Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companion: Romana (II), K-9
Written by: David Fisher
Directed by: Lovett Bickford
Editor's note: Hey, guys. Just wanted to say that due to busy schedule with life we have a fill-in by friend-of-the-blog Cassandra this week. She'll be appearing regularly (probably about once a month) to do a serial here and there. Standard stuff, really. And who doesn't love a good guest perspective? Especially here, on a serial worthy of snarking. But love-snarking. Anyways! Enough hijacking! I'll see you all next week for a First Doctor Dalek story, but for now let's see what she has to say about some Doctor Who!
Background & Significance: 1980 marked quite a few changes for
Doctor Who.
When families sat down together in the evening to catch the opening of the Eighteenth Season of the show, dubbed "The Leisure Hive", not only would they be greeted by a new opening credits sequence (complete with updated mix of Ron Grainer's original opening theme, new logo, and new face shot of Tom Baker), but they would come to find that the Fourth Doctor's trademark outfit had mysteriously turned... burgundy?
These, and other changes enacted in this final season of Tom Baker's run, were indicative of the behind-the-scenes changes that had already occurred; namely, the arrival of John Nathan-Turner (often referred to as JNT) as producer of the beloved sci-fi show.
Now, it's not like JNT mysteriously showed up in a poof of smoke at the beginning of Season 18 and enacted all these sweeping changes with the help of his magical mini minions. He'd been under the employ of the BBC since 1960, and 1969 saw his first work on
Doctor Who with the Troughton serial "The Space Pirates". Over the years he climbed the ranks, and ultimately served under producer Graham Williams from 1977 til 1979. Tack on his work as producer til the show's cancellation in 1990, and you have over 20 years on the show.
Holy damn. That's a long time, no?
So by the time JNT accepted the position of producer after Williams' departure, the facts were these: Many people (both on the crew and the audience at large) were not taking
Doctor Who seriously. Tom Baker had far too much influence in the direction the show had taken over the years and not necessarily for the better (it's in this era, after our friend Robert Holmes left as script editor, that the show turned from dark Gothic to much more comedic in nature).
Thus, the show needed to be updated--or, rather, brought back to basics. People needed to start taking it a little more seriously again, which ultimately led to the changes enacted in Tom Baker's final season (and the many other decisions over the years following these initial few): new credits sequence, new TARDIS exterior, new costume (including the introduction of the question mark motif that would be integrated into each Doctor's costume until the show's cancellation in 1990), even the offing of a companion (which I'll touch on in a bit). This, by God, would be an era of
Who to be reckoned with.
So what about this serial?
As far as stories go, I found it decidedly "meh". Not terrible, but not quite good, either. It's really rather average, and I often found myself just going along with what was happening on screen, not fully committed or invested. However, having never encountered Romana II (called such because this particular Companion happens to be a Time Lord (awesome!) and this is her second of the two incarnations we see on the show) before aside from the cheap little gondola scene we got of the two of them in "The Five Doctors", I loved her and found that she was easily the best part of "The Leisure Hive".
But enough of all that. Let's take a closer look, shall we?
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