year became the outgoing script editor in favour of Antony Root. He still had given himself the power by writing Tom Baker’s last tale and Peter Davison’s first. ‘Castrovalva’ continues from where Logopolis left us, the Master is still hanging around.

It’s a story of two halves – the first is completely centred around the TARDIS and the Doctor’s failing regeneration, the second in the land of Castrovalva. Note that this story, like Logopolis, has an ambiguous sounding name based on a location of the story.

The Doctor arrives in Castrovalva.

Not since the heady days of William Hartnell had the production team decided to use the TARDIS so much, or explore it so heavily. They needn’t have bothered. It’s white and uninteresting and apart from the odd room it’s mostly corridors. The Doctor seeks refuge in the zero room, which is a nice idea and it doesn’t look too bad. The whole TARDIS should have been that soft pink colour, might have looked better!

Communicating to Castrovalvans isn't so easy.

The Master has set a trap, using a projection of Adric (I think) to set the co-ordinates for ‘Event One’, the hydrogen in-rush which began the Universe, he hopes to destroy the Doctor that way. Adric is stuck in a web for most of the story, in the Master’s TARDIS creating things, and several projections of himself that run around and do stuff. With the regeneration failing, this was not the wisest choice by Bidmead because Nyssa and Tegan are left trying to help the Doctor but they haven’t reallyhad much of a relationship with him beforehand, there’s no history. In fact, Tegan isn’t even a willing companion at all. Narratively it would have made more sense for Nyssa to be trapped in the web, I believe.

There’s not a lot of action until part four. Part One starts a bit lively as they are chased to the TARDIS, but then it’s wandering through corridors mostly. Oh, big finish. More time in the TARDIS in episode two, but eventually they arrive on Castrovalva after some awful dialogues about Index Files which really is squirm material. Not the actors’ fault – Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton do a great job delivering Bidmead’s wordy scientific rubbish. The rest of the episode is them wandering through the forest towards Castrovalva, a citadel atop some rocks.

The Master finally decides it's time to kill the Doctor.

Episode Three and the Doctor starts to recover, they are taken in to Castrovalva, we meet a whole bunch of other characters, something is wrong, build, episode end. Episode four they work out that Castrovalva is suffering from ‘recursion’, obviously Bidmead’s favourite word of the day he thought he would turn into a story. Turns out one of the people from Castrovalva – the Portrieve, is in fact the Master! Anthony Ainley starts to camp it up a bit. ‘Castrovalva’ was all a plan to, as far as I can see, catch the Doctor and destroy him, which disguised at the Portrieve the Master had plenty of chances to do.

Suddenly the people of Castrovalva, also created as part of this plot by the Master, realise he’s bad and attack him. Behind a tapestry we find Adric and the web! The Doctor pulls Adric out and the run away, to find recursion really taking hold of Castrovalva now. They have a lot of difficulty in working out how to get out! Luckily Adric created the place and he can see the way out. The Master is not so lucky and is still inside when the citadel disappears.

Space folds in on itself. Like so.

All that to just kill the Doctor? Because the ‘Event One’ thing didn’t work? Bah! Rubbish utter rubbish. It’s the first story of a new Doctor, you don’t want to spend most of the time working out what’s going on, you want to see what the new guy has to offer. And Peter Davison is a little in consistent to be honest. However, he’s just regenerated and it’s all within the bounds of what could be. Cast-wise it’s strong. It’s just so pointless! It’s not very engaging and quite boring at times to be honest. As a first story, I would have preferred to see a bit of action, and get to see more of Peter Davison as he takes the reins.

4/10

Logopolis

Tom Baker and Mathew Watherhouse

One thing that feels imminent is the end of the fourth Doctor, all the way through season 18. Things had changed and a change in the lead man was what was needed to really reboot the series and launch it unapologetically into the 80s. The final tale of season 18, Logopolis, sees Tom Baker say goodbye in a script written by Christopher H. Bidmead, which seems to indulge the author a lot.

Not to say that this is a bad story. It certainly has an epic feel to it, but it is absolutely riddled with issues. But let’s start with the new companion – Tegan Jovanka. When she appears in episode one with her Aunt Vanessa, there are some great exchanges between the two. Breath of fresh air? Definitely! A real feeling relationship with a bit of humour. John Nathan-Turner cast Janet Fielding as the Australian air-hostess, and the casting was perfect.

The Doctor is found in the TARDIS cloister room. The cloisters ring impending doom, so at the final story for the fourth Doctor, it’s fitting to start there. The set is rather nice too. All of a sudden the Doctor wants to repair the chameleon circuit, and decides to materialise around another police box. Turns out the Master already did that, so we have a TARDIS inside a TARDIS inside a TARDIS… the conundrum continues on and on. Except that unlike

in ‘The Time Monster’ they are all the Doctor’s TARDIS, which makes little sense. The Master dematerialises, but the issue continues, and yet there the Master is to kill Auntie Vanessa. Bidmead, that who sequence makes no sense at ALL!

The Logopolitans await the Doctor's arrival.

As I said, Bidmead seems to be playing with ideas, but he forgot to make something that made sense. We have all this guff about materialising the TARDIS underwater to flush the Master out. We have the Watcher – a projection of the next Doctor. I liked that idea. We end up on Logopolis where the Monitor and the Logopolitans are trying to harness the power of the CVE to stop the Universe disappearing thanks to entropy.

Apparently the collapse of the Universe has started, and only Logopolis stands between the Universe and total disintegration. Pity the planet looks so rubbish. I mean really it does, it’s the final story for a great Doctor and the corridors and backdrops look like white tarpaulins with a bit of sand. It’s a dreadfully unconvincing design.

Anthony Ainley and Sarah Sutton

Oh yes so the Master is back, now played officially by Anthony Ainly in a frilling costume with tails. That’s right –TAILS! Pantomime much? Although much of performance is pitched softly with chilling undertones, so I think he did a good job in his first full story as Master. We will have to wait and see if he returns. Did he need to go the beard, just like Roger Delgado? Probably not.

Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) suddenly shows up, brought to Logopolis by the Watcher – why? Don’t really know. She is manipulated rather callously by the Master whom she believes is her father briefly, but she adds little to the story. She sees her planet, Traken, destroyed in a heartbeat by entropy on the TARDIS screen. Considering the Master has also taken over her father’s body, I guess I expected her to be a bit more upset than she was. In fact the rate that the TARDIS scanner shows the entropy taking over the Universe, you’d think the whole Universe would be gone in 1-2 minutes. Perhaps hard to show but it seems impossible that anything survived.

The Master and Doctor face off.

The Doctor and the Master team up in a chilling end to episode three. They end up at Earth’s Pharos Project, a disk aimed at the sky, to send information taken from Logopolis to keep the CVE open and save the Universe. This they do, but the Master turns around and sends a bulletin to the Universe that if they don’t accept him as supreme leader he will destroy the CVE and the Universe with it. The Doctor then climbs out onto a moving gantry to disconnect the cable, he does but falls to his doom. This at least prevents the master from destroying the CVE. The Master runs away as guard approach the control room connected to the gantry. It’s not shot very well sadly, and the use of a still photograph of Anthony Ainley to show he is watching the Doctor’s struggle to get to the cable is frankly laughable. But I guess Peter Grimwade, the Director, was very stretched on both budget and time.

It's the end, but the moment has been prepared for.

On the fake Astroturf below the dish, the Doctor is joined by his companions, and then the Watcher. They become one, and the Doctor has a new face – Peter Davison. That scene was done nicely bar some of the replayed clips of enemies and friends, which had out of sync sound and were unneeded. The style of combining the two (in fact three) actors was different from previous regenerations, and I liked that very much.

The story is a real mixed bag. It’s big on gloom doom, but not on action. I still don’t understand why a CVE – Charged Vacuum Embointment, which it has been established as a gateway to E-space, can stop entropy. I don’t understand WHY the Universe was decaying to the point of no return. I do understand they wanted to link back to E-space and therefore the CVEs gained importance. I don’t understand why some shots are grainy, others are blurry, and the look of the thing is very inconsistent.

It has an epic feel, needed for a Doctor’s finale. It’s well acted for the most part. The design is stretched too far – and dolls are used to represent the shrunken remains of the people the Master kills with his Tissue Compression Eliminator. Not convincing at all. It smacks of a story that struggled to get made to be honest. It’s a little to ideas-focussed for mine. But Tom Baker – what an amazing 7 years he gave to the part. Wonderful wonderful performance over the years, and he is wonderful in his final tale.

6.5/10