Warrior's Gate

Four Episodes
Aired between 3rd January 1981 and 24th January 1981

Written by Steve Gallagher
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Paul Joyce


Synopsis

Trying to find their way out of E-Space, the Doctor, Romana and Adric end up in a time disruption (effectively "nowhere" in time).  You would expect this place to be totally empty, but as it happens, it's got a big spaceship in it, navigated by a lion-like alien and manned by a Dad's Army crew of inept space traders. Their leader, Rorvik, is clearly hurting the alien by forcing him to help them by using it's mind to effectively "imagine" them out of the limbo their trapped in.

The alien finds the TARDIS and manages to escape, using it's unique power to run through time.

Meanwhile, the TARDIS is also struggling in limbo and the Doctor, with no better ideas debates some pre-determination and whether he should just start pressing random buttons which would bring them to where they were meant to be anyway.

As they debate this, the lion alien breaks into the TARDIS and starts messing with the controls.  He says his name is Biroc and that he's a shadow of his own past and their future. Once he's pressed some stuff, it runs off again back into the white nothingness.

The TARDIS lands and Romana checks the console after it and K9 are damaged by the time winds from the open door. She discovers all the coordinates are at 0.  It's like they are at an intersection between the negative e-space and the positive n-space.  The Doctor decides to go off and look for Biroc, leaving the other two to repair K9.

The freighter as it happens has also landed nearby and whilst the Doctor is gone, Rorvik and his cronies head off and find the TARDIS.  Romana stalls for time by only appearing herself, and the crew take her prisoner, trying to use her like they used Biroc to navigate out of the limbo they're in. 

Adric takes K9 and tries to find them but K9 is seriously messed up and not working right, resulting them in getting separated and lost.

The Doctor finds a medieval archway and banquet hall with a mirror at the end and full of old rusted armour and skeletons.  The armour comes to life and it turns out they're robots!  They try to kill the Doctor and he escapes by ducking and they cut each other to bits. 

He takes them apart and learns that the machines are called Gundans.  They were built by humans who were enslaved by the lion-aliens (Tharils).  The Gundan's were rebels who took down the Tharils and ended their tyrannical reign. 

Meanwhile, Rorvik tells his crew to revive another Tharil and he leaves to find the Doctor whom he believes is alien enough to use the navigation chair without dying. As they are gone, a Tharil is awoken (a dangerous procedure) and it runs rampant on the ship.  It finds Romana and frees her,

Elsewhere, the Doctor gets close to getting some key information about the church like structure.  It's a gateway, possibly out of e-space.  He uses K9's power when he turns up to boost the signal, but the last Gundan decapitates its companion and runs into a portal of the mirror.  Rorvik and his crew turn up to capture the Doctor but the Doctor also escapes through the mirror.  Whilst there, he meets Biroc in an alternate dimension that's black and white.  Biroc takes the Doctor to a mansion.

K9 overhears the crew saying that the distances from the freighter, the TARDIS and the gateway are shrinking.  This info becomes significant, when eventually, they discover that the freighter is made up of dwarf star alloy, an incredibly dense material that is ultimately responsible for collapsing this pocket limbo like a black hole.  It means they have only a short time before everyone dies.

Meanwhile, Romana gets free and discovers that Rorvik and his crew are slavers, and have captured numerous Tharils that are in hybernation (the dwarf star alloy is the only thing the Tharils can't travel through). Romana meets up again with the revived Tharil (Lazlo) and they go through the portal to the mansion. 

Once there, they see a flashback to the past, where the Tharils are lording it over the humans.  They see the Gundan's turning up to kill them all, and then they're thrown back into the limbo where they are captured by the slavers.

Rorvik wants to use a giant lazer to blow up the portal and open the way out of this place, but the Doctor is certain it will just kill everyone.  Biroc appears to him and tells him to do nothing.

After a lot of running about, trying to stop the slavers, ultimately, Biroc's advice was right as the crew kill themselves with the backblast of their freighter as they try to blow open the portal.  The Doctor, and co. are on the other side of the portal thanks to Biroc, and Lazlo revives some of the remaining Tharils who phase out of time to escape the collapse of the limbo dimension. 

With everything safe, the Doctor aims to return to the TARDIS, but Romana opts to stay behind in the black and white dimension to help free the Tharils from other locations. 

She also keeps K9 so he can be repaired from the damage that the time winds did to him. 

This means that the Doctor and Adric leave via the portal and re-enter N-Space.

Trivia

• The original conclusion to the e-space trilogy was meant to have been a political thriller involving Gallifrey and Romana's failure to return.  It was so long and messy however that in the end it was abandoned and replaced by another story called dream time

• Even the script for the new story was significantly re-worked by Chritopher Bidmead and the Director - Paul Joyce.

• Paul Joyce was ambitious and more suited to working on feature films.  He took ages trying to get the perfect shots and often overrun, costing the BBC money and getting many people's backs up including Barry Letts and John Nathan-Turner. 

• Tom Baker and Llala Ward were also unhappy with the script and were a constant pain throughout.  Llala didn't like how her character had been written out and had a blazing row with JNT and she didn't get along with Matthew Waterhouse either.

• This pressure cooker was particularly hard to deal with, and due to all the problems of the shoot, JNT ended up firing Paul Joyce and putting in director Graham Harper to get the thing shot.  Unfortunately, the story was so weird and off the wall, that Harper could only go so far and didn't have the perfect grasp on exactly what it should look like.  So, with cap in his hand, JNT had to go back to Paul Joyce and re-instate him.

• In a huuuuge turn up for the books, this story actually brought the blistering rows of Tom Baker and Llala Ward to an end and in a move that shocked absolutely everyone, they ended up getting married!  Perhaps less shocking, their marriage wasn't the most plain sailing and the couple would get divorced just two years later.

The Review

Warrior's Gate is weird. If you're not up for weird and you're not willing to think a little about what the show is telling you and just want some Saturday evening family entertainment, then Warrior's Gate is one of the most boring Doctor Who stories that has ever been created.

If you are in fact up for a bit of deeper introspection but you only watch  an episode every week, or even every other day, then it's likely one of the most confusing stories that's ever been created.

If..in fact, you're willing to look a bit deeper, and you're willing to invest two hours of your time into this thing, then Warrior's Gate is strangely appealing, with something new to offer you each time you go through it.

No matter how long you spend on it though, you'll find it surreal and will probably be confused.  It's not that the plot (what little there is) is complicated.  What's confusing is what the director chooses to do and how they choose to reveal the story and what they focus on.  There's far less explanation in this story, and a decent amount is inferred by not spelt out which is great, but uncomfortable because we're not used to it.  In addition, a story has a beginning, a middle and an end, but Warrior's Gate sets up the basis of this story (getting stuck in the limbo) and then just leaves it there, because they're not focusing on that, they're focusing on the Tharils and their hubris and the slavers and their hubris and the lessons we learn from them.

That all sounds phenomenal and may well have been amazing, but when you boil it all down, all the philosophy of the I Ching and moral messages, the moral of the story seems to be "do nothing and it's going to work out fine".  Well, how is doing nothing ever going to make good TV?

At least there's some refreshingly different takes on things to take away from this - the aliens being baddies at first until they learned their lesson is a great change, and because the movie Alien has been shown, we get to see that the crew aren't all space marines and happy go lucky - they're complaining and have unions.  It's just a shame that they're all annoyingly inept.

Rating

If you watched it all the way through in one sitting in 2018 onwards...

5 out of 10

Otherwise....

3 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

2 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Mind Robber

• Inferno

• Planet of Evil

• Underworld

• The Horns of Nimon

• The Doctor's Wife (Doctor Who, Series 6)

State of Decay

Four Episodes
Aired between 22nd November 1980 and 13th December 1980

Written by Terrence Dicks
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Peter Moffatt

Synopsis

Whilst looking for an exit from e-space, the TARDIS takes its crew to a planet where there's one primitive village that sits at the foot of a giant gothic tower.

As the Doctor and Romana explore the planet (unaware that Adric has stowed away in the TARDIS), they soon find out that the lords of the tower rule over the village and demand a selection of people that are taken to the tower never to return.

If that wasn't odd enough, the Doctor soon finds out that all forms of reading and studying are forbidden, and the practice of science is punishable by death.  Only a select group of old men have rebelled, and hide themselves deep within the woods.

They use scraps of technology that they've found, and these seem to come from an old crashed ship called the Hydrax.  The Doctor gets the stuff working again and looks through the logs.  They tell of a three man crew - Captain Sharkey, Nav Officer Lauren McMillan, and Science Officer Anthony O'Conner.

Meanwhile, Adric sneaks out of the TARDIS and ends up earning his keep at the local inn of the village chief - Ivo.  Whilst there, he is found by one of the rulers, Orcon, and taken to the tower.

The Doctor and Romana leave the rebels cave and are soon attacked by vampire bats shortly before being captured by soldiers and taken to the tower.  Once there, they meet King Zargo and Queen
Camilla.  They wittily spar back and forth until the Doctor mentions the hydrax.

One of the guards, Habris, comes in and says that Orcon wants to speak to the King and Queen about the "time of arising".  They post guards outside the throne room and confine the Doctor and Romana there.

The Doctor and Romana figure out that the names Zargo, Camilla and Orcon are descendent of Sharkey, McMillan and O'Connor.  They also discover via a hidden bulkhead panel that the tower IS the Hydrax.  They use the bulkhead and explore the old parts of the ship until they find lots of bodies stored in the bowels of the ship, with drip feeds that lead to a huge vat of blood in the fuel tanks.  This, coupled with the steady, thumping heartbeat, leads the Doctor to understand that the three who rule ARE the original crew of the Hydrax, and have been transformed into Vampires by a huge vampire creature known to them as the great one.

They are captured by Orcon who understands that they are Time Lords and are the great enemy, they apparently fought a great war back in the days when Rassilon was young.  The vampires were ultimately destroyed apart from their king who disappeared (meaning, he fled into e-space and is now hibernating).  With this knowledge, the Doctor and Romana know they must kill the head vampire or the universe is doomed.

Lucky for them, the old rebels decide to infiltrate the tower and they help them escape.  As this happens, Romana hears that Adric has been captured and she wants to rescue him.  The Doctor goes to get more info from the TARDIS, leaving Romana and one of the rebels, Tarak, to find him.  They do indeed find him, laid on a bed, sleeping like a vampire.

Everything goes awry when the King and Queen awaken and attack.  They kill Tarak and keep Romana and Adric as sacrifices.

The Doctor learns from ancient records that the Time Lords used "bow ships" and formulates a plan.

The Doctor sends K9 to sort out the guards and he goes to set off the scout ships that lie dormant at the top of the Hydrax. Meanwhile, Romana is put on a sacrificial alter where bats suck on her blood,

and the great king vampire begins to awaken.

Unfortunately for him, the Doctor manages to launch the scout ship, sending it straight up, then it runs out of fuel and falls straight down, it's spike'd nose piercing the king vampire's heart and killing it.

In response, Orcon, Zargo and Camilla crumble to dust and the villagers are free.

The Doctor gets the technology working and leaves Ivo, and the remaining rebels to figure out their new tech, whilst he, Romana and Adric go off to find a way out of e-space.

Trivia

• This story was originally written during Phillip Hinchcliffe's run as a producer in 1977.  Whilst the story was good enough, they were told they couldn't use it because the BBC were doing a serious attempt at Dracula, and didn't want the competition (or didn't want it to look like they were taking the mickey out of it).  It worked out okay in the end, because the alternative script was The Horror of Fang Rock.

• The original working title was "The Vampire Mutation", but script editor Christopher H. Bidmead didn't like it.  He wanted "The Wasting" but Terrence Dicks thought they'd be the butt of the joke for "Wasting everyone's time". 

• Talking of Bidmead, he had a heavy hand on this script, wanting to place more emphasis on scientific theories and less on the horror element.  His contribution was the evolution of the Hydrax Crew names, which he thought was fascinating, but Terrence Dicks was not pleased at all.  Despite this, he made the changes and the script was presented to Director Peter Moffatt.  As it happened, Moffatt had seen an earlier draft and he demanded that the original script be returned or else he wouldn't do it!  Terrence won his victory and the script was returned to its original state

• This was the first story actually filmed in the sequence, and so the first time Matthew Waterhouse (Adric) had been on the set.  He and Llala Ward didn't hit it off at all and tensions grew even harder amongst the crew.

• Tom Baker believed that the Time Lords would have blue blood and if you look at the bat scene, his blood is indeed blue.  JNT was not impressed when he found out, but there wasn't the time to re-shoot.

The Review
Shown only three years beyond the point in which it was written, the State of Decay stands out in the midst of season eighteen like an absolute sore thumb.  It's a pseudo-historical set on an alien planet, and there's some of those through the Key to Time era, but what's different in this is that there's the added element of nostalgia.  State of Decay returns with the gothic horror elements thrust upfront and is unapologetic about it.

If we follow the old formula of Brain of Morbius being Frankenstein and Talons of Weng Chiang being the Phantom of the Opera, then you'd be forgiven for saying State of Decay is Dracula, but it's not.  Well, not really.  It's far more like Hammer Horror Dracula than the actual Bram Stoker story.  It's got the intimidating castle on the cliff, it's got the suspicious villagers warning the visitors not to visit said castle, oh and it's got over dramatic vampires.

I like State of Decay because it's not trying too hard.  There's probably lots wrong with it, ham acting for one, but they're not necessarily things to get hung up on because in a way, it's not meant to be taken that way. The beauty of it is that it's taking all these horror tropes and just playing with them and it does so in a way that's fun.  You might say it's clumsy and obvious but I disagree. Look at the line from Romana when the Doctor tells her about the hermit on Gallifrey.  There's not a "LOOK AT THIS - AREN'T I FUNNY!" moment, it just flows.  For every hissing vampire woman, there's unsettling revelations about the threat they pose and blood hidden in great vats.

Maybe it's because we've had such a run of bad stories of late that I want to give this a higher mark than perhaps it deserves, but to me, State of Decay is a final farewell to old Doctor Who and is a pretty damn good one at that.

Rating 

9 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

7 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Savages

• The Daemons

• The Face of Evil

• Terminus

• The Mysterious Planet (Trial of a Timelord Parts 1-4)

• The Impossible Planet (Doctor Who, Series 2)

• The Vampires of Venice (Doctor Who, Series 5)

Full Circle

Four episodes
Aired between 25th October 1980 and 15th November 1980

Written by Andrew Smith
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Peter Grimwade


Synopsis

Romana is upset that she has to return to Gallifrey.

The Doctor seems to sympathise, but he knows it's impossible to refuse the call.  On their way, they luckily pass through a Charged Vacuum Embodiment (C.V.E. or in other words, a rift in space).  This event takes them to another dimension that they refer to as Exo-Space or E-Space.

At first, The Doctor and Romana don't realise what's happened, and they think the TARDIS is faulty when they supposedly land on Gallifrey, but the area outside is a wooded clearing.

They begin to trouble shoot the problem, when a young boy called Adric barges into the TARDIS and collapses.

They learn that Adric is one of the descendants of a colony crew that crash landed here thousands of years ago.

They are ruled by a council of three men called the deciders, and  they are periodically trapped inside the ship when toxic mists descend on the planet.  Adric's brother and some of his friends have rebelled against society and hide in a cave nearby.  They were goading Adric into helping them steal fruit from the community (Adric's a nerd who has a badge for mathematical excellence).  Adric was caught by one of the Deciders who was in the market, but before he could be taken in, the Decider was dragged into the marsh by some humanoids.  His final words to Adric were that they had come "full circle".

The mistfall is upon the planet again, and Adric gets the Doctor and Romana to try and help him get his brother and friends to safety.

The Doctor gets to the colony ship and starts to investigate, as he finds the fact that the deciders have been lying to the colonists - the mists are perfectly fine.  The monsters (marsh men) rise up out of the swamp and make their way onto land.

One of them gets into the colony ship and is captured.  The Doctor tries to stop the colonists from dissecting the marsh man up, but it gets free, kills the surgeon and itself. 

As the Doctor is messing about, Romana and Adric stay in the TARDIS.  The Marsh Men come along and take it on their backs to a cave above the starliner (the colonist's crashed ship). They intend to use it as a battering ram.

The Marsh Men are scared off and Romana goes outside to find out why.  They meet Adric's brother and his friends and they find some fruit that has strange spiders in it.

The kids run into the TARDIS as they swarm against them, but Romana gets bitten and possessed.

She turns into an ally of the Marsh Men and starts to direct them. Adric and the kids meanwhile manage to haphazardly pilot their way to the starliner.

Ultimately, the Marsh Men, led by Romana attack the starliner.

The Doctor figures out that the Marsh Men are actually ancestors of the humans living there (they killed the original colonists).  Romana is captured and injected with a serum devised by the Doctor and he cures her.  The Marsh Men are driven out of the star liner when the colonists discover that the marsh men don't like pure oxygen (they use cylinders to drive them out).  Adric's brother is killed in the attempt.

The Doctor gives the deciders knowledge on how to pilot their star liner and he goes off again with Romana in the TARDIS.

Trivia

• This story was written by a fan who'd read a Doctor Who production book that was published with a "how to create a script" section at the back.  He impressed Script Editor Christopher H Bidmead and he was brought in.  After extensive work on the script, it was made 

• The role of Adric was thought up by John Nathan-Turner, but didn't quite turn out how he wanted.  The original concept was for him to be a sort of Artful Dodger character.  The reality was much more a whiny brat than skilled pickpocket.

• The name Adric is derived from eminent physicist P A M Dirac. 

• By this time, Tom Baker and Llala Wards relationship was worse for wear.   Guest stars recollect that they would be at opposite ends of the rehearsal room, screaming and shouting at one another

The Review

The first thing fans comment on when they discuss this story is that it was written by a genuine fan. I think because of that, a lot of people try to look for things to like about it, effectively giving it a "pass" because if it's bad, there's a fear of the "I'd like to see you do better", especially when you realise that the fan in question was nineteen at the time.  I'm not immune to those feelings, but as much as I want to like it, I just can't.  Why not?  Because to me, it's very, very boring.

I know some people will say "hold on, there's a lot of science in there and fascinating stuff about evolution".  Yep, I'll give you that, there is.  But it's just not covered in an interesting way for me.  I'm not even sure how I'd do it.  Look, it's sort of like Day of the Daleks.  The concept is pretty good, but you've to watch three quarters of it before you get to the point.  And to add insult to injury, the whole thing is so wooden.

There's only two people in this entire story that show any kind of genuine pathos - one is the Doctor, and I don't mean Tom Baker. I'm talking about the surgeon that gets killed by the Marsh Man, the other is Login who has some compassion for his daughter being trapped outside.  Everyone else is pretty bland.  I didn't care about Adric's brother or his mates.  Adric himself is totally unsympathetic, and even Tom Baker and Llala Ward are just plodding through it all. 

The tension in the plot is built around the Marsh Men attacking, the mists killing people, and the spiders.  Well, the spiders are laughable, the Marsh Men lumber about so slowly that they never feel like a threat at all, and there's absolutely no fear about the mists because we never get to build up anticipation that the Doctor's going to die when he come's into contact with them, I.e. the killer mist theory's immediately disproved and done in a very casual manner. 

Sorry to all fans of this story, but despite the slightly interesting concept of long evolution, this story is booooorrrinng!

Rating

5 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

4 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Rescue 

• The Sea Devils

• Planet of Evil

• The Face of Evil

• The Pirate Planet

Meglos

Four episodes
Aired between 27th September 1980 and 18th October 1980

Written by John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Terence Dudley

Synopsis

As the Doctor and Romana tinker in the TARDIS to repair K9, a bunch of space mercenaries land on a desolate planet called Zolfa-Thura.  There, they bring a modern day earthman to a strange structure that rises from under the ground.

The mercenaries have been hired by a talking cactus called Meglos to help him get a very powerful artefact called the Dodecahedron from a neighbouring planet called Tigella.

On said planet, the Dodecahedron is supplying power to a community of humans that are split up into two philosophies - the Deons (priests) and Savants (scientists).  Both are led by an old man called Zastor.

The Dodecahedron is doing something strange and neither group can decide what to do about it. Zastor has sent an invitation to the Doctor to help out.  On Zolfa-Thura, Meglos knows this, and  after he uses the human prisoner to morph into a dopelganger,

he sends the approaching TARDIS into a time loop, then morphs into the Doctor to impersonate him.

The Gaztaks take Meglos to Tigella and looking like the Doctor, he manages to steal the Dodecahedron from under their noses.

The Doctor and Romana repair K9 but realise they're trapped in a time-loop. They manage to get their way out of it, only to be split up and be captured by the Tigellans and Gaztaks.

Thankfully, Romana slips the mercenaries and gets back to stop the Doctor from getting crushed under a rock. They rush back to the TARDIS and follow Meglos to Zolfa-Thura. Once there, the Doctor himself takes a leaf out of the alien's book and ends up impersonating Meglos in order to gain access to the Dodecahedron.

It turns out that the power source is being used by Meglos as a type of death-star lazer to destroy other planets.

The Doctor sets it up so that the lazer destroys Zolfa-Thura itself, he rescues the human businessman, and he gets them back to the TARDIS in time to take off, thereby leaving Meglos and the Gaztaks to be destroyed.

The Doctor agrees to take the human businessman back to earth before they continue on with their adventures.

Trivia

• The writers were sitcom writers that Christopher Bidmead discovered and invited to work something up.  As they were writing at one of their homes, they noticed a very sorry looking potted cactus on the kitchen table and used that as a template for Meglos

• As part of their writing style (and likely because they weren't veterans at writing sci fi) they used an anagram for one of the character's names.  Brotodac is actually an anagram of Bad Actor. They did write other scripts for Doctor Who and the anagrams got progressively ruder.

• A lot of the Gaztak uniforms are from The Ribos Operation

• This story debuted the first use of a revolutionary new technique in special effects. It was called scene sync.  It worked by using technology to link the camera focused on the green screened actors with the camera focussed on the tiny model, so that when the characters walked across the room, the other camera panned too, allowing it to look like they were walking across the surface of an alien planet.  This doesn't sound great now, but in 1980 it was huge. Look back to Underworld and see if you notice any special effects shot where the camera pans and then compare it to this.

• Because the season's stories were not shot in the same order as they were shown, it's hard to tell, but during this story, Tom Baker was quite ill due to an illness he'd picked up in Spain.  He got so bad that at one point, Llala Ward (who was having an on-again off-again relationship with him), had to feed Tom Baker via tubs of baby food.  It's speculated that this act brought them back together for a time and we'll see later in this season what that lead to.

• The end credit music for part 4 weirdly is in a different key (and is actually the same key as Delia Derbyshire's original title score)

• Last but not least, this sees the return of Jaqueline Hill, Barbara herself (not the character unfortunately).  She spent the time between Doctor Who having kids and raising them.  She wanted to get back into acting and her husband pulled some strings to get her this gig

The Review

Meglos is a strange story to summarise in review.  As a story itself, it doesn't do anything new. We've got a bunch of primitives who are monopolising planetary resources on jungle planets (creature from the pit). We've got two worlds at war with one a wasteland and another lives in a bunker (Armageddon Factor).  Even the dopelganger isn't anything new.

What is new, is the techniques of the story, and whether I want to admit it or not, they do go some way to redeeming this story.  Let's start with the obvious one - the make up.  I think it's brilliant. Although the concept of an evil cactus is like something straight out of Monty Python, the practical effects are so intricate and painstakingly applied that I can't help but to be impressed.  The voice of Meglos is pretty great too, harking back to that gravelly growl of Morbius and hints that this thing is really evil.

The scene sync is also a very welcome addition and up to this point, I never even knew I wanted it.  It opens so many doors of potential for the production team that I can't help but get excited about how this will be used in the future episodes.

Then there's the acting.  Most of the Tigellans and Gaztaks are very melodramatic, I have to say, and the stupid haircuts and clothes don't help lend any credibility to them.  Brotodac is funny and stupid, but he's meant to be.  The real gem is that even Tom Baker relishes playing the villain and happily does it well.  And this brings us to another point on technique. For the second story running, he's relegated to a side slot, whilst Romana does all the fast talking. Their roles have become reversed.  She rescues him now, she gathers companions.  It's not necessarily bad, just weird.

I like Meglos, but not because of anything it offers as a story. I would watch this story purely from a fascinated place, where I wanted to see the technological and cultural turning points of the show itself.


Rating

6 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

4 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

The Chase

The Enemy of the World

Death to the Daleks

The Creature from the Pit

Ark of Infinity

The Leisure Hive

Four Episodes
Aired between 30th August 1980 and 20th September 1980

Written by David Fisher
Produced by John Nathan Turner
Directed by Lovett Bickford


Synopsis

The Doctor and Romana want a holiday.  They try Brighton Beach, but the Doctor ends up taking them there in the winter and K9 is so depressed that he throws himself in the sea and blows up.

Romana suggests going to "The Leisure Hive" on the planet Argolis, which they do.

Argolis is a planet devastated by a nuclear war between the Argolins and the Foamasi. In the aftermath, the Argolins have built a domed leisure complex there.  This complex is however almost bankrupt, and the Argolins are getting desperate.  They have used the funds from it to look at Tacyhonic research, the ability to distort and manipulate time, with the hopes of finding a way to make themselves young again and ensuring the survival of their race.

The Foamasi are offering a buy out of the complex, but Pangol, a young Argolin and leader of the Tachyonic Recreation Generator research, is totally against it.

It turns out that a rogue person (or creature) is running around the hive, sabotaging the experiments in Tachyonics.  The Doctor gets embroiled in it, firstly by nearly having his arms and legs ripped off,

and then by being aged five hundred years.

It all culminates in the fact that a Foamasi private business syndicate (in other words Mafia), have been causing the problems so that the Argolins are forced to sell the leisure hive and thus the technology to them at a low rate.

The Foamasi government turn up and arrest the mafia lizards, but now that Pangol has the faults identified and fixed, uses the tachyon generator to multiply himself and create an army of Pangols with which to start up the war with the Foamasi again.

What he doesn't know is that the Doctor slipped into the machine as well and the duplicates are all of the Doctor.  He returns to his normal age and helps to stop Pangol.

Pangol tries to run the process again, but he gets turned into a baby and the currently dying leader of the Argolins (Mena) is rejuvenated back to a good age.

The Doctor and Romana go back in the TARDIS and go away again, leaving behind the randomiser from the console as the Doctor is fed up of running from the Black Guardian.

Trivia

• By the time John Nathan-Turner sat in the Producers seat, he'd been working on the show for three years and he had a good idea on what he wanted to change. He soon became a "new broom" that would sweep clean a lot of the old stuff away including most of the humour in the show, the Doctor's old costume, the old title sequence, and the old ways of TV production. 

• Once the old stuff was gone, Nathan-Turner ushered in brand new things, like a new title sequence that was bang up to date with the eighties, a brand new fibre glass TARDIS, and he gave the Doctor a brand new costume (including the inclusion of "?" on the Doctor's collar that would stay until the end of the classic series). He also got rid of Dudley Simpson and gave the job of incidental music to the Radiophonic Workshop.  

• Barry Letts returned to help smooth the handover, and he agreed that the show had gotten a little bit silly, and helped tone it down a bit

• John Leeson also arrived back as K9 for this season (not that you see much of him in this story)

• David Fisher's original concept had been for the Foamasi to be like mafia and wear dinner jackets and bow ties, but as noted above, Barry Letts and Nathan-Turner jumped straight on that.  Coincidentally, "Foamasi" is an anagram of "Mafiosa"

• The new script editor, Christopher H Bidmead came in and wanted to put the show back on scientific roots, that's why there's a load of talk about Tachyonics going on in this one

The Review

There's no other word for it.  This story is a mess. One huge mess. Just look at the synopsis.  Oh, wait, I've thought of another word to describe it too.  Boring.  Very, very, boring.  Tom Baker plays a supporting role again, but Llala Ward just has a very tedious set of scientific words to get through, and messes about with prisms and computers for half the story.

John Nathan-Turner's "new broom" approach wasn't totally misguided.  I've spoken numerous times in the last couple of seasons about how Tom Baker turns more and more into Eric Morcambe (see the Ribos Operation onwards) and the general production quality of the show went significantly downhill.  I like humour, and some of the stories work well, but if you've watched them in sequence, there is definitely a sense of "it'll do" to it, which is what JNT was all about changing.  The problem is, that he was quite draconian about it and half of the stuff he implemented was what we in the industry call a bad idea.

The humour was meant to be toned down, and despite what some argue, it was in this (there's a bit of witty mannerisms from the Doctor in it, okay).  This is good.  Having over a hundred seconds of a camera panning along a deserted beach isn't.  Having a story set on a leisure planet and only showing some naff men playing zero G squash isn't good, in fact, it's awful.  Talking for almost the whole story about Tachyonics as if we all care is even worse.

On that, the inclusion of the Tachyonics makes no sense anyway.  Having a story about sabotage and a hidden assassin could work (and in some sequences, the story does manage the tension quite well), but the whole plot with Pangol is just ludicrous and sticks out like a sore thumb.

The scenes of the Doctor getting old and getting ripped apart are ultimately pointless too...but at least they were done as cliff hangers, and as some guides mention - they were instrumental in giving a huge shock to the audience of 1980 who had grown complacent.  All of a sudden, they were shown that things could and probably would start happening to the Doctor.  Look at the next story for how that progressed.

At least the Foamasi masks looked great. It's just a shame that their bodies were all puffy and clearly didn't fit into the human suits they were supposed to.

Rating

3 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

3 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Macra Terror

• Nightmare of Eden

• Terror of the Vervoids  (Trial of a Timelord)

• Delta and the Bannermen

• Paradise Towers

Shada

Six Episodes
Never Aired

Written by Douglas Adams
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by Pennant Roberts


Synopsis

In the far future, on a research space station called "Think Tank", a sinister looking man undertakes an experiment that sucks his colleagues minds into an autonomous floating grey sphere.

 He smiles at his handiwork, takes the sphere and puts an automated quarantine message on the speakers.

Back in 1979, the Doctor and Romana have visited Cambridge, to see the Doctor's old friend (and fellow Time Lord), Professor Chronotis.  Apparently Chronotis summoned them, but he's not in at first, so they go punting.

Chronotis arrives whilst they're out and meets a student called Chris Parsons.  Chris borrows a book from the scatterbrained Professor and it turns out to be a very special one - it's the Worshipful and Ancient Law of Galifrey - an artefact from the time of Rassilon that contains a huge amount of power and Time Lord secrets.

The Doctor and Romana return to see Chronotis who asks them to help him find the book.  After a lot of searching, Chronotis suspects that Chris may have the book.  The Doctor goes to find him.

Skagra, the man from Think Tank goes to see Chronotis, and manages to use the sphere to steal Chronotis' mind whilst Romana is inside the TARDIS, looking for more milk.

 Chris Parsons turns up to question the Professor about the book and helps Romana with him.  The Professor manages to beat out a message on his hearts that says beware Shada.

The Doctor (having missed Chris Parsons) returns to the university with the book.

He encounters Skagra who sets the sphere on him.  The Doctor races away and escapes in the TARDIS.  They decide after all that they need to speak to Skagra and go to his invisible ship to see him.  Romana and Chris are taken prisoner and the Doctor's mind is taken by the Sphere.  Skagra seems to hold all the cards once he's taken the book and he grabs Romana, stealing the TARDIS to go and find the hidden Time Lord prison planet of Shada.

The Doctor survives (the sphere only took a copy of his mind) and he uses Skagra's ship to go after him. The ship takes them to Think Tank, where they find out that Skagra is a scientist who tricked the others into putting their intellect into the sphere.  They are suddenly attacked by Skagra's henchmen - the Krargs, giant slate like monsters.  They escape, but the scientists of Think Tank are killed.

Meanwhile, Chris' colleague, Claire goes to Chronotis' room and finds that it's in fact a TARDIS itself.  As she dematerialises the room accidentally, it brings back Chronotis who seems less forgetful and more purposeful.  They go after Skagra too.

The lot of them ultimately meet up at Shada, and Skagra says he intends to use the sphere to trap everyone's minds in the universe, merging them into one giant super mind.  He needed to get to Shada, because there, the master criminal known as Salyavin had the power to project his will into others minds and therefore it would be crucial to the plan for the sphere to inherit that power.

Using the Krargs to guard everyone, Skagra opens Salyavin's cell, only to find it empty.  It turns out that Chronotis is the master criminal himself.  He repented for his crimes, managed to escape, made every Time Lord forget about the prison planet and stole the book so he would be safe and could live out his life peacefully on earth.

Skagra attacks everyone with the sphere, bringing the other prisoners under its control.  K9 holds them off but Skagra escapes in the Doctor's TARDIS.  The others take off in Chronotis' TARDIS and the Doctor manipulates the force fields to sneak on board his own TARDIS.

Skagra takes the TARDIS to his carrier ship and there they have the final battle.  Romana and K9 ultimately defeat the Krargs, and the Doctor makes a mind control helmet and uses it to counteract Skagra's commands. He takes control of the ship and puts Skagra in prison, leaving him there for the Time Lords to deal with.

The gang all return to Cambridge and have a nice cup of tea, baffling the Police with the sudden return of the room to it's normal place in the time and space continuum.

The Doctor and Romana leave and whilst tinkering on board the TARDIS, Romana asks if the Time Lords exagerated Salyavin's crimes because he seemed like a "nice old man".  The Doctor smiles and says yes they always exaggerate, just like with him. He expects in 200 years someone to say "was that really the Doctor, he seemed like such a nice old man."

Trivia

• So, lets get the obvious thing out of the way.  This story was never shown on TV.  It was partially filmed on location and had a slight bit of studio work.  The crew had done rehearsals for the next block of filming and had all gone off for lunch.  When they returned, they discovered that the TV studio had been locked and a technicians strike had been called (supposedly over the jurisdiction of whose job it was to operate the clock on the kids show, Play School)

• The strike was so disruptive that it was impossible to make up the scenes in time to get it out, so the story was shelved. Incoming Producer, John Nathan Turner said he wanted to finish it and use it as a Christmas Special, but it never really materialised in the time that Tom Baker stayed with the show, and it was decided to can it once he'd left.

• Parts of Shada were used for The Five Doctor's when Tom Baker couldn't be procured.

• This is the last story Douglas Adams wrote for Doctor Who.  As is well documented, he used parts of this story to form his Dirk Gently novel, and he used the unrealised script of Doctor Who and the Krikkit men to form the basis of his third Hitchhikers Novel "Life, The Universe, and Everything".

• This was the last time that a six part Doctor Who story would be used.  The format from this point on would be split into two or four part stories, occasionally three

• This was also the last story that Graham Williams was involved in. It's little known, but he had a significant hand in shaping this story into what was to be shot.

• This, sadly, is also the last time we see the 70's opening sequence, and hear the 1967 version of the music from Delia Derbyshire on the show

• As if that wasn't all, David Brierley's tenure as K9 came to an end as well.  John Leeson would reprise the role in the next season

• And the lasts keep on coming.  This was the last time Tom Baker would wear his iconic multi-coloured scarf and different frock coats.  

• The TARDIS was remade after this story too, making it bigger and lighter to carry around set

• A plus point is that this is the most re-made Doctor Who story ever, with a VHS release, Two DVD's, a radio play, and two books (one being a fan produced one).

The Review

It's actually refreshing to have something this complicated in a Doctor Who story for a change.  The six part format does offer a good opportunity to really dig deep into some of the aspects of the story, such as why Skagra wants what he wants, what Salyavin did to get imprisoned, what the Krargs are and why they feature in this at all, how come Skagra knows about the Time Lords and Shada in the first place, and much more...well, I said there was opportunity for that.  The reality was a little bit different.

In fairness, the story does a very good job of some things.  As I've just said, the story is complex enough to be intriguing at first. It throws in a good bit of foreshadowing with the mention of Salyavin, as if Skagra is going to be him and puts a mystery in the way with the ultimate Mcguffin - the book of the Time Lords.  It also does a good job of integrating the real world into the story, just like in times gone by (and particularly in the fifth and sixth Doctor's run) with alien menaces in sleepy English villages, this manages to capture the feel of things going down in Cambridge quite well.  Another point worth mentioning (that others don't necessarily agree with) is that for 60-70% of the show, Skagra actually acts like a villain, as in he DOESN'T tell anyone what his ultimate plot is, nor does he put them in easily escapable death traps.  It's a shame then when ultimately, Douglas Adams couldn't find a way to uncover the character's purpose without him getting fed up and blurting it out in front of everyone.

The downfall of Shada, like a lot of past Doctor Who's, is the format. Douglas Adams chose to go down the line of focusing more on the cat and mouse aspects of racing after the bad guy, at the expense of more essential but perhaps less visually interesting parts of the story.  Fair enough I suppose, but it is a shame because what starts as a great little story, soon drops down into monotony and a thick layer of tedious humour, incredibly low budget action scenes, and non-sensical plot points.  If it had the cash to throw around like mission impossible, this wouldn't matter, but they don't.  It's curious to note as well that the book of the Time Lord's starts off as extremely important, and acts like it's going to be the major focus of the story, but gets less and less relevant as time goes on.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Shada is fine for the first couple of episodes, but once they all hop in the TARDIS, things go downhill until it ends bewilderingly, with the Doctor leaving Skagra to die of starvation in his spaceship, and letting Salyavin off because he's probably a nice-guy after all.

Rating

7 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

5 out of 10 (if watching 6 parter)

3 out of 10 (if watching the 2hr plus 2018 cut)

Watch this if you liked...

• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

• The Time Meddler

• Terror of the Autons

• The Five Doctors 

• The Mark of the Rani