Serial 84: The Brain of Morbius

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companion: Sarah Jane Smith

Written by: Robin Bland (a.k.a Terrance Dicks and Robert Holmes)
Directed by: Christopher Barry

Background & Significance: Season 13 of Doctor Who is perhaps one of the best seasons of television the show ever experienced. After a season of stories coordinated by the previous production team, this new start allowed Holmes to sculpt the show into whatever he wanted it to be. As we've discussed previously, this resulted in a season full of horror pastiches and sendups. Mummies, mutant plants, shapeshifters, body snatchers...

And now? Frankenstein.

"Brain of Morbius" comes at the exact halfway point of their era and represents the pinnacle of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes vision for the show. Originally written by Terrance Dicks (the original version had an aesthetically-challenged robot that cobbled together a body for the wrecked Morbius based on its own warped view of human anatomy), it was eventually almost completely re-written by Robert Holmes, so much so that Dicks asked his name be removed from the writing credit. As such, it's really a Holmesian contribution to Doctor Who and to say otherwise is massive, massive self-deception (as we'll discuss) because... well... it's a Holmes story, isn't it?

So let's get to it!

Serial 95: The Sun Makers

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companions: Leela

Written by: Robert Holmes
Directed by: Pennant Roberts

Editor's Note: Hallo hallo! Dropping in to point out that this is Cassandra's last entry! Lordie lord we are racing towards an ending and quickly, aren't we? By golly we are. But yes. Here's Cassandra with some discussion on "The Sun Makers".

Background & Significance: So the name of this game is 'satire'.

When I watched this story for the first time, the point flew right over my head and so I ended up disliking it.  "Robert Holmes?" I thought.  "Oh, surely this shall be another heavy masterpiece."  And it's not, so, I was confused and felt a bit betrayed and let down, since this was the last Robert Holmes story we did on our initial watch-through.

But just because this is much lighter fair than what I've come to expect from Holmes, doesn't make it bad.  On the contrary, it really shows off his range as a writer, as good comedy is one of the hardest things to master.

And this is a comedy.  It's a very biting satire on Imperialism and Colonialism as well as the British equivalent of the IRS, which I think is hilarious.  Granted, there are some dark elements/moments that we'll talk about in a bit, but at its heart this is a comedy, which makes it fit in splendidly with the Williams era aesthetic.

This is also one of the last stories featuring Leela as a companion, which makes me really sad because I love Leela and I think she's really great here, which may or may not have something to do with the return of Pennant Roberts, who also directed Leela's debut story "The Face of Evil".

But enough of all that, let's take a closer look, shall we?

Serial 80: Terror of the Zygons

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companions: Sarah Jane, Harry

Written by: Robert Banks Stewart
Directed by: Douglas Camfield

Background & Significance: Usually when there's a shakeup in Classic Doctor Who there's a slow period of transition as the show moves into its new ethos. You see it in the Hartnell era when Verity Lambert slowly transitioned into John Wells slowly transitioned into Innes Lloyd with some crossover of stories there. Wells's only real contributions were "The Massacre" and "The Ark" ("Myth-Makers" and "Daleks' Master Plan" being Lambert commissioned) while "The Celestial Toymaker" and "The Gunfighters" were more Wellsian than they were Lloydian.

The transition, the weaning, really helps bridge the gap between a giant paradigm shift, and "Terror of the Zygons" is a fantastic bridge between the UNIT era and the Gothic Horror of Hinchcliffe/Holmes.

Written by Robert Banks Stewart in his first of two contributions to Doctor Who, this story features the last appearance by The Brigadier until "Mawdryn Undead" some eightish years later. Stewart's prior credits (or at least the one most influential on this story) included The Avengers, leading Stewart to really focus on writing his Doctor Who like The Avengers. Script Editor Robert Holmes eventually smoothed out the edges caused by this, but it's clear that this is Doctor Who unlike we've seen previously. This is really high on the rural adventure that The Avengers was so known for in the 60s, which is not unwelcome and instead comes across as tremendously exciting and delightfully fresh.

To direct, the production team brought back Douglas Camfield, one of the great Doctor Who directors, for his first contribution to the program since 1970's "Inferno". Unsurprisingly, Camfield was brought back by the tenacity of the script and tailored his style to fit that.

But really, this is the deep wane of the UNIT years. While UNIT is a present in this, it's more than clear that The Doctor has outgrown them and they have no place in the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era. That doesn't stop them from re-appearing twice more in this season (in "The Android Invasion" and "The Seeds of Doom"), but as you'll see in those stories, their opportunity had long since past and they're very, very faded into the background. The Brigadier isn't in "Android Invasion" and Harry and Benton aren't even in "Seeds of Doom". There were plans to kill The Brigadier off in this story (according to legend, it was even Nicholas Courtney's idea), but Hinchcliffe opted to not kill off one of the programme's main supporting players, which led to the quiet exit of UNIT instead of a bombastic blaze of glory.

In their defense, UNIT had had too many opportunities for the bombastic blaze of glory. Probably best to go quietly.

Oh and this story has the Loch Ness Monster. So if you're ever wondering which one that is, it's this one. This is the one in which Doctor Who does the Loch Ness Monster.

So let's get to it!

Serial 108.5: Shada

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor), Paul McGann (8th Doctor)
Companions: Romana II, K-9

Written by: Douglas Adams, Gary Russell (audio adaptation), Gareth Roberts (novelization)
Directed by: Pennant Roberts (and Gary Russell)

Background & Significance: As of the day I'm posting this, there are 106 episodes missing from the Doctor Who archives. The number would be 108, but two were returned to the archives last December and the number decreased accordingly. Unfortunately, those missing episodes were the first recoveries in eight years and it's doubtful many more will ever be recovered. To travel in the other direction, Doctor Who is going to outlast all of us because it's infinitely malleable and so long as stories exist, Doctor Who has the potential to exist. I'll be sad if there's Doctor Who stories still coming out after I die, but if there aren't I'll probably more disappointed than I ever would be sad.

As fans, this leaves us with the notion that Doctor Who has created a need that will never truly be satisfied. There are points where you might burn out on Doctor Who, but you'll always come back because you will always want your experience to be as complete as possible to make up for the fact that there's one in ten episodes that you will never see, and because there's stories that will air long after you die that you'll never see because you're, well, dead. We're obsessed with the gaping hole left simply by being Doctor Who fans, by the infinite wealth and treasure trove we alone are privy to and the wasted opportunities strikes us as inherently wasteful, because why waste a good story?

Which brings us to "Shada".

"Shada" is the only Doctor Who story that can never truly be "complete". Unlike those stories missing from the archives, (which hypothetically could be returned despite its unlikelihood) "Shada" was completely written, partially produced, and never completed, which is entirely different.

The serial was intended to be the last big hurrah of the Graham Williams era. Williams himself was really done with the program by this point, and between Tom Baker's increasing irritability and not being able to get a budget near what he wanted it to be (it's never near what you want it to be, which is, inevitably, "infinity dollars" (or "infinity pounds" as this case might be)) he decided to go out on an story penned by his script editor, Douglas Adams, one that would be funny and delightful and rompy and basically everything Williams ever wanted his era to be. He even planned for it to have a good budget, having been recently slammed his first two seasons by failing to account for a big, six-part season finale, which is why "The Invasion of Time" and "The Armageddon Factor" are so insanely, unbelievably cheap-looking. So he pinched his pennies and made "The Nightmare of Eden" and "Horns of Nimon" (and even "Creature From the Pit") on an unusually small and tight budget.

It was all looking to go awesome. There would be Time Lord intrigue (which Williams always worked into his season finales) and Douglas Adams's own particular brand of humor and lots of money so he could go out on a proper note.

And then this labour dispute happened in December and they targeted Doctor Who because Doctor Who was a really good target that would get their point across. Williams fought to get the whole thing done in time and did good on the location work and made some progress on the studio time, but the labour dispute turned even more sour, the BBC postponed all recording dates in December, and because Christmas programs were way more important to the BBC than Doctor Who, Williams found it impossible to schedule the five recording dates he needed to finish the story and get the whole thing done before the story would actually make it to air.

So Williams's planned swansong never aired and "Horns of Nimon" became his legacy.

The part that stings most about this is that Williams had half a complete serial, and that's the part that I think gets in most people's heads about this. The whole story is a big ol' question mark that's gotten Doctor Who fans since it first didn't air. (And who can blame them? Just hearing the titular "Shada" is a Time Lord prison is enough to kick your brain into overdrive. I know it was a story I became particularly enraptured with when I first became aware of it. Hell, I still am and I'm not even a Douglas Adams fan) The fact that we'll never see it as it "should have" existed is the biggest kick in the teeth and the one that pushes Doctor Who fans from "intense curiosity" to "obsessive need."

How obsessive a need, you might ask? Well, plenty of people have attempted to get a faithful retelling of Shada up and running for years and years. Ian Levine did one in the early 80s with script inserts in place of scenes that weren't filmed (and apparently now has a cut of the film that he personally financed with animation to fill in the gaps that weren't filmed). Nathan-Turner worked after the show's cancellation to secure Tom Baker to provide linking narration to the existing clips to piece the whole thing together in a way that would make it make sense, getting a home video release in 1992, which remains the best he could do. Big Finish got permission from Douglas Adams's estate to produce an audio adaptation of Shada with animatics to visualize the story as best as possible. Because they couldn't get Tom Baker to reprise his role they asked then-incumbent Doctor Paul McGann to be The Doctor for the story and adapter Gary Russell wrote around it in such a way that it made sense. This was released in May of 2003.

Fast forward to this year: for the first time, Adams's Doctor Who story has been novelized by Gareth Roberts based on Douglas Adams's script and notes. It's the first time an Adams Doctor Who story has been novelized.

It's been an unsurprising obsession, but my question becomes "so how is it?" We have three different source texts to work with: Nathan-Turner's Tom Baker narrated home video release in 1992, Gary Russell's 8th Doctor Big Finish audio/animatic adaptation in 2003, and Gareth Roberts's novelization. I think it'd be a good idea to talk about all three of these and see which one works best, which one doesn't, and how do they all add up to the larger picture of the swansong Williams (and Adams) never got? Not only that, but how do these two Doctors' interpretations compare? It was written for Tom Baker, but how does Paul McGann do?  Was Douglas Adams really a great Doctor Who writer? Can we as a mass collective of Doctor Who fans ever move on?

Strap in, kids. This is gonna be a long one.

So let's get to it!

Serial 79: Revenge of the Cybermen

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companion: Sarah Jane, Harry

Written by: Gerry Davis
Directed by: Michael Briant

Background & Significance: Now that we're really rapidly approaching the home stretch of this blog, I think it's become terribly clear which eras of Doctor Who I enjoy and which I do not. I've come to find the Pertwee era one of the most fun eras while I've really come to dislike a vast majority of Troughton due to its lack of both ambition and originality (which is unfortunate, because I love his Doctor). But the era that I have to always mention right up front is the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era. I went into it initally with my arms crossed and without any real desire to partake. "I'd like the comedy", I thought. "I have no taste for horror."

I was wrong about that. Hinchcliffe/Holmes is almost definitely my favorite era in Classic Who. I'm always in the mood for one of their stories because they're just so damn enjoyable (if not flawless) and it really is one of the most consistent runs of Doctor Who in terms of sheer quality. The run of stories from "Robot" to "Horror of Fang Rock" is one of the most outstanding runs in all of Doctor Who history where the lows are more than watchable and the highs are nigh untouchable and some of the best Doctor Who ever produced. What's here is the stuff of legend, and regardless of quality I'm always eager to jump back in whenever I need a Doctor Who fix because what's here is so good, if nothing else than aesthetically. Fortunately there's usually a bit more to go on than pure aesthetics more often than not, but other times? Shrug. That's what you got.

With all that in mind let's talk about "Revenge of the Cybermen".

"Revenge of the Cybermen" is the black sheep of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era. It's widely regarded as their weakest story and "a mess" to put it mildly. But why is this one singled out when "Android Invasion" is an equally impressive candidate? My guess is "Android Invasion" benefits from being buried in the middle of its season, in between two dynamite Robert Holmes stories whereas this story is tacked on at the end of a very strong season, estranged from everything else by what's been called the best Dalek story of all time. That's to say nothing of the pressure of giving the Cybermen a return after a six and a half year absence, nor the pressure of making it something of an informal sequel to "The Ark in Space". Of course, this pressure was only magnified by the return of former script editor and co-creator of the Cybermen Gerry Davis coming back after seven and a half years to pen their return.

Throw in a production haunted by a curse from a petrified witch and you've got yourselves a ball game.

So let's get to it.

Serial 81: The Planet of Evil

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)

Companions: Sarah Jane

Written by: Louis Marks
Directed by: David Maloney

Editor's Note: Hey, guys! I have the week off to prepare(?) for next week's entry. Which (knowing me and what kinda story it is) will be a gargantuan entry. So this week Cassandra's stepping in to talk about a different planet. Only this one belongs to an adjective. Not arachnids.

Background & Significance: "Planet of Evil" aired towards the beginning of Season Thirteen of Doctor Who, the second of Tom Baker's seven seasons, as well as the second season of the show being overseen by the almighty Hinchcliffe and Holmes. We've been around long enough that you should know how we feel about this guys. And these first three seasons of Tom Baker. =)

Season Thirteen is an interesting season because everys tory in it is an homage in one way or another to a very famous sci-fi/horror classic. "Zygons" is essentially Invasion of the Body Snatchers. "Pyramids of Mars" is a send up to mummy movies. "Android Invasion" is Body Snatchers again. "Brain of Morbius" is Frankenstein, "Seeds of Doom" is The Thing and Day of the Triffids, and "Planet of Evil" is Forbidden Planet as well as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

The thing about this season, though, is that it takes the tropes and homages the works, but in a way that if you're not familiar with what they're homaging it doesn't take away from the storytelling at all. And I really enjoy that. I've never seen Forbidden Planet, but I'm still able to enjoy this, as well as pick up what they were going for. It's a very clever way of taking classics and spinning them in such a way to suit Doctor Who, which is one of the reasons I really love this season (except "Android Invasion" of course).

"Planet of Evil is also written and directed by names with whom we're pretty familiar. Louis Marks had previously penned "Planet of the Giants" and "Day of the Daleks" (which is also great), and would go on to write "Masque of Mandragora," which is a pretty great track record, if I do say so myself. And David Maloney, of course, directed such awesomeness as "The Mind Robber," "War Games," "Genesis of the Daleks," "The Deadly Assassin," and "The Talons of Weng-Chiang." So don't mess.

This is also the first adventure with The Doctor and Sarah Jane without Harry, who decided to stay on Earth at the end of "Terror of the Zygons." Prepare for awesome.

Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Serial 104: The Destiny of the Daleks

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companion: Romana II

Written by: Terry Nation
Directed by: Ken Grieve

Background & Significance: With two years of Doctor Who under his belt, it's only fitting that producer Graham Williams would choose to bring in The Daleks for a turn. It's weird. There's not REALLY a producership or era that happens without eventually doing a Dalek story (the Troughton seasons are a notable exception, but then again, Troughton is more era than producer, methinks, and he did get two kick ass Dalek stories up front).

But this is the Graham Williams submission to the Dalek canon, and as you might expect it is deliriously problematic.

For a start, this is the last story Terry Nation wrote for Doctor Who, so that's something to look forward to. It's also the first of many, many returns for Davros and a great posterchild for all the Davros stories moving forward, teaching the people who do the stories a great number of things about how Davros should and should not function in a story. Perhaps the greatest mistake was replacing David Wisher with David Gooderson, and it's not that Gooderson is bad, it's just that his interpretation is impossibly way too Hitler-on-the-nose if you know what I mean. It's also the only Doctor Who story directed by Ken Grieve. So that's a thing.

It's also with this story that we get the introduction of the second incarnation of Romana. In the previous story (the unfortunate "Armageddon Factor") Mary Tamm stepped down and decided to pursue other interests, leaving Lalla Ward to step in and be the "real Romana" or rather, the Romana that we all know and love. And it's not that Tamm is bad, she just happened to get stuck in "one big story" that people can't ever seem to really parse out and examine as six separate stories. So people seem to remember her as in a whole lot less Doctor Who than she actually was. Ward had a season and a half. Tamm had "only one story". It's inaccurate, sure. But it does mean that we get a regeneration that is impossibly controversial and helped along by the ever so cheeky Douglas Adams, who has also taken over as script editor. So that happened.

To sum up: we have Douglas Adams and Lalla Ward and the return of Davros and Terry Nation. What could possibly go wrong?

So let's get to it!

Serial 85: The Seeds of Doom

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companion: Sarah Jane Smith

Written by: Robert Banks Stewart
Directed by: Douglas Camfield

Background & Significance: Each story in Tom Baker's second season covered a Doctor Who twist on a different horror movie. The season had already done a version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Mummy, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (twice!), Frankenstein. "The Seeds of Doom" was loosely based on "The Thing From Another World" (better known in modern circles simply as "The Thing") and a famous science fiction novel called Day of the Triffids, which, for those who don't remember, is about a bunch of killer plants.

So yes, this story is probably best remembered as "that one with the plants".

"The Seeds of Doom" is the final story of Tom Baker's second season and the second of the three six-parters in The Hinchcliffe/Holmes era ("Genesis of the Daleks" being the first, "Talons of Weng-Chiang" being the third), and it was at this point that Doctor Who was at its most popular ever. Tons of people were watching week-to-week. Mary Whitehouse was screaming as often as she could about how Hinchcliffe/Holmes should be fired because of the show's violent and horrific content (thereby bringing in more people to watch it because that's what hype does). Holmes was gaining more and more influence on the show's writing, so much so that starting in the season following this one he was allowed to write two stories a season, a huge move against traditional BBC policy, which explicitly forbade a script editor from commissioning his own scripts. Hinchcliffe was pushing the budget more and more and more and making the show into a gorgeous looking thing so the sets that weren't made of two planks of plywood and a loofa. People were eating it up.

Not only that, but this is Tom Baker at some of his stunning, stunning best. It's Elisabeth Sladen running around and having a jolly time and being one of the best companions ever. Its dastardly, evil villains who are some of the best I've ever seen. It's brilliant, engaging science-fiction storytelling. How telling then, that this is the second and final script from Robert Banks Stewart, a famous writer for popular spy action drama show "The Avengers" (no, not THOSE Avengers, the other more British ones) who returned to Doctor Who after his great turn writing "Terror of the Zygons" and who infused his scripts with tons of action and adventure to the point where it really does feel like Doctor Who doing their spin on The Avengers. How choice, then, that they always paired him with the-oft-and-rightly-lauded director Douglas Camfield, who did some of the best action-centric Doctor Who of the Classic Era.

Can you tell we're in for a treat?

So let's get to it!

Serial 89: The Face of Evil

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)

Companion: Leela

Written By: Chris Boucher

Directed By: Pennant Roberts

Background & Significance: After the departure of Sarah Jane and the experiment of not giving The Doctor a companion for one story, producer Phillip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes (who had found writing a companion-less Doctor Who story immensely difficult) set about looking for a new companion to fill the void.

As luck would have it, Hinchcliffe and Holmes had commissioned a story from one Chris Boucher, who had submitted several ideas to the program and had finally gotten his first bite at the apple with this story.

Interestingly enough, one of the most engaging aspects of the serial was The Doctor's de facto companion for the story: a member of the main tribe in the story, a young woman named Leela. Originally, Leela was not supposed to be a companion, but she really fit into the ideas that Hinchcliffe and Holmes wanted to incorporate into Doctor Who moving forward. The fact that she was a savage and nothing like any companion The Doctor had had before (or would ever have since) helped convinced Hinchcliffe of her long term viability. For Holmes, it was his desire to bring in a Victorian street urchinish character later in the season that the following one might have a season-long arc of educating her Eliza Doolittle style.

This story is also the first appearance of the previously mentioned Chris Boucher (who would go on to write such gems as the subsequent "Robots of Death" and the following season's "Image of the Fendahl." He would go on later to be the script editor for Blake's 7. So that's something.

It's also the first introduction to Pennant Roberts who... let's just say he has one of the poorest track records in Doctor Who, having helmed such directorial turkeys as "The Pirate Planet", "Warriors of the Deep", and "Timelash". So that's something. I guess we'll have to talk about him a bit because... well... he actually does rather good here, doesn't he? I mean, he makes great use of the fact that this whole story was shot on a soundstage with no location filming. That's impressive, if you ask me.

This story, though... it also has the unfortunate "honor" of being in one of the greatest Doctor Who seasons of all time. It's wedged between Robert Holmes's Time Lord magnum opus and Boucher's own legendary tale about Robophobia and a murder mystery on a sandcrawler. Throw in the fact that we lost Sarah Jane just two stories ago and we end off the season with "Talons" and it's no wonder this story gets lost in the shuffle. Well... Not any more!

So let's get to it!

Serial 113: Warriors' Gate - The E-Space Trilogy Part III

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companion: Romana II, K-9, Adric


Written by: Stephen Gallagher
Directed by: Paul Joyce & Graeme Harper


Background & Significance: Wanting to push Doctor Who out of the complacency he saw under the purvey of Graham Williams, new producer John Nathan-Turner set about completely re-jiggering the show over the course of its 18th season.The first changes and were small but important when he commissioned a new opening title sequence, musical arrangement of the theme, and standard, codified outfit for The Doctor. The final major change was the turnover of Tom "he-pretty-much-is-Doctor-Who-at-this-point" Baker in the season's finale.

But before he did that, Nathan-Turner did a complete companion turnover.

 As with the other turnovers in the season, they came slowly and over time, so as to not be too jarring to the audience. Adric first appeared three stories in and became a full companion proper in the subsequent story. After the escape from E-Space, Nathan-Turner introduced new companion Nyssa in the season's penultimate story, and the final new companion (Tegan) in the season finale. It would leave an over-crowded TARDIS (a problem not really remedied until the departure of Nyssa in "Terminus"), but it still gave a new direction towards "relatability", which Nathan-Turner felt was lacking, especially when The 4th Doctor was as aloof and unconnectable as he was (and only getting more and more so as time went on), the first incarnation of Romana had proved as cold and unrelatable as she was, and the wonderful sidekick of the Tin Dog could only ever be a silly robot (and thusly not relatable). Lalla Ward's Romana definitely helped the situation by bringing levity, but in Nathan-Turner's eyes the fact that The Doctor (a Time Lord) was stuck sticking around with a robot dog and another Time Lord only made the show less connectable and personal...

So Romana and the Tin Dog... They'd have to go. And go they did.

Interestingly enough, "Warriors' Gate" was not the original conception for their departure. Initially, script editor Christopher H. Bidmead had commissioned a story from acclaimed novelist Christopher Priest (of "The Prestige" fame, amongst many many others) entitled "Sealed Orders", which supposedly would have featured "A political thriller set on Gallifrey in which the Doctor is seemingly ordered to kill Romana by the Time Lords. A complex plot involving time paradoxes would result in the appearance of a second Doctor (who dies) and lead to Romana's departure; it also involved the idea of time running into itself, resulting in one TARDIS existing inside another." [source]

Unfotunately, Priest was a novelist, not a television script writer, and the script proved unfeasible for television, resulting in Bidmead to using a fall back script by Stephen Gallagher he had commissioned for such an event.

And so "Warriors' Gate" came to be.

It wasn't a smooth transition, however. Gallagher's script proved to be fairly unfeasible for television, resulting in the story's director, Paul Joyce, working with Bidmead to do some major uncredited rewrites on the script to make the story workable. Joyce himself caused friction because of his ideas on the script, especially with Nathan-Turner (who contemplated firing him), and at one point handed over the reins to production assistant Graeme Harper, who worked on a few sequences alongside Nathan-Turner in what would be his first uncredited directing work.

And what we're left with is... a hell of a story. It's a jumble, it's a puzzle, and it's a hell of a ride. I mean, after all that we just talked about, it'd kinda have to be, right?

So let's get to it!

Serial 112: State of Decay - The E-Space Trilogy Part II

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companion: Romana II, K-9, Adric


Written by: Terrance Dicks
Directed by: Peter Moffat


Editor's note: Hey kids! Matt here to interject a few words before Cassandra takes over. Hope you've been enjoying this week-long look at E-Space (I know I have...). We'll be back to our regular Tuesday schedule on Tuesday but not before I round out the week with a look at "Warriors' Gate" on Friday. So check that out. Until then, feast your eyes on Cassandra stepping in to talk about some vampires.


Background & Significance: "State of Decay" is something of an anomaly in Season 18.

With the arrival of producer John Nathan-Turner and script editor Christopher Bidmead, Tom Baker's final season saw a definite shift in the show, as is normal when a new producer/script editor regime takes over.  Shying away from the Williams aesthetic of wonder and fantasy, Bidmead and Nathan-Turner strove to ground the show with a more "realistic" sense of hard sci-fi.  But we've gone over all that before.

So what is a Terrance Dicks penned vampire story doing here, right in the middle of E-Space?

"State of Decay" was actually intended to kick off Season 15. Developed by Dicks and Robert Holmes, the story fell in line with the deliciously Gothic horror tendencies of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era, inspired by Bram Stoker's novel Dracula.  However, the BBC stopped all production on the story, then called "The Vampire Mutation", because they were about to do a very expensive adaptation of Dracula, and it wouldn't do to have Doctor Who stepping on its toes with a vampire story of its own. Therefore, Dicks had to abandon his scripts, and wrote "Horror of Fang Rock" instead.

Enter JNT, three years later. Out of all the unproduced scripts that he had at his disposal as producer, he liked the vampire one the best. And so, he hired Terrance Dicks to rework it, replacing Leela with Romana, adding in Adric and K-9, and so forth.  Christopher Bidmead made changes as well, cutting back on the Gothic horror elements and playing up the sci-fi, so the story was more in line with his sensibilities.

So what we're left with is an interesting adaptation of an adaptation of sorts, a Gothic horror story trussed up with sci-fi elements to make it fit the new vision of Doctor Who. But does it work? Or is the tension between the new and the old such that they are entirely incompatible?

Well, let's take a closer look, shall we?

Serial 111: Full Circle - The E-Space Trilogy Part I

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companion: Romana II, K-9, Adric

Written by: Andrew Smith
Directed by: Peter Grimwade 

Background & Significance: Season 18 of Doctor Who is something of a strange beast if for no other reason than because it marks a period of transition for the show. Most transitory periods only last a few or so episodes (the transition from Pertwee to Tom Baker is a good example, where "Robot" is a weird UNIT story and not really the Hinchcliffe/Holmes vision of the show), but this season marks a big paradigm shift as the show prepares to move away from Tom Baker and towards the stewardship of Producer John Nathan-Turner.

This is the one where you really start to feel its effects.

As Philip Sandifer is talking about all this week, the hand off from Tom Baker to Nathan-Turner happened in stages. Certain things were immediately apparent, the change in costume being the one that really stands out. Nathan-Turner really helped to codify the Tom Baker costume, which is... well... it's a good thing, I think. I mean, I'm personally a huge fan of the first three years of Tom Baker's look: Huge coat, colorful waistcoat, tie, button down shirt, slacks, perfect-length scarf... hat optional. It gave the Doctor a sense of ordered chaos and manner of appearance. As time went on though, Tom Baker started to take more liberty with his costume. No tie. Waistcoat optional and unbuttoned (which makes me ask why he even bothered keeping it around). Scarf that looks like a two-story tall curtain rather than an actual scarf. (Compare the two and you'll see the difference).

If nothing else, the burgundy scheme really points towards Baker's imminent departure. It feels very restrained, very somber, very foreboding. Funeral clothes, if you will... but for his own funeral. It's an ominous touch that just feels so good and so right, especially in retrospect.

But then you turn around and talk about script editor Christopher H. Bidmead, who brought in an almost over-saturation of "science" into a show that had been so defined by the "world of dreams and fantasy" under Graham Williams. It's not that I don't like his ideas (I mean, I love "Castrovalva", and "Logopolis" was totally watchable), but the focus on that is a bit silly, especially when it gets into Bidmead's own perspective on "science" which is much more based on conceptual interests (entropy) than actual data, facts, and real physics or whatever.

Which brings us to our week-long discussion of E-Space, which will see the arrival of Adric and the departure of Romana and K-9. E-Space is a big sci-fi concept that really pushes the Bidmead conception of Doctor Who more than "The Leisure Hive" or "Meglos" ever could. Those two stories were conceived and commissioned by the previous production team (re: Graham Williams) and don't make for "Nathan-Turner" stories. The next story ("State of Decay") was a product of long time Doctor Who stalwart Terrance Dicks. Fortunately/unfortunately Nathan-Turner didn't want to be undermined by any experienced Doctor Who crew who could undermine his authority, so Dicks is an old holdover. Almost in response, Nathan-Turner went in the completely opposite direction and commissioned "Full Circle" from Andrew Smith, who was only a teenager at the time.

Talk about fresh blood. Youngest writer on Doctor Who ever. I'm curious to see how it works out.

So let's get to it!

Serial 92: Horror of Fang Rock

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companion: Leela

Written by: Terrance Dicks
Directed by: Paddy Russell

Background & Significance: "Horror of Fang Rock" slipped through the cracks.

Even though this is the first serial produced by Graham Williams after he took over producership from Phillip Hinchcliffe, but it certainly doesn't feel like it. More than anything, it feels like a big last hurrah commissioned in the waning hours of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era, approved before Williams took over, and stamped with all of the Holmesian trademarks of his run with Hinchcliffe. Williams, as nascent producer, didn't do much to change it to match his vision.

Really, that's the thing about "Horror of Fang Rock" that I find so terribly interesting. It doesn't feel like a Williams story at all. No. It really feels like the last great Hinchcliffe hurrah and even deals with the tropes and stylings and tones of his era to the letter.

It's directed by Paddy Russell (who had previously done "The Massacre", "Invasion of the Dinosaurs", and "Pyramids of Mars") and would be her last contribution to the show. It's also written by Terrance Dicks, who would disappear for a few years only to come back and write about some vampires and then a big multi-Doctor mashup, so in a lot of ways it really does feel like a changing of the guard. It's after this that Holmes's work on Doctor Who undergoes a noticeable shift away from his carefully cultivated tone and style towards the more playful work of the Williams era, and you can really feel his fingerprints all over this story as they make the transition from here into something... less good.

And perhaps most interesting of all is that this kicks off a season that is... middling in my opinion. It's good that the Williams run starts off so strong, but also sad because it means he can only go downhill from here.

So let's get to it!

Serial 91: The Talons of Weng-Chiang

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companion: Leela

Written by: Robert Holmes
Directed by: David Maloney

Background & Significance: In 1976, as producer Phillip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes were going to wrap their third season as a team, it became obvious to the two of them that Hinchcliffe was being moved away to a new show and that Robert Holmes would most likely be going with him. Holmes, of course, did end up leaving four stories later (subsequent producer Graham Williams asked him to stay on), but in terms of the geniusness that was Hinchcliffe's oversight, this was it, and when it comes to Holmes, this (in a lot of ways) was it for him for a while.

All of this is adds up to the fact that "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" is a wonderfully important and meaningful story. And if it's not that way to anyone else (how many times do we have to talk about the racism again? Fine, fine. I will too) it certainly is to me.

In a lot of ways, "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" is the thesis project for both Hinchcliffe and Holmes and carries all of the trademarks they picked up over the course of their three years running the show. Indeed, Hinchcliffe's first instruction to Holmes was "write anything you want, just don't include The Master" (which Holmes, at one point, wanted to do), giving Robert Holmes free reign to write anything he wanted. This, of course, led to Holmes dialing into the Gothic horror he'd been injecting into the show, only he dialed it up by eleven. He grabbed books and books off the shelf, injecting everything from Phantom of the Opera to Sherlock Holmes to Fu Manchu. He brought in his classic double act, making, perhaps, the most famous double act he ever did (who, by the way, Hinchcliffe seriously considered spinning off into their own series, which would actually happen eventually and to much acclaim), set it in Victorian times (which was the only thing his era was lacking when you really look at it), homaged Jack the Ripper, created a VERY Robert Holmesian villain, and made The Doctor Sherlock Holmes.

Hinchcliffe, of course, didn't care anymore. Well, I mean he did care. He was still producer and he'd had a very good run, but he wanted to go out on a bang (and did in a way very few others have), by making the very best Doctor Who story he could. So when I say he didn't care, I mean he didn't care about silly things like "budget" anymore. His vision for Doctor Who had always run up against budgetary concerns, but this time he threw it all out the window and made it lavish and gorgeous and the best it could possibly be. He brought in David Maloney (of "Mind Robber", "War Games", "Genesis of the Daleks", and "Deadly Assassin" fame) for his final ever work on Doctor Who, authorized night shoots, and told everyone to go crazy and make the best show they possibly could.

As it turns out, when you're running what's probably the best Doctor Who era ever and you tell everyone to make the best story and give them the freedom to do so, it'd be pretty hard to mess that up. And they really don't. It's astounding how much this really ends up being the perfect ending for their era, a climax and zenith that Doctor Who had very rarely reached or would reach again. And for most everyone to agree that this story is easily the best of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes when quality of the era is as high as it is (and in case you've forgotten, go back and see all of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes stories there's been and look at how high a bar they set), that's really saying something. Really truly.

Also, as a heads up this is probably going to be a love fest. I can already feel it coming, but hey. It's the hundredth story we're reviewing on the blog. I say we do it right.

So let's get to it!

Serial 106: The Creature From the Pit

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companions: Romana II, K-9

Written by: David Fisher
Directed by: Christopher Barry

Background & Significance: One of the things that strikes me most about working writers (or anyone in the professional entertainment industry, for that matter) is the notion of "Why do sucky people keep getting rehired even though their work sucks?" Take the Baker/Martin team for example. Those guys wrote literally the worst Doctor Who stories ever (or if not that, then my least favourites) and they were around for years and years and years, asked back over and over again. But why?

The answer to this, of course, is that they got the work done. Someone might not be the best writer or director, but they got the job done in good time and on a good budget. Quality is irrelevant. Money was saved.

Such is my thought on David Fisher, who returns to Doctor Who for the Douglas Adams season of Doctor Who with the last story of his we're going to be talking about here at the wonderful(?) Classical Gallifrey. Now, in the previous season he was responsible for the [what I still consider to be] absolute genius "Androids of Tara" and the very very strange "Stones of Blood", which was good except for the bit where it made a really weird and unwelcome left turn two thirds of the way through episode three and became a story I wasn't quite interested in. It's hard to count "City of Death" (because that was much more Douglas Adams than it was Fisher, who just did the base concept), so those two Key to Time stories and this one are all we really have to go on when it comes to judging David Fisher's contributions to the show.

But more on what he does with that in a little bit.

This story was the first story shot in that one Douglas Adams season and is surprisingly low budget seeming for such an early story (let's be honest, though: "Destiny of the Daleks", "City of Death", and "Shada"? Not cheap). It also is the first to not only feature Lalla Ward as Romana, but more specifically Romana II. It's a weird change, especially considering David Fisher had written all the scripts for this story before Lalla Ward was even cast (it was assumed Mary Tamm would be returning) and if you watch this you can totally tell that Fisher is writing Romana with a definite inspiration from her first incarnation than the second (it's the costume and the dialogue more than anything).

It also sees the return of veteran director Christopher Barry, who hadn't been seen on Doctor Who in three years (he'd previously done "The Brain of Morbius") and would never be seen on the programme again. The reasons are understandable, though. If that was the creature the production team came up with, I'd have left and never come back too. Same too with K-9, seen first here done by the voice of guy-who-is-not-John-Leeson, which is not exactly welcome. All in all it's a kickoff to this season I don't consider myself a huge fan of, which is weird because it's technically the third story of the season.

What I mean to say is it's a lot of things. Plenty. Too much. Worth discussing (yeah, boy). Ultimately a bit sour.

So let's get to it!