Day of the Doctor

So. I watched this on Sunday morning Japan time November 24th. I watched ‘The Five-ish Doctors’ with Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy as the thing downloaded, which I enjoyed immensely. It was very funny and a great nod to the past. And then it was time. 50 years in the making – ‘The Day of the Doctor’. It had, sadly, already been spoiled to ribbons. We already knew who John Hurt was ‘ the War Doctor’ – thanks to a brilliant prequel featuring Paul McGann. We already knew that David Tennant and

Tom Baker makes an appearance,.

Billie Piper were returning, so was the Time War, and so was Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. And the Zygons. I wish some of those elements had been kept secret. BUT the worst leak that I had read just by accident was that Tom Baker was making an appearance. And I tried not get spoiled for this one, I really really did.

So with the absence of surprises, I delved into this 76-minute special. I watched it twice on Sunday. The first time left me feeling incredibly flat. Disappointed. Not angry or resentful I should add, I just didn’t connect to the thing. I didn’t enjoy it I guess. I didn’t think it was in anyway bad, but I didn’t like what Steven Moffat had done, the choices he had made along the journey. Which I thought was fine, everyone has different opinions, different expectations and you can’t please everyone, and this time I was one person who it hadn’t hit accord with and such is life.

John Hurt as the Doctor.

I watched it later, in the evening again. And I got more out of it. I didn’t completely change my mind, but I got more out of it. I smiled more. I enjoyed it more. So let’s look closely at what we got.

We got the Time War. I will start with the biggest negative of all perhaps, and that’s the way the Time War was depicted. It’s supposed to a war in TIME, as far as I understood. BUT instead it was merely Daleks and Time Lords shooting at each other. A lot. The argument could be made that it wasn’t waged through time but FOR CONTROL of time, but we had been told before it was the former. The look of what we got was very good, very epic. But I felt letdown as how the Time War had been envisaged.

Billie Piper.

We got the War Doctor. And really this is what the story was all about, and with that I have a big issue. John Hurt plays the Doctor the once. He’s a special guest-star in this episode and he’s centre-stage. To me that was not right. In the broader sense it is about the 10^th and 11^th Doctor who have tried to forget the Time War, and this incarnation of the Doctor. The story is about the Doctor’s self forgiveness. Until they decide to change history. The most powerful and best point of the special is when ten and eleven (now eleven and twelve) stand side by side with the War Doctor to end the time war with this amazing sentient weapon – another aspect I liked. The weapon is played by Billie Piper. More on her later.

But the idea of changing the past, it’s something that’s crept in frequently it seems of late. Just change history. It harks back to ‘The Waters of Mars’ when the 10^th (11^th) Doctor declares he is so powerful history is his to command. And then he realises he’s gone too far. So what is this? And yet history is and isn’t changed. Gallifrey is saved, hidden somewhere, giving the Doctor a quest to find it. It’s beyond timey-wimey now. The Doctor will still say the same person and believe he destroyed Gallifrey and the Daleks, until he reaches the point in his time stream with Matt Smith. Ok. But what about ‘The End of Time’? Did that happen? How does it all fit in? It’s not worth thinking about because nothing will ever make sense again. I liked the Time War idea. I think perhaps we didn’t need to see it. Ever. As much as many fans have been screaming for it. In one foul swoop Moffat has changed the Time War and added another Doctor into mythology.

Which also begs the question – why not use McGann as the War Doctor? I can’t believe people watched the show JUST to see John Hurt, and at least that would be a nod to the older fans in some way. Was Moffat determined that none of the existing Doctors should be shown to do something so bad as destroy Gallifrey? I think it would have worked better with McGann personally, and it wouldn’t have changed what people accepted and Who-history. A perhaps better argument against McGann appearing as the Doctor in ‘Day of the Doctor’ could be that if one was included (as the Doctor) it would be unfair on Davison, McCoy and Colin Baker.

David Tennant and Billie Piper. Great! They weren’t teamed together which was a blessing. Billie was really good as the weapon, creepy and all. David Tennant was somewhat understated, which was nice actually. Moffat decided to give the three Doctors a fair bit of screen time together, unlike previous attempts at multi-Doctor stories, and that really paid dividends. I’m not really sure about the stuff with Elizabeth the first. David Tennant really is the romance Doctor. And now married to Elizabeth the first!

John Hurts’ mocking of Tennant and Smith has made a lot of Who-fans smile, myself included. That was played beautifully. We had the 13 Doctors working together with a great sound-alike of William Hartnell and an ever-so-brief appearance by Peter Capaldi (which I was expecting sadly) as the TARDISes are used to save Gallifrey. We had some wonderfully clever uses of time, having all that time from Hurt’s Doctor through to Smith’s to calculate how to save Gallifrey. Except – Hurt’s and Tennant’s Doctors were supposed to forget everything! Ooops! But what’s a good episode without massive plot holes?

I didn’t like Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and the eagerness to blow up London. The Zygon sub-plot was almost irrelevant and they left the Zygons negotiating with Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and forgot about it. Well, unless we see more of it in the future of course. But it didn’t bother me. Nice touches here and the – the use of the Coal Hill School, where Clara now teaches, and I Chesterton as the ‘Chairman of the Governors’ too, lovely touch.

And then we had Tom Baker in the final scene (not as the Doctor), and he was simply magical. There’s not much more I can say about that scene. Doctor Who is going to change from this story, you can be sure about that. The exact direction is known only to Mr Moffatt, but I think it will include Gallifrey. A search for Gallifrey. That could be the focus of Series 8.

The plotting of the special disappointed me, but there was still a lot to like. Some wonderful moments. The Doctor – the Doctors were the focus, not the Daleks or the Zygons, and surely that’s something they got right. I’m a grumpy old man and not everything floated my boat. But that’s the way it goes sometimes. I’m not going to shout with indignation over the parts I didn’t like, or act like ‘HOW DARE HE’ in regards to Mr Moffatt. He’s a fan too, and presumably he wrote what he would have liked to have seen. Which is the only way he could about it. Doctor Who is 50 years old. I love the show. I do not love every single story. Probably though, every single story has a moment, an idea, something I liked. And this, despite the plotting, had plenty.

6.5/10

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

The Keeper of Traken

I don’t know what to say. After two good stories, Johnny Byrnes’ ‘The Keeper of Traken’ falls terribly flat in my opinion. I can’t say I was ever drawn into this story, or grew to like the characters save perhaps Nyssa (Sarah Sutton). Despite Bidmead’s wish to make the series more ‘scientific’, this story is full of mysterious ‘sources’, and a man that appears and disappears at will in his chair.

The Doctor and Adric meet the Keeper

And it’s so dull. It’s terribly serious for most of the time and there is a lot of capture, escape, recapture even more that the standard Doctor Who tale. Let me start with a positive, I love the design. It’s beautiful, really, this story features some of the most ornate and detailed corridors in the show’s history. They were not lit well at all sadly, in particular the outdoor scenes which were shot in the studio and it’s very very obvious. It’s  case of never knowing whether the scene is indoors or outdoors, which shouldn’t be an issue for the audience, but it clearly is.

Geoffery Beavers as the Master.

The Master returns, played very well I think by Geoffrey Beavers. He underplays it wonderfully, his soft, chilling voice adds another dimension to the part. The make-up is based on the job done for Peter Pratt in ‘The Deadly Assassin’, but doesn’t go as far in being hideous. As a result people will compare the two appearances and frankly this one is not as convincing as the previous.

Anthony Ainley as Tremas.

The plot is a bit confusing. The Melkur. Appears to be a TARDIS. With the Master’s TARDIS inside. Although I would prefer to believe it was a sort of shell connected to the Master’s TARDIS. He has two TARDIS’s now? The whole plot is basically political manoeuvring to get Kassia (played well by Sheila Ruskin) into the Keeper’s position so that the Master can take the power of the Keepership and rule the Universe or something along those lines.

The acting is strong. We also have John Woodnutt as one of the council, and of course Anthony Ainley as Tremas who would become the Master by the end of the story in a bizarre scene where he loses his long white hair, becomes much younger and appears in a frilly costume. Despite excellent casting, the story has very little action, goes round and round in circles and does not feature much humour either. The result is a very dry and unengaging story sadly.

John Woodnutt - always good value

Tom Baker of course is always great, and Adric (Mathew Waterhouse) quickly forms a strong bond with Nyssa, you wonder if he’s found a girlfriend at one point! Every story in Season 18 seems to have a fair bit set in the TARDIS. ‘The Keeper of Traken’ features a little less, especially compared to ‘Warriors Gate’ and ‘Meglos’. I wonder if it was a directive to use the TARDIS a lot more before the start of the season? Perhaps they felt the set was under-utilized. Whilst I enjoy stuff set in the TARDIS, it often prevents the story from moving on or even starting. Here a lot of the first episode is rooted in the TARDIS, which

Kassia looks up at Melkur

means we are waiting for the story to start properly. Perhaps the story was just not meaty enough to last four episodes. I think ‘The Keeper of Traken’ would have worked quite well as a single 45-minute episode.

It’s not bad per se, not at all, but it didn’t hold my attention either. It’s back to the dryer sort of feel of ‘The Leisure Hive’.

4.5/10

Warrior's Gate

Everything that ‘State of Decay’ was, ‘Warriors Gate’ isn’t. It is not a simple, traditional logical story, un-complicated by babble. It is not straight-forward, it doesn’t have easily recognisable characters, and it does not return to the elements that had made Doctor Who so successful over the years. However, I really like it. I pronounce it the best story of Season 18.

Royce and Aldo

Why? Well, it’s really out there, it’s very clever and the direction is attempting to present Doctor Who in a way which takes it away from the standard multi-camera set up which has been so limiting for the series over the first 18 years. The director Paul Joyce went to hell and back trying to make the story, and despite all the difficulties churned out four excellent episodes of Doctor Who. Is the story easy to understand? No. It’s not. Is it really strange and weird in places? Yes it is! Would I recommend it to friends who were not Doctor Who fans? Never in a million years. But still, I really liked it.

Why? What? I have to justify myself? Ok well let’s see. ONE – characters. The story centres around a group of humans who have come to Warriors Gate to take slaves which they can sell because the slaves are ‘time sensitives’ – they can see through the time lines and navigate space ships. This ship has the worst crew known to space travel.

Romana is faced with Rorvik

They are lazy and don’t seem to care at all.

We have Royce and Aldo, who seem to be based on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Hamlet. They always toss a coin to make decisions. They are periphery characters who don’t do a lot, appear to mostly be ‘along for the ride’, but they also add a dose of humour. The Captain of the vessel, Rorvik, is played supremely by Clifford Rose. It’s a great performance of a Commander with an inept crew slowly but totally losing the plot.

Biroc leads Romana through the haze.

There’s a bit of humour in the story, which is overall very dark. The time sensitives are being taken as slaves, but we also see that they treated humans as slaves too when they had a great empire. Is it a comment on the nature of living beings? That there is a circle of life. You had slaves, then you became slaves? Some sort of ironic justice? Biroc is the main time sensitive character. They all have the same costume (which has become an issue in season 18 – lots of sameness about the costuming. Oh, you’re all from the same place? Well I expect you all wear the same clothes too!) with beards and big hair.

Warriors Gate is on the coordinates of 0-0-0. What that means is it’s the intersection being N and E-space. There seems to be a sort of strange world between the two, through the mirrors as it

were. It is unclear if it’s a separate place from both Universes, or if it’s in N-space. You step through a mirror to get there, if you can. You need to be a time sensitive it seems.

What is a little unclear is how the Doctor ends up passing through to N-space at the end. Whilst the space ship blows itself up by trying to back-blast a way through the mirror that was always doomed to fail, the Doctor is told ‘do nothing’. He takes off and it seems is let through by Biroc. That’s the only way I could make sense of it – Biroc and his kind have the power as time sensitives to open the way through to the other universe.

The Doctor, Biroc and Romana fade from view.

The ending is muddied by the rushed and frankly bizarre exit of Lalla Ward who decides she needs to stay and help Biroc free slaves on many planets in E-Space. Apart from one line to Adric in episode one, this is not really foreshadowed and there’s no real affinity built between Biroc and Romana. So it’s very odd. K-9 has had a hell of a season, and we finally say goodbye to the robot dog as well in this story when the Doctor gives him to Romana. Sadly, he spends most of his final story a gibbering mess.

At least the fact that they are in E-space is relevant for this story, unlike the previous two which could have been set anywhere. It’s a different Universe – so HOW is it different? That’s what needed to be addressed and really wasn’t. Bidmead was very excited about this script, written by Steven Gallagher. I can see why, it’s right up his alley with terms of what he was looking to do with the show.

Design-wise it’s great. The ship is well realised, the void that they are stuck in is too, and the gate looks beautiful. The Gundan robots also are a work of beauty. The ideas of using black and white photographs for the land ‘beyond the mirrors’ was a great idea that doesn’t quite work in every shot sadly.

The director uses a lot of hand held camerawork and shoots through grates and gantries and the feel is far less static than your standard Doctor Who tale. I think Paul Joyce did a great job.

8/10

State of Decay

Terrance Dicks’ ‘State of Decay’ is easily the best of the season so far. They have a writer who understands the series and understands drama. There’s a little humour here and there, it’s kind of a fun ride too, I enjoyed this one quite a bit.

The concepts are easy enough to understand and the story flows logically. The design is strong, the direction good. Tom Baker seems to be back to something like his very best form, and the villains are rather good too! I only have one main issue with the story – like its predecessor, the fact that it’s in E-space, negative co-ordinates, a different universe, has no impact on the story whatsoever, other than it was a great place for the Great Vampire to hide. He could have hidden underground on any ol’ planet really.

Emrys James as Autron menaces Mathew Waterhouse.

I mean what makes it E-space? Coordinates? Well that’s not really an interesting pull for an audience. Everything looks the same, people act the same, in fact everyone in this story also fell through a CVE into E-space anyway. So what’s the point?

Autron is the main villain of the piece, played wonderfully by Emrys James. He is supported by the Zargo and Camilla, played by William Lindsay and Rachel Davies, again strong performances. Dicks has chosen to do a story, which like ‘Brain of Morbius’, is full of clichés, things you’d expect with a vampire story. But that is exactly why it works! If you’re going to have vampires, don’t be

Zargo and Camilla welcome the Doctor and Romana to their house.

obtuse about them! They drink blood, they live in a tower, they harang the villagers, they have pale faces.

Then he mixes in the rocket, and the remnants of the technology that brought the descendents of the villagers to the planet. Weave in a little Time Lord history, a clever way of destroying the slowly-waking Great Vampire, and you have a classic Doctor Who story. You don’t need anymore! You don’t have to be as complicated and confusing as in ‘The Leisure Hive’. Honestly!

Stake in my heart? Try a mistake!

Sure there’s the technology which looks like a commodore 64, but hey, that was cutting-edge at the time. Sure, Adric (Mathew Waterhouse) is just strange, unconvincing and a pain in the arse, but you can just pretend he’s not in the story cos he really doesn’t do that much.

‘State of Decay’ is not the greatest Doctor Who story by a long shot, but it returns to the series’ strengths and the end result is a very solid, enjoyable and even at times exciting story.

7.5/10

Full Circle

Draith and Dexeter investigare killer cantelopes!

‘Full Cirlce’, written by Andrew Smith who at the time was 17 years old, sees the Doctor and Romana head to a place called ‘E-space’, a universe with negative coordinates. We see some interesting new creatures and ideas in a story I can at least say I enjoyed more than the previous two, without being amazed or anything like that.

Marshmen rise from the swamp

It’s got a bit more ‘soul’ than the last two stories. It also has its limitations. It deals with some interesting issues, particularly about scientific exploration of  species other than ‘human’, and indeed with the concept of evolution. Not bad for a 17 year old!

Christopher H Bidmead has been making his mark on the series already, so I think he probably had a lot to do with this script. Having said that it’s still a story with severe limitations, and one that asked a lot of the director and designers. We have the ‘marshmen’, who are really the same as the humans, but much earlier in the evolutionary cycle. Then we have these spiders which look pretty darned scary in most shots (mixed in with the odd shot where they look completely fake!) who also share the same DNA. It’s a bit confusing.

Romana is savaged by a spider

Whilst I was reasonably impressed with the spiders, the Marsh-men look pretty rubbish up close. Fantastic when they are walking out of the swamp during ‘mistfall’, but when they linger for any length of time on screen they look very poor – their design appears to made from the bottom of bathmats.

The characters are not that well written. We have a group called ‘outlaws’ who are just really naughty children, and of course we have Adric, played by Mathew Waterhouse, destined to become a companion by story’s end. Sort of. He stows away. The character is presented as a know-it-all type, which isn’t a good basis to start a companion character, but Waterhouse’s acting is fine. It’s nevertheless a strange match with the Doctor and Romana.

Marshman under the knife

Then we have three ‘Deciders’, the people who run the society. James Bree and Alan Rowe play two of the Deciders. The third Decider is Login, played by George Baker, perhaps the strongest character of the story. He, at least, is someone we care about. Tom Baker seems to be more at ease and gives his best performance thus far of the season, whereas Romana has a bad time of it getting bitten by a spider and turning nasty for a time. Lalla is always good.

The story is set in a community, but it’s difficult to understand the community. They appear to live in a sort of Eden, with a huge space ship at its door which they prep for takeoff, however the technology from the space ship in no way appears to affect the society. They are busy prepping it, replacing parts, yet seem to live very simple lives. We never see their dwellings either. When they have to return to the safely of the space ship, they take barely anything with them. I wondered if they still lived permanently in tents or something

Bree, Baxter and Lowe do some deciding.

.

The ending is a bit… flat really. They force the marshmen out of the Starliner and take off. The issue was that no-one knew how to launch the ship – the manuals told them how to fly after takeoff. Oh, and the Doctor works out that they’ve been preparing for launch for 40,000 generations. Oh please! In that time they would have developed technology with the Starliner at hand. And the space ship, despite regular and constant maintenance, would not be in any condition to take off, or indeed stand.

It’s still a little dull this one, but not as much as the first two of Season 18. Some interesting ideas at the very least.

6.5/10

Meglos

‘Meglos’ is a very odd story. It’s not very original. There’s a mysterious power source that can destroy planets. It’s a bit like ‘Colony in Space’s’ doomsday weapon. There’s a dopple-ganger, a guest appearance by Barbara Wring herself (Jacqueline Hill), a strange jungle and so utterly woeful CSO. There’s a random human character used to the give Meglos form, but the form of the Doctor. There is a bit of humour, in the form of  incredibly stupid characters, and a general mocking of religion in general.

The Doctor? NO! It's Meglos!

Again the story under-runs overall by a whopping 13 minutes too. Yet the ending appears rushed. There are some nice ideas in the story amongst it all, and interesting plot devices including trapping the Doctor, K-9 and Romana in a time loop, and they have to ‘throw it out of phase’ to break free. Which doesn’t make a lot of sense but they had to get out of it somehow.

Tom and Lalla try to get out of the timeloop.

Let’s start with the CSO. JNT wanted to make the show appear ‘less cheap’ when he took over, but after two stories has failed dismally. CSO has by this time been used in Doctor Who for a good decade, yet they can’t get it right. Feet disappear, hair looks strange, there’s a clear outline around the people… it’s shocking. In no way could the audience believe the actors are where they are supposed to be. And there-in lies the real problem of CSO, it’s destroys all suspension of disbelief.

Bad CSO

I like the idea of a cactus being the main villain. A talk cactus? Pretty cool all said. And they didn’t make the mistake of trying to make it move about at all. What really irks me about this story is the Dodecahedron. It is some mystical object that came to Tigella one day a long time ago and powers their city. Not only that, it is worshipped as a gift from the God Ti. It defies all plausibility. The followers of Ti and worshippers of the Dodecahedron are led by Lexa (Jacqueline Hill), and they all wear robes and have chants and it’s pretty appalling really. Jacqueline Hill is committed and wonderful I should add, it’s not her fault that it’s all so stupid.

She meets her doom after she’s been convinced the Doctor is telling the truth (after she tried to sacrifice him in a Batman-esque scene). An almost dead pirate takes a pot shot at Romana as he dies near the entrance, and she jumps in front of Romana to save her. It was really pointless strange death. It added nothing to the script at all.  I don’t understand why the authors – John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch killed her off. It just seemed cruel frankly.

Grugger and Brotodac.

It’s four episodes in which you wonder what happened. No-one gets to Tigella until episode two, Romana leads the pirates around and around in circles, people are confused as to who is the real Doctor and finally the Doctor turns the weapon in on itself.

The design is interesting, quite 80s. The costumes in particular, which sees normal Tigellans all where the same white wigs. What was that. It is visually far more interesting than ‘The Leisure Hive’ though. Lots of purples and greens in the jungle. The music is very similar to the previous story, but thankfully toned down considerably.

The biggest positive of this adventure is Tom Baker playing the Doctor and Meglos, which he takes in his stride and does a fantastic job of. Sadly we really only get one scene with the two of them together. The cactus effect on the skin of Meglos, played by Tom, looks very good too. But alas, there wasn’t a hell of a lot to hold my interest.

4/10

The Leisure Hive

John Nathan-Turner took over the reins for the 18^th season, and this was the story which opened it. I have to admit to rather liking season 17, despite what the pundits might say about it, and so one story into a new season I am struggling. Everything is different. The look is different, the them is different, the costumes are different, the special effects appear different, everything is deadly serious, the picture seems somewhat washed out for some reason. It’s a huge adjustment as a viewer.

David Haig

They believed, JNT and his script editor Christopher H. Bidmead, that the humour element had gone too far. And they were right, I have to begrudgingly say. However, the decision to basically eradicate ALL humour from the series is not exactly logical. They could have toned it down a lot and still had room to move. Instead, it seems to be abandoned. The Doctor’s costume goes all purply. He had various coats which he wore up to the end of season 17, now it’s an official ‘costume’, which question marks on his shirt collar (not subtle) and everything is more co-ordinated. Don’t see why it was needed and don’t particularly like it to be honest.

Adrienne Corri

Tom does seem to be showing the years a bit more by now. It’s his seventh year in the part after all. In this story he is aged – brilliantly by make-up I must say it’s one of the best aging jobs I have seen done, and he remains old for over two episodes, which Tom Baker hated but I thought was a good aspect of the story. His performance is very good too as the old Doctor.

 I like the reworking of the theme music by Peter Howell. We see the re-introduction of the middle eight too which has been missing, bar a couple of odd episodes, for many years from the theme. However the Radiophonic Workshop took over the incidental music in this story, and we bid a very fond farewell to Dudley Simpson. On the DVD they talk about Simpson’s music sounding a bit ‘samey’, but I have to disagree. He’s done most of the last 12 seasons I’ve watched and I don’t recall ever thinking ‘oh he’s used that theme again’ or ‘doesn’t he ever try something different’. Anyways, the decision had been made and I hope ‘The Leisure Hive’ is NOT indicative of what’s to follow because the music is loud and over done and seems to underscore 90% of the story. It’s intrusive and really effects the ability of the viewer to enjoy the story.

Tom Baker's amazing make up job.

I’m not really sure what was going on in the tale too. The four episodes run at around 1 hour 27 minutes, so we’ve had around 13 minutes cut from what we normally have over four parts. It’s a pity because this story could really have done with more explanation, especially about Tacyonics. From a quick research job I discovered a Tacyon is a particle which can move faster than light. To use it regenerate a person back to their younger self, I can sort of see that. But to duplicate people into solid beings? That was just confusing and not very logical to me. They wanted the science to be more real. Well, if anything the ideas in ‘The Leisure Hive’ are less believable.

They seem to be very limited on sets too. It’s mostly corridors and cheap ones at that. Ok you can level that criticism at most Doctor Who stories, but it’s really obvious in ‘The Leisure Hive’. The director, Lovett Bickford, has tried a bit of hand-held camera stuff, and a laboriously long opening shot at Brighton Beach with a pretty pointless scene the point of which seems to have been to blow up K-9. John Leeson returns in a strange move, especially for him. If he decided to leave, why would he come back a later?

The DVD frankly looks like it is a second or third generation picture, I’m not sure why but it is very blurry. It does nothing to enhance the story! The exterior stuff on Argolis, the model shots mixed with the new effects device, ‘Quantel’, are however excellent. Not so the shot of the shuttle leaving and arriving. It’s the same unconvincing shot taken through a hole looking up at the rear of the shuttle. It sounds a bit rude doesn’t it? It looks poor and it’s used at least four times.

Look, maybe the ideas are interesting but it’s very confusing to be honest. It’s taken very seriously, Tom Baker seems very dour for 97% of the story, apart from the moment he suggests they arrest his scarf for murder! I can still hear the music ringing in my head 24 hours later. It’s held together with some strong casting, Laurence Payne in the first episode returns to Who – he was in the Gunfighters. David Haig as Pangol is strong too, and Adrienne Corri as Mena is absolutely excellent. The final episode builds up nicely and is a good finish to the story with Pangol becoming a baby.

HOWEVER> I have left the worst to last! The Foamasi. A reptilian race whose design was apparently left to costume. They are laughable. They are perhaps the worst ever creatures in Doctor Who. They are green and fat and clearly men in … well it kinda looks like a dress doesn’t it? It is clearly material. It’s a joke, and shatters the believability of this story completely.

I realise I have really seriously panned this story like almost no other. It’s not the worst. It just has some shocking elements like the music and the Foamasi. It’s not easy to follow, it’s very serious and deadpan, there’s no shades of light and dark.

4/10

Shada

Tom Baker in Narration mode.

The thinktank boys.

‘Shada’, for those who don’t know, is a unique story in the history of Doctor Who. The only story not to be completed in Doctor Who’s original 26-year run. What we have today, saved from the scrap-heap by incoming (at this point) Produced John Nathan-Turner, are a mixture of scenes that were shot by Pennant Roberts before the production was closed down. At a guess, I’d say that it’s around 50% of the programme. We have all the location footage, plus studio stuff as per location. The first two episode are mostly complete, whilst episodes five and six have very little material. The DVD is a re-release of the VHS which came out in the early to mid nineties, and features Tom Baker linking the existing footage via narration.

So what to make of this Douglas Adams’ story which had been built into the ‘greatest story never shown’ at one point, and since has been regarded as perhaps not quite living up to that, let’s be honest, pretty lofty label. The ideas are generally very clever, and very Douglas Adams. Some take the line of the difference between fairy story and science fiction far too far over to the fairy story side. The idea that reading a book backwards whilst in the TARDIS could take you to the Time Lord prison planet Shada for instance.

But there’s some great stuff too, and again the cast, Tom Baker and Lalla Ward in particular, are having a ball. There’s a wonderful aura (for want of a better word) to ‘Shada’ and it certainly is a great shame it wasn’t completed. The use of Cambridge as a location fits in with the ethos of the show at the time, and the twist that Professor Chronotis is in fact the great criminal Saryevan works very well.

The guest cast includes Bond-Villain Christopher Neame  as Skagra, who is after the Time Lord criminal because of his ability to project his mind into others. Wonderful spot on casting, up there with Julian Glover in ‘City of Death’. Glover would go on to be a Bond villain as well, and also have a similar role in one of the Inidanna Jones movies. Perhaps the best piece of casting though was Denis Carey as the bumbling Professor Chronotis. He comes across as a kind old man, very absent-minded in an endearing kind of way. Such a contrast to a master criminal, which is the point. David Hill as Chris Parsons would go on to star in ‘Waiting for God’ with Graham Crowden. Along with Victoria Burgoyne as Clare it was good casting in roles the audience sort of relates to and characters that we can care about.

Denis Carey as Chronotis.

The production. Well. Firstly, the stuff shot in 1979 looks great. The sets and locations hold up perfectly. We never see the Shada sets, or the main sets for Skagra’s ship which the Doctor re-wires to turn into a TARDIS, and we don’t see a lot of the Kraals, evil monsters created from vats who are at least part robot and are electrically charged, but they at least look better than the Nimon and the Mandrels. Certainly a very interesting design.

Then we look at the elements brought into the production for the 90s video release, all of which remain on the DVD. Perhaps sadly. Tom Baker’s

Victoria Burgoyne as Clare.

wonderful personality warmly fills the screen for the narration, which I enjoyed. The shots of the space ships and so forth though are very very ordinary, worse than they would have done back in the day. Then the killer – the music. Why John Nathan-Turner didn’t seek out the man who would have scored the story originally (he’s still alive in 2013 incidentally) I don’t know. This is story well suited to Dudley Simpson’s style. Instead, the dreadful mess that we get is composed by Keff McCulloch. I am told he becomes a regular composer near the end of the first 26 years, and even redesigns the theme music. God no! It is genuinely awful clunky music which doesn’t suit the style or era of the piece. It is utterly dreadful. If only there was an option to view the story with no incidental music!

Christopher Neame

This was to be both Graham Williams and Douglas Adams last contribution to the series. Williams had had enough and Douglas Adams had by now become famous for ‘Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy’. Such a pity that it was unfinished, because I do believe it would be highly-regard these days if it was. Not at the upper-echelon of stories, no. But a very clever, warm script backed up by some fine actors and a wonderful atmosphere.

7/10