The Mark of the Rani

Two Episodes (45 mins each)
Aired between 2nd February 1985 and 9th February 1985

Written by Pip and Jane Baker
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Sarah Hellings

Synopsis

In a little village in the north of England called Killingworth, an old woman who runs a bathhouse
has a sinister practice of gassing miners and somehow turning them into violent vandals and thugs. 

They're seen as belonging to the Luddites, a group of people that are against the oncoming use of technology in the industrial revolution that is stealing away jobs from hard working men.

Perri and the Doctor arrive in Killingworth after noticing some form of time distortion. 

They investigate the town and he soon sniffs out the fact that the bathhouse is connected to the distortion. He also discovers that a series of top names in the scientific world are about to come and meet in the village at the invitation of notable scientist George Stephenson. He is however, unaware that he's being watched from afar by his old enemy the Master, who has somehow escaped the flames and is alive and well.

The Master goes into the bathhouse and finds that another renegade Time Lord known as The Rani is orchestrating things here.

The Rani was exiled from Gallifrey and set up her own empire on a planet known as Miasmia Goria. She is extracting chemicals from the miners that controls sleep (serotonin).

The Master works out that it's because she has been messing around with her citizens to create super species, but has made them all violent. She now needs the chemical to calm them down and stop the riots.  The Master takes her batch of the chemical, as well as some small maggots that have mind control powers when placed in people's mouths, and blackmails the Rani to help him kill the Doctor.

Although the Doctor disguises himself and infiltrates the bath house to find the Rani's operation and confronts her about the immorality of it, he is ultimately captured.

The Master enlists the help of the "Luddite" miners to attack the Doctor.

They throw the TARDIS down a mine shaft and strap him onto a mine cart and are planning to send him down after it.  Perri helps rescue the Doctor, but she accidentally sets the cart going towards the mine shaft.  Lucky for the Doctor, George Stephenson himself manages to stop the cart and rescue him. 

Together, they all go to see Lord Ravensworth, the owner of the pit to plan their next move.  The Doctor tries to convince Stephenson to call off his meeting with the other scientists, but the Master overhears and ends up using one of the Rani's maggots on Stephenson's aide - Luke Ward. 

He tells Ward to kill anyone who tries to stop the meeting.  The Master then returns to the Rani and suggests she helps him make sure the meeting happens, with the intent of speeding up humanities technological development and therefore transforming it into a power base for him to rule over. In return, the Rani can come and extract as much seratonin as she wants.  The Rani gathers some landmines and takes the Master with her to set a trap.

The Doctor decides it's time for action and goes off back to the bathhouse. He steals his way into her TARDIS and begins exploring, when it is summoned to some old mine workings by remote control, with him still inside. The Doctor hides as the Master and the Rani return and awaits his chance.

Meanwhile, Perri talks with Lord Ravensworth and says she is a botany student.  She goes with Luke Ward to Redfern Dell to look for certain herbs to use to create something to calm down the "Luddite" miners. Unfortunately, Luke Ward has been commanded by the Master to take her there, as that's where the trap is for the Doctor.  They walk around and unfortunately, it's Luke himself who steps on one of the Rani's landmines and gets turned into a tree.  It comes alive as Perri walks past it and grabs her. 

The Doctor has seen it all from afar and seizes his moment, capturing the Master's Tissue Compression Eliminator and using it to force them to help Perri escape.

The Doctor takes the Rani's chemical and goes to make everything right, but the Master and the Rani manage to escape, fleeing in her TARDIS.  Unfortunately for them, the Doctor sabotaged the navigation systems whilst he was in there and some of her specimens (one being a T-Rex) begin to grow and come to life due to the effect of time spillage. 

The Doctor and Perri return to Lord Ravensworth and George Stephenson, trading the serum for the Doctor's TARDIS that has been recovered from the bottom of the pit shaft.  They instruct Stephenson on how to give the chemical to the Luddites and then make their departure.

Trivia

• The Master turning back up was an instruction from JNT. There was no explanation as to how, and Eric Saward was not happy with the idea, but had no option but to let it in

• The name Rani means queen. Pip and Jane Baker based her character on their conversations with neuro biologists at dinner parties. They wanted her as an immoral biochemist rather than a typical hand-wringing villain

• The story might have had a load of studio work take place, but an extra film crew was offered by the BBC due to a mistake in another programme, so JNT took full advantage of them and sent them to Ironbridge museum to do location work instead 

• The scene where the Doctor marks his face with coal dust was made more funny by a dog taking a S**t in the pile. When Colin first did the action, he rubbed it all over his face and the crew stalled to clear it off so they could have a good laugh.

• They also left him hanging on a pole between two trees and even though some dog walkers stopped and talked to him, they never offered to untie him! 

• This was the first time Pip and Jane Baker worked on the show, but they soon became favourites of John Nathan-Turner's. He would use them throughout the seasons until the end of the series

• Colin Baker and Kate O'Mara had worked together before a couple of times and so knew each other quite well.  This was before she went on to appear in Dynasty though.

• The original music score was different as it was commissioned to a man called John Lewis, who unfortunately contracted a terminal illness and died before he got a chance to finish it.  Johnathan Gibbs was asked to do the score instead and he had a much more orchestral take on it.

The Review

The Mark of the Rani has a strange yin-yang of regard to it.  What do I mean by that?  I'll try to explain.  In fandom, it's generally regarded as a terrible story, with awful attempts at Geordie accents, stupid plots and ret-conning the Master's final death with no explanation whatsoever. BUT, this is juxtaposed by an almost cult following of the Rani (not quite to the level of Sil from the previous story, but still formidable). 

Equally, not since the shambles of Black Orchid has the Doctor Who production team even attempted to do a historical. This has all the bells and whistles of it, even including historical figures in the script, something which hasn't been seen since the sixties.  This SHOULD be a welcome return and the fact that they went to the effort to find an authentic location in a museum and get the costumes right, well, we should be applauding it. The problem is the execution is poor at best.

The character of the Rani is interesting enough, with her detached scientific approach to things making many of us intrigued. She demonstrates quite clearly, she is not cut from the Master's cloth. She has reasons and motivations and that is good. But what she's doing, the reasons why is pretty much stupid. Many of the scenes are supposed to be sinister (I think) but they come across as hokey. But as mentioned, the crux of her character is quite intriguing, which is why to this day, every new season of Doctor Who that comes out, the fans are looking with eager eyes as soon as there's a whiff of a female villain to see if the Rani is going to return (see the whole Missy debacle for more).

Sadly, the only other time she appears on screen is a laughable attempt to disguise herself as Bonnie Langford.

The Mark of the Rani should be good, on paper it probably is, on screen it most certainly is not.

Rating

4 out of 10

Re-Watchability Factor

4 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Time Meddler

• The Green Death

• The Time Warrior

Planet of Fire

Four episodes
Aired between 23rd February 1984 and 2nd March 1984

Written by Peter Grimwade
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Fiona Cumming

Synopsis

Shortly following Tegan's departure, Kamelion screams in pain. The Doctor and Turlough rush to find him on the floor, connected to the TARDIS data core.

As this is happening, the TARDIS picks up on a distress signal and Turlough seems to recognise it and is troubled by it - so much so that he rips out wires on the console to stop the signal.  All for not though, as Kamelion takes control of the TARDIS and heads towards the source of the signal, which happens to be the island of Lanzarote.

On the island, Howard Foster, an archaeologist is returning with his team from bringing their finds up from the sea bed. Amongst the finds is a strange golden object marked with the sign of two triangles.  His step-daughter, Perpugilliam "Perri" Brown shows up and explains she's bored and intends to go backpacking in Morocco with a total stranger.  Howard is angry at first, but then offers to pay for her ticket to make sure retains her return ticket to New York and thereby making sure she's safe. He convinces her that he's left his money on the boat, but when they get there, he strands her on it in order to make her miss the flight.

Not to be deterred, Perri takes the strange artefact with the intent to sell it, changes into a bikini and tries to swim ashore.  For some reason though, she can't swim very well and ends up half-drowning herself until Turlough spots her on the TARDIS monitor and saves her.

Turlough takes Perri to the TARDIS and lays her in bed to recover, and finds the artefact. Again he is disturbed as he happens to have a strange embossed tattoo of the triangle pattern on his arm, the same as the artefact.

The Doctor, having been running all around the island trying to find the source, tracks it back to the TARDIS and uncovers it from Turlough. He asks what the artefact is, but before Turlough can fully explain, the TARDIS doors close and it begins to take off again.  Kamelion is controlling the TARDIS once again and has taken form of Howard from Perri's memories.  The Doctor confronts him, but doesn't get much sense, ultimately figuring out that they're going back to where the artefact originated from - a desert planet known as Sarn.

On Sarn, there is a community of people who have a faith worshipping Logar, god of fire.  That faith is waning as people are starting to question whether he exists at all.  The disciple of the high priest Timanov, is a boy who also bears a mark on his arm similar to Turlough.  Timanov thinks the boy, Malcon, is a chosen one of Logar and he alone can determine if heretics are burned in fire to appease the god and stop the earthquakes that seem to be troubling their village.  The community seem to be ready to overthrow Timanov and Malcon when the TARDIS arrives, and people take it as a sign from Logar.

 As the Doctor and Turlough go out to investigate where they've landed, "Howard" turns into the Master and proclaims that he's got control of the TARDIS now.

Following this, Perri runs all over the fire riddled mountainsides of Sarn, being chased by Kamelion who has taken on the appearance of the Master.

The Doctor and Turlough meanwhile find evidence that people from Trion are living on Sarn (the mark on Turlough's arm is called the Misos triangle and it's a sign of his people).

It seems that Malcon maybe Turlough's brother as he and his father went missing when they were very young (implication is that their ship crashed on Sarn).  Malcon knows of the ship and takes Turlough there who then finds out off of Perri that the Master is involved.  Together, they all race back to the village, but see that the Master has managed to convince Timanov that he is a messenger from Logar and convinces the high priest to try and execute the Doctor by burning him sacrificially.

Turlough finds some technology that disables the flame and then goes to free the Doctor.

Perri is re-captured by Kamelion / The Master and taken into his TARDIS.

The Doctor figures out that the seizmic disturbances are from the volcano that's about to erupt and kill them all. He realises that the fire in the centre of their community is fuelled by Newmismaton gas. which has renown healing properties - he assumes that the Master is after using the gas to rejuvenate himself.

Sure enough, the Master takes Perri in his TARDIS to a central control in the heart of the volcano that was put there long ago and controls the Newmismaton gas flow.  He tries to force Perri to work the controls, but she escapes into his TARDIS and tries to destroy Kamelion's control box, instead finding a miniaturised Master within it.

Like a complete idiot, the Master accidentally shrank himself when trying to upgrade his Tissue Compression Eliminator.  Now he needs the gas to rejuvenate himself.  Perri tries to slap him with her shoe, but he escapes into the innards of his own TARDIS console and is forced to open the doors to free her.

Perri goes and finds the Doctor, takes him to the control room in the heart of the volcano.  The Doctor sets up a trap by altering the system.

The Master arrives and uses Kamelion to try and dispose of the Doctor but the Doctor's trap short circuits Kamelion and he ends up being destroyed by the Tissue Compression Eliminator.

The Master, having been put into the blue flames of the Newmismaton gas is returned to normal and starts to gloat, but the Doctor fiddles with the controls and watches the flames turn yellow and the Master is burned up to nothing.

Even though he doesn't want to (because he was a political prisoner and sentenced to exile on Earth), Turlough contacts Trion and gets them to send out a ship to come pick up all the villagers on Sarn.  They arrive but tell him that times have changed and he's welcome to return home with his newfound brother.

Turlough does so and asks Perri to look after the Doctor.

The Doctor does seem intent to send her back to Earth, but she convinces him that she was wanting to travel the world anyway, and travelling in the TARDIS for three weeks is much better.

Trivia

• If you don't count the guest starring Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in Battlefield, this is the last time a male companion has an adventure with the Doctor until the series re-boot in 2005.

• The destruction of Kamelion and departure of Turlough also marked the end of a nearly 7 year run of non-human companions that travelled with the Doctor.

• According to John Nathan-Turner himself, the last words from the Master of "Won't you show mercy to your own..." would have ended in "brother". This was obviously kept secret as they didn't want to be that explicit.

• The scene where Perri is drowning was interrupted by a Norweigian man from a nudist beach who saw her and dove in, swimming to her to help, but finding out when he got there that she was perfectly fine.  Luckily, the crew got all the shots of Perri before hand.

The Review

As with Terminus, I found The Planet of Fire to be unbelievably boring.  Once again, there are minor aspects of Grimwade's stories, mainly the idea at the core of them that are interesting, and Planet of Fire does have these,  but they've been done before, and much better.

The civilisation based on a space travelling race is old hat for Doctor Who now, and once the TARDIS lands on Sarn, we're left with little of interest beyond a story that looks at the warnings of following blind faith.  That's alright, but it doesn't really focus on that theme, it just has it there in the background whilst we see a lot of messing around by men painted silver. 

Indeed, Kamelion is written out in this, and he's made one of the key elements in this story, which is fair enough, but we've not really seen him since the King's Demons, so no viewer is attached to him at all and it's irrelevant how much pain he's in because he's effectively still a robot to us. 

The running around Lanzarote and Perri's introduction wasn't too bad, and it did hold my attention for a little bit.  I'm not saying I'd like more than one episode of it (like Ark of Infinity), but when this is one of the good bits and it goes away mid-episode 1, then it's going to be missed.

The artefact plot bothers me. I mean, why is it on earth in 1984 anyway?  The Master / Kamelion additionally are a source of amusement and  frustration as they're so over the top on a constant basis that it is a complete turn off.  The less said about the entire shrunken master scenario, the better.

All in all, I would seriously recommend giving this a miss once you've seen Nicola Bryant get her kit off and half-drown.  It's such a sad thing too, as Season 21 has been a real upswing in the quality of stories for Peter Davison's run on the show. 

Dire production and I'm not planning to watch this again any time in the future.

Rating

3 out of 10

Re-Watchability Factor

2 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

The Time Monster

Death to the Daleks

The Brain of Morbius

Underworld

The Two Doctors

The Fires of Pompeii (Doctor Who, Series 4)

Time-flight

Four episodes

Aired between 22nd March 1982 and 30th March 1982

Written by Peter Grimwade
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Ron Jones

Synopsis

Concorde goes missing and the staff at Heathrow airport start freaking out.

On the TARDIS, the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa have only just collected and dropped the crew of the freighter and surviving marines off in the 26th Century (see Earthshock).

Nyssa and Tegan ask the Doctor to go back in time, but the Doctor refuses, angrily saying that there's some laws that even he can't break and they shouldn't ask him again.  He tries to take their minds off Adric's death by going to the Great Exhibition of 1851, but instead lands in Heathrow Airport, 1982.

They immediately get arrested, but thanks to the Doctor's UNIT credentials, they come to find out about the missing Concorde.

The Doctor offers to help and they load the TARDIS onto a second concorde, flying it out to the area where the other one went missing.  Whilst on the flight, the TARDIS picks up some kind of strange signal, but they all believe they pass through the area without too much trouble and land back at Heathrow.

It's not long however before they discover that this Heathrow is an illusion (like a perception filter) and they've actually travelled back in time 140 million years.

Once they can see clearly, they notice the second Concorde on a desolate plane, a great citadel in the distance, and the remains of an alien spacecraft.

The crew and passengers of the first Concorde are entranced except for Professor Hayter, a prof. in Hypnosis.  The hypnotised humans are marshalled by blobs of energy known as Plasmatons. As they talk to the Prof. the crew start to take the TARDIS to the citadel and Nyssa gets visions and hears voices.

Meanwhile, at the Citadel, a strange oriental creature known as the Kalid works with a force of psychokinetic energy to entrance everyone. It's the same energy that's affecting Nyssa so strangely.   He can view things through a crystal ball and watches with curiosity and manages to trap Nyssa in a block of the Plasmatons.

The Doctor goes with Hayter and the pilots to the citadel and finds scores of humans trying to gain entrance to a sealed chamber.  He leaves the others there to try and help the humans to snap out of it whilst he ventures further.  The Doctor meets Kalid and finds that he's brought the Concordes back through time so he can use the people on them as a slave force to get access to the sealed chamber.

Kalid manipulates the psychokinetic energies around the area to try and blackmail the Doctor into letting him have access to the TARDIS, otherwise he will hurt Hayter and the crew.

Nyssa breaks free of the Plasmatons and heeding to the voices in her head, she and Tegan go to the citadel.  They find numerous visions including one of Adric who begs them not to go any further.  They understand that it's just apparitions though, so they go onwards.  They eventually get to the sealed chamber and they somehow gain access to it.

Nyssa in a trance throws a nearby artefact into a tank and the effects hurt the Kalid who collapses and starts bleeding green slime.

The Doctor is puzzled as they examine the Kalid's crystal ball.  It turns out not to be controlled by psychokinesis, but by electronics.  The Master shrugs off his Disguise as the Kalid and laughs.

Turns out the Master somehow escaped Castrovalva but has found himself stranded in pre-historic England as his own TARDIS needs a new power source.  He found the chamber and equipment and he believes that the centre of the chamber could hold the power he needs.  Now the Doctor is here though, he wants the Doctor to give him his TARDIS so he can get into the chamber another way.

The Doctor has no option but to give him the keys, then they run to the chamber to try and get in it before the Master.  They break the wall down eventually and find Nyssa and Tegan in there.  Through Nyssa, the group learn that the tank like structure contains the essence of a race known as the Xeraphin.  Because of all the souls inside it, it's got a good personality and a bad one, the bad called to the Master, the good to Nyssa.

Prof. Hayter sacrifices his body to become a vessel of the Xeraphin. They use it to appear as an entity called Anithon.  It explains that the Xeraphin came to earth to escape the Vardon-Kosnax war. The Earth contained so much radiation that they built the citadel and shed their bodies to hide in hibernation until the world was safe. The Master's arrival forced the split personality of the Xeraphin however.

Through a couple of attempts, the Master is eventually successful in bringing the Xeraphin sarcophagus onboard his own TARDIS and making it the new power source.  Some of the Concorde crew manage to sabotage his electronics however and the Master is forced to negotiate with the Doctor for equipment so that they can all get off Pre-historic earth.

They do indeed get back to the modern day, and the Doctor reveals that he tricked the Master. He gave him a temporal limiter like he asked for, but set it to arrive slightly after them, so that it pings the Master's TARDIS all the way to modern day Xeriphas, where he hopes the Master will have revenge exacted on him for taking the sarcophagus.

Together, the Doctor and Nyssa fly away as the Law start to ask questions, believing that Tegan is now back where she's wanted to be for months.  Tegan however did decide to run back to the TARDIS, but she's too late. They're gone.

Trivia

• This one required a lot of talking with British Airways to get permission for filming Concorde.  They used stock footage for some things, one of them including a bird that flies past the plane in pre-historic times as it's taking off!

• This story was the brain child of renowned director Peter Grimwade. He wrote the scripts and had to make numerous changes over quite a long time before it was ready for filming.

• The Master was a result of John Nathan-Turner meddling with the script and insisting on bringing him back. The Kalid was originally going to be an actual Arrabian sorcerer

• Matthew Waterhouse was included as a vision in this story, purely so that they could put his name in the Radio Times and nobody know his character was going to die in the story prior to this

• This is actually the first story where the Masters shrinking weapon is named - the Tissue Compression Eliminator

The Review

When you hear the outline of the story, it doesn't sound too bad, but trust me, it is.  That's probably due to the bad execution of a half good idea. The script isn't amazing, and the dialogue is AWFUL, but it could have been salvaged if not for the over-ambitious attempt to realise this story on practically zero budget.

The Masters involvement just makes zero sense, least of which being the fact that he wears the Kalid costume for no apparent reason and dribbles green goo, again, why?!

Watching this story is just tedious as it's slow paced, full of jargon and arguments with an old guy over whether aliens exist.  If it was the first or only story of a drama production, you might get away with it, but rightly or wrongly, it's something that people in Doctor Who tend to just accept and get on with for the sake of the audience watching it.  It's like a companion refusing to believe that the TARDIS is bigger on the inside for at least four stories.

The only redeeming feature of this story for me is the aftrermath of Adric's death (which is incredibly short for the same reasons mentioned above)  and the faux departure of Tegan at the end.  Supposedly, she was always meant to come back, but if you watched it at the time, it was perhaps an additional shock that she'd been left behind.  Ultimately, I would say do yourself a favour and give this one a miss, there's nothing worth seeing at all and you can use your time in much better ways.

Rating

3 out of 10

Re-watchability Factor

2 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

The Faceless Ones

The Three Doctors 

Invasion of the Dinosaurs

Smith and Jones (Doctor Who, Series 3)

Logopolis

4 Episodes
Aired between 28th February 1981 and 21st March 1981

Written by Christopher H Bidmead
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Peter Grimwade

Synopsis

The Doctor and Adric are taking a tour of the TARDIS interior, noting that the ship is gradually decaying from its age when the Cloister Bell sounds.  The Doctor says it's a sign of impending doom.  He decides that the best thing to do is to give the TARDIS an overhaul, and fix the chameleon circuit whilst he's at it.

To do this, he takes them to a Police Box on earth in 1981, landing on top of it so that the real police box is transported inside the console room, and they can take the appropriate dimensions of the box that they'll need.

The Doctor's intent is to go to a place called Logopolis, where the scientists there will be able to use the dimensions he provides to effectively re-make the TARDIS from the ground up.

Little does the Doctor know however that the Master has done the exact same thing as him very shortly before (hinting at some form of telepathy between the Time Lords). This leads to a form of time loop where going in the doors of one TARDIS leads into the console room of the other.  The Doctor and Adric go off to find the Master in this recursive labyrinth.

Meanwhile, a young lady called Tegan Jovanka struggles with her old car to get to Heathrow Airport, where she's about to start her new job as an air hostess.  Her Aunty Vanessa is with her to help her along, but they get a flat tyre and are forced to pull up near the box.  Trying to call for help, Tegan enters the TARDIS and gets lost in the interior.

Whilst she does so, the Master nips out and kills Aunty Vanessa with his handy Tissue Compression Eliminator.  Why?  I don't know.

Not being able to find the Master, the Doctor decides on a bonkers plan to flush the Master out by opening the doors whilst at the bottom of the Thames.  Thankfully, the TARDIS actually materialises on a boat instead, missing target by mere feet.  As they inspect what went wrong, the Doctor sees a mysterious white figure.

He speaks to him alone and comes back looking very sombre.  He decides to go to Logopolis instead, taking Tegan inadvertently with them.

Once on Logopolis, they are greeted by the chief scientist known as the Monitor.  He assures them that he can use a very complex form of mathematics known as block transfer computation to re-design the TARDIS as requested.

Nyssa turns up and says that a friend of the Doctor's brought her here.  She's looking for her father who went missing.

It doesn't take long however for the master to begin messing things up, shrinking lots of Logopolitans, tricking Nyssa into believing he is still her father, and trying to sieze control of the planet by using a technological device to silence the Logopolitans from speaking their mathematical equations.

This backfires however, as it turns out, that the universe should have decayed and died a long time ago because it's something called a closed system (it's finite).  The Logopolitans have staved off the end of the universe by using a replica of the Pharos Project on Earth to effectively open up dimensions via CVE's (see Full Circle) thereby creating more and more "space" and keeping the system open, therefore staving off entropy.  Now that the Logopolitans cannot do that, the universe suddenly begins to die!

All this mayhem means that it's too late for Logopolis and the Doctor forces Adric, Nyssa and Tegan into the TARDIS which is taken by the mysterious white figure out of the known universe and time stream to keep them safe.

They watch helplessly as entire worlds and solar systems begin to blink out and die - one of them being Traken.

The Doctor meanwhile stays behind and is forced to work with the Master.

They determine that whilst the replica of the Pharos project is beyond saving, the data in its computer banks is still there, so the real Pharos project on Earth could be capable of restoring balance.  He, the Master and Tegan (who jumped ship) go to Earth and try to get to the control room on the radar dish.  Tegan gets left behind and finds Adric and Nyssa as they convince the white figure (they call the Watcher) to bring the TARDIS to Earth.

They look on helplessly as the Doctor and the Master get up to the dish.  They setup the dish to open up more CVE's and provide stability but the Master holds him at gunpoint, sending out an ultimatum to the universe that if they don't recognise his rule, he will close the CVE.  The Doctor sprints onto the gantry, trying to disconnect the cable that the Master would use to carry out his threat, but the Master re-aligns the dish tilting it.

The Doctor does disconnect the cable, but falls from the gantry in the process.

The companions race to the Doctor's side as he lies on the ground.  He says that "this is the end, but the moment has been prepared for" and reaches out to the mysterious white figure who then melds with him to regenerate into the next Doctor...

Trivia

• The story was the brainchild of Christopher H Bidmead, who was going out as script editor because he'd had enough.  He thought of the idea from Keeper of Traken when the Master escapes from the Melkur in his TARDIS - so it was a TARDIS within a TARDIS.  The first instance of this though was of course, the Time Monster.

• The watcher was meant to be mysterious and alluded to as the possible new form of the Master.  That's why he wasn't shown for the first couple of episodes. Unfortunately, the ending of the Keeper of Traken showed us everything and spoiled all the effort they went to on this

• The character of Tegan was designed by John Nathan-Turner.  He created it because Australian broadcasting were talking about a co-production and he wanted to justify a jolly to Australia, so he put an Australian character in.  

• When designing the character, JNT asked for the character to be called something like Tegan OR Jovanka, but that got muddled in the process and her full name became Tegan Jovanka.  

• The house Tegan leaves actually belongs to one of the writers of Meglos.

• Finally, we can't end this without talking about good old Tom.  This wasn't the ending he was hoping for, and he made sure everyone knew about it.  His general depression about the direction the show was going, and his recent illness all took their toll on him.  He was grouchy to the end, and whilst it was the end of an era, many of the crew would breathe a sigh of relief when he left

The Review

This is the end indeed. Tom Baker wanted it spectacular with high stakes, shooty lasers and big explosions.  Whilst that might have been a bit over the ever tightening budget, it could have been done something like it.

Now, if you're an intellectual and into scientific theory, then you'll probably think this review is dumbing things down or assume I just didn't "get it". That's not the case.  Oftentimes, we argue that Doctor Who plays it too safe and child-friendly for the audience and they can afford to do more high brow things and explain more complicated processes.  I totally agree with that, but in my opinion, Logopolis does so at the expense of drama.

The scientific concept of entropy destroying the universe unless you open up other dimensions is cool (and is supposedly used by Isaac Asimov himself as the basis of a story).  Having a recursive loop of TARDIS' is cool even if it's been done before, and if done right, the shrink-killing of lots of people could be terrifying.  Indeed, Logopolis has arguably the highest body count of any Doctor Who story yet told, it's just that most of them are off screen and not referred to other than lights of stars blinking out.

My problem with Logopolis is that it's full of techno-babble.  Whether real or made up, I don't care. It's just too dense to get any enjoyment from it, and it's sold in a way that it practically pauses for you to be impressed when someone spouts out a long and complicated theory.  It's frankly impossible to relate to. The only character you can do that with is Tegan who spends all her time either decrying the usefulness of men, or crying about the fact that she's hopelessly lost and wants to go home.

To add to the misery. the Master is chaotic at best, having no real motive and just going with the flow, trying his hand at a couple of evil schemes just because. I mean, he could have been joking about the CVE, but how would he realistically enforce his rule?  How would he know if they'd refuse his rule?

At least you can say that the main actors were reasonably good at their performances, but the supporting ones - especially the guards and policemen were agonisingly bad.

Rating 

4 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

4 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• Terror of the Autons

• The Time Monster

• Castrovalva

• Planet of Fire