The Sun Makers

4 Episodes
Aired between 26th November 1977 and 17th December 1977

Written by Robert Holmes
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by Pennant Roberts


Synopsis

The TARDIS lands on Pluto, but the Doctor is shocked to find that it's been colonised and is full of warmth and light.  He and Leela soon discover that the inhabitants are humans, who colonised the planet after Earth became uninhabitable.

Their new friend, Cordo, tells them how the majority of humans are used as slave labour, working for a company who demand ever increasing taxes on their workforce.  They are led by a small group of gatherers in each Megropolis of Pluto.  The one here is a Jamaican Gatherer called Hade (don't believe me?  Listen to how he puts "Marn" at the end of his sentences).  The gatherers in turn report to The Collector.

They go with Cordo and find a small band of rebels hidden deep underground.

They agree to help the rebels to overthrow the Collector's regime, but the Doctor is captured in the event.  He is put down for mind wiping but he manages to wreck the machine.  Gatherer Hade decides to release the Doctor in the hopes of using him to locate the rebels.

As the Doctor has been gone ages, Leela goes to rescue him but ends up getting shot and captured in the attempt.

The Doctor makes it back to the rebels but they are suspicious of how easy he got away from the corporation.  He spends ages trying to not let them kill him.

Leela meanwhile is taken to the Collector where she announces that the Doctor is a Time Lord.

The Collector learns of them and decides that it's imperative that the Doctor is killed.  He is angry that Hade has let him go and settles to "steam" Leela to death.

The Doctor and the rebels get word that Leela is going to be steamed and with the help of K9, they go and rescue her.  Once that's done, they use the Public Broadcast System to convince the other citizens that they should rebel.

The Doctor pays a visit to the Collector's boardroom and starts messing about with the machinery. He is confronted by the Collector and he discovers that the wheelchair bound guy is an Usurian who has manipulated the human race to be in their debt.

News of the rebellion starts to come through however, and the Usurian gets so stressed about it that he turns back into his natural form (seaweed) and disappears down his commode.

Gatherer Hade is thrown off the top of a building to everyone's cheers and his assistant Marn switches sides.

All the bloodthirsty rebels are given the Doctor's blessings and he, Leela and K9 return to the TARDIS after advising the rebels to look at making their way back to Earth which should have recovered by now.

Trivia

• As noted in The Image of the Fendahl, Robert Holmes was leaving the show.  He wrote this story because he was following Terrence Dicks' legacy of the outgoing Script Editor writing the first story of their successor's run (see Robot)

• Popular fan opinion is that this story is all about the Inland Revenue and the British Tax System, especially as he had received a very nasty visit from the tax man not long before he wrote this.  Louise Jameson however, reckons that Robert Holmes told her it was actually about the BBC.

• Tom Baker and Louise Jameson had resolved to work together, but their relationship was still tense.  Pennant Roberts knew this, and therefore ensured the script had bits where Leela and the Doctor were separated.  Louise loved this because it gave her a chance to shine all on her own.

• The crew left Louise Jameson hung up in her straight jacket whilst they went on tea break

• This was the only time that Micheal Keating joined Doctor Who as one of the rebels.  He would go on shortly afterwards to play Villa in Blake's 7.  He was in every single episode of that show and most people regard him as their favourite character.

The Review

With The Sun Makers being a Robert Holmes story, people would be forgiven for expecting me to give it a free pass and say how great he was, therefore, it must be good also.  I was okay with the Krotons, and I went really easy with the Space Pirates, well I just can't do it with this.

It's like Robert Holmes forgot all the amazing stuff he'd done in the 70's and went back a step because he just didn't care.  Since I'm pulling him down so much, let's start with the actual writing.  It feels lazy.  It starts with the one minute conversation about multiple suns (being the only thing to justify the title whatsoever).  The obvious links to his hatred of the tax man doesn't bother me so much (who doesn't hate the tax man?) but it's done....clumsily, like we're being bludgeoned over the head with the references to the Inner Retinue (Inland Revenue), corridor P45, etc.  Beyond that, the dialogue feels forced.  The Doctor AND Leela are trying to be funny and whilst now and again it works, I think they are trying too hard.  It's the little details that feel like they've been skipped over because who cared.  For example, Leela says to K9 "what do you want, a biscuit?"  I didn't see any dogs on her home planet and even if they were there, I doubt they had biscuits, plus when has she been in that situation to know that dogs get treats like biscuits?  I might be being pedantic here, and yes, it is only small things, but the point is, skip details like this and it pulls you out of the story and breaks your suspension of disbelief.

The sets were crap too, with air bubbles being in supposed metal walls, and the guns were a joke.  Then there's that corridor, OH MY GOD!  You know that bit in Austin Powers with the steam roller?  Yeah....

So was anything good about this story?  Henry Woolf did a half decent job, and it's nice to see Leela having an opportunity to be active.  Did they have to send the Collector shrinking into his own chair though?  It makes as much sense as the ending of the Daemons!

Rating

3 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

2 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

The Space Museum

The Krotons

The Mutants

The Monster of Peladon

The Pirate Planet

The Caves of Androzani

The Happiness Patrol

The Long Game (Doctor Who, Series 1)

Image of the Fendahl

4 Episodes
Aired between 29th October 1977 and 19th November 1977

Written by Chris Boucher
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by George Spenton-Foster

Synopsis

In a stately old house, four scientists investigate the existence of a fossilised human skull believed to have been around for twelve million years which means that it's far older than what it should actually be.

The group are led by Professor Fendelman, a rich and eccentric academic who - along with his colleague, Max Stael - are undertaking secret experiments with a time scanner.

The scanner is somehow affected by the presence of the skull and whilst its running, the skull begins to glow and affect the mind of Thea Ransome, one of the scientists.

The Doctor is alerted to the danger when the waves of the Time Scanner affect the TARDIS.  They travel to Earth and begin searching for the source, leaving K9 in the TARDIS as he was halfway through being re-wired.  The Doctor fears that if they don't find the Time Scanner quickly, it will implode and that would be bad.

Fendelman realises that the Time Scanner somehow caused a mans death the previous night, and in fear of his work being interrupted, he convinces the others not to report it to the Police and he hires private security to stop further intruders.

As night falls again, the Doctor and Leela investigate the priory.  Leela ends up finding an old woman called Ma Tyler and her grandson, Jack.

Ma Tyler is very superstitious and thinks bad things are going on.  Indeed they are, as the Doctor immediately knows that the priory is the hunting grounds to the Fendaleen, a creature of myth.

Adam Colby, another one of the scientists is terrified now that more people have turned up dead and goes to call the Police but soon finds that the line is dead.  Colby confronts Fendleman about it who takes him to the Time Scanner and reveals that the machine was built by him and it somehow led him to find the skull.  The more he uses it, the more information he gains.

After getting locked up and escaping again, the Doctor finally finds the skull, but underestimates its power as it starts to drain him.

Luckily, Leela turns up and frees him from it.  They go back to Ma Tylers house and the Doctor explains that the skull is linked to the Fendahl, a mythical creature from Gallifreyan lore that existed on "the fifth planet" before it was destroyed.  He goes with Leela to try and locate the fifth planet and figure out how it came to earth.

Back at the priory, Max Stael turns on Fendleman and Colby, revealing that he is a satanist and he used Fendleman to gain the skull, a powerful occult artefact.

The Doctor finds that the fifth planet is inaccessible as it's in a time loop and is mad at the Time Lords for it.  They obviously tried to stop the Fendahl and failed so covered it up.

The Doctor takes the TARDIS back to Ma Tyler's house.

Max Stael takes all the scientists to the basement of the priory and uses Thea Ransom as a host for the Fendahl.  He and his cultists begin a ritual that transforms her into a medusa type host.

The Doctor, Leela, Ma Tyler and Jack all head to the priory to stop the Fendahl and manage to kill the fledgling Fendaleen with rock salt in their shotgun shells.

They eventually come up with a plan to grab the skull and use the Time Scanner to set off a localised explosion that will destroy the Fendahl, it's children and the priory itself.

The cultists are overrun as they underestimated the Fendahl's power and Max is forced to kill himself rather than be consumed by the creature.  Colby is the only scientist survivor, and he sets the machine to blow up, running to Ma Tyler's cottage where he takes cover with her and Jack as the priory is destroyed.

The Doctor and Leela just make it out and go to drop the skull off in the centre of a supernova.

Trivia

• Chris Boucher wrote the story. It would be the last Doctor Who TV script that he would do, as he was appointed Script Editor on Terry Nation's new show - Blake's 7.  Boucher did return to the universe however by writing a novel - a sequel to the Robots of Death, and also developed a series of unofficial audio dramas in the same universe, called Kaldor City (see Robots of Death).

• This was the last story Robert Holmes commissioned as a Script Editor for Doctor Who.  He'd had enough and was looking at moving on.  His replacement was a guy called Antony Read.  

• The keen eyed of you will have noticed Leela's new uniform (well, it was addressed in the show too I guess).  This was supposed to have been made to be more comfortable for Louise Jameson and plus the old one was wearing out a bit.  Oddly enough though, this one seems far more, ahem, revealing than the original.

• And that's not the only thing to have changed with Leela.  Her hair is up in this story because a hairstylist mistakenly cut six inches from her hair before filming.  The final scene where she has it down was done six weeks after the rest had been filmed

• Here's an interesting fact for you. Wanda Ventham, the lady who plays Thea Ransome, got her role in this story just after coming back from having a baby.  That baby was none other than future star, Benedict Cumberbatch!

The Review

At the risk of sounding a little bit dim, I had a problem understanding this story.  Chris Boucher struck gold with his other two stories (Face of Evil and Robots of Death), both of which had decent developed worlds and comparatively fleshed out characters.  Image of the Fendahl has complexity to it too, but I feel that half the time it's unnecessary and the other half it's sort of left vague.  It's like a shop where you know beyond the windows are a whole host of amazing sights, but the glass is too frosted to see any of it.

In part the vagueness works but ultimately, I found myself concentrating more on that aspect than any of the other bits, which is a shame.  To be sure, there's lots of great things about this story.  Anyone who has followed this blog for a while will see that I really enjoy the more Lovecraftian aspects of Doctor Who, and this story is perhaps the pinnacle of it.  The old Priory, the mysterious skull, the occult rituals that leave the Satanists woefully outclassed, the foul creatures lurking in the darkness and the old lady who knows more than any man should.  All of this is superb, and I'll come back to this point in a moment.

The acting is also pretty great which is weird to say.  In more historical settings like Victorian London, you can get away with characters talking a bit more formally or out of the norm.  This is supposed to be a modern day story, but many of the characters are melodramatic to the point where you expect "Tales of the Unexpected" music to start up at any moment!  Thing is though, their melodrama does work.  Colby's sarcastic wit works, Max's facial expressions work, and Ma Tyler's odd dialect just adds to the fact that she is an old woman who's steeped in the tradition of the old ways.

In some respects, this story would work far far better without the Doctor sticking his oar in.  The tone of this story is very very right, and on the same lines of grimness as the Seeds of Doom and Pyramids of Mars, but it just falls down at the point where you have to explain all of it.  The Fendahl and the Fendahleen, the nuances of the time scanner.  I think I got it by the end, but it felt like the story got there in a very haphazard way.

Overall, this is the penultimate, great show of gothic horror during Tom Baker's reign and it's good, if a little marred by trying to be too much of a smarty pants.

Rating

8 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

7 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Daemons

• Planet of the Spiders

• The Pyramids of Mars

• The Seeds of Doom

• The Stones of Blood

• The Long Game (Doctor Who, Series 1)

• The Power of Three (Doctor Who, Series 7)

The Invisible Enemy

4 Episodes
Aired between 1st October 1977 and 22nd October 1977

Written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by Derrick Goodwin

Synopsis

The Doctor and Leela hear a mayday call near Titan.  As they investigate, they run across a sentient alien virus that invades the TARDIS, infecting the Doctor (Leela is immune).

The Doctor recovers and they go after the distress call, landing on an outpost.

Three of the relief crew for the outpost have been infected by the virus and are trying to track down and infect the remaining base member.

They also try to make the Doctor loose control of his mind to the sentient virus, seeing as he is now host to the nucleus of the virus.

 Because Leela is immune, they see her as a huge threat and try to get the Doctor to kill her.  He manages to keep control of himself enough to warn her that he's being dominated and asks her to get him some help.

Meeting up with the surviving station member, Lowe, Leela manages to take the Doctor to the Bi-Al Foundation, an inter-galactic medical asteroid where the top scientific minds deal with alien viruses.

Leela tries to get Dr Marius and his robot dog, K9 to help the Doctor whilst she holds off the virus-laden hosts (of which Lowe is revealed to be one).

Marius ends up helping the Doctor by creating clones of Leela and the Doctor, shrinking them and injecting them into the Doctor's body.  Once inside, they move up to the brain.

They eventually find the nucleus and take it to the tear duct, but end up dying before they could be extracted (because they cannot live past 12 minutes).  Marius accidentally extracts the nucleus and enlarges it, forcing the virus to become an even bigger threat.

Marius is taken over and the virus hosts along with the nucleus go back to Titan to prepare to multiply. The Doctor is meant to go too, but he is rescued by Leela.  As the virus heads to Titan, the Doctor manages to cure Marius and uses the facilities to create an antidote before heading off to Titan with the help of K9.  The Doctor, Leela and K9 eventually stop the virus by blowing up methane tanks and thereby the entire base.

The Doctor tries to return K9 to Marius, but he is asked to adopt the robot dog and look after him.

Trivia

• So apparently this story was a riff on an old tale called Fantastic Voyage that was all about miniaturised people running around inside the human body and exiting via the tear duct.  To everyone who grew up in the 80's this will no doubt be more reminiscent of Inner Space

• This was one of (if not the) heaviest use of models in Doctor Who to that point.  Apparently the surface of Titan was a model salvaged from the Space: 1999 set.

• As noted in The Robots of Death, the old console room was ruined as the wood warped, so this story sees the new TARDIS console room.  It stays like this until the end of the Seventh Doctor's run (with minor changes).

• The Nucleus costume was worn by none other than John Scott Martin, one of the original crew members that  wore the first Dalek costumes.

•  Oh, alright, let's give mention to K9.  The story goes that Dave Martin's dog died not long before they wrote the story.  He asked if he could make the character to sort of deal with his grief and have something of a super-dog that couldn't get run over and really was man's best friend.  

• The model work on K9 was sort of innovative and the crew / public loved him so much that he ended up staying on for the next three years despite his radio control signals getting mixed up with the TV camera signals, causing him to go out of control and run into walls half the time

• It should also be mentioned that John Leeson, the voice of K9 took his role to the extreme, crawling around on all fours during rehearsals.  Tom Baker loved this and the pair soon had a great friendship, to the point of doing the times crossword together between takes.

The Review

Given the long run of highly successful gothic stories that came out of Phillip Hinchcliffe's run, its only right to expect the writers to lay an egg at some point.  This I'm afraid to say is that egg; a huge, rotten specimen of a story.

From what I've read, the production was severely rushed because it was shifted up to be shot sooner than they wanted because of other stories falling through, that's why spaceship pilot seats look like they were bought from Ikea, the door signs look like they've been cut out of paper and stuck on, and the guns don't have a lighty-up bit or moving part on them.

I'll not say too much more about the visual stuff because as with so much of classic Doctor Who, we are expected to use our imaginations; however, bland interior sets and a giant shrimp notwithstanding (it's better than the Ogron-eater or Alpha Centauri at least), it's the infected humans cause the most problems.  The bottom line is that the make up is horrible and just not at all scary.  It's fluffy white feathers and pretty scales.  How can you take that seriously when it's only sitting a few feet away from Michael Sheard's bald head and bushy tash? At least the special effects guys did their best with the huge amount of spaceships and planets.

Taking it to the plot in general, this story feels like it's all over the place.  Writers have tried to use this 'Doctor being attacked from within' before and since, and I'm not certain that any of them work, or that they did at the time they were shown.  In this story, Leela has nothing in the way of skills or ability to tackle this threat going on inside the Doctor, so she has to get help from the most implausible duo we've seen in a long time.  The space station is excruciatingly designed just to get us from A to B and K9 is similarly just in there for a whim that serves no real purpose at all.  What makes it infuriating is that these things have been created for the story, but yet there's no real effort been made to get things making sense from a plot point of view.

For example, Marius injects clones into the bloodstream - how are they not drowning?  Come to think of it, he even says about them not having time to give the clones full experiences that the Doctor and Leela have and yet...they clearly do have them anyway!!!  Why do they feel pain when their other selves get hurt?  Why are they totally fine with only living for twelve minutes?  How does Marius even know the time limit.  It's random!

The story is full of these instances where we are supposed to suspend our disbelief and go with it, but when you have to do a whole lot of it, I start to question whether it's up to the standard we're used to.  I can't blame it all on Bob Baker and Dave Martin.  Robert Holmes is still Script Editor at this point and I have come to the conclusion that he's phenomenal at stories set in the past, but pretty bad at ones in the future.  The Invisible Enemy is close to the Space Pirates in parts, with Marius being just as stupid and farcical as Milo Clancy.

The one saving grace for this story is the introduction of K9 into the show.  Well, that's if you happen to like K9.  At the risk of alienating some of you, I don't and never have. But despite what I think, Graham Williams and thousands of people across the UK did.  Graham Williams also made it clear that he'd had enough of prancing around Baker Street and wanted more futuristic outer space adventures for the Doctor, despite the budget being as tight as it had ever been.  Buckle up, there's going to be more where the Invisible Enemy came from.

Rating

3 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

2 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Ark

• The Space Pirates

• The Mutants

• Frontier in Space

• The Ark in Space

• The Christmas Invasion (Doctor Who, 2005 Christmas Special)

• Enter the Dalek (Doctor Who, Series 8)

The Horror of Fang Rock

Four Episodes
Aired between 3rd September 1977 and 24th September 1977

Written by Terrence Dicks
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by Paddy Russell


Synopsis

A lonely nineteenth century lighthouse at Fang Rock is the scene where a strange comet comes crashing down and a mysterious fog soon rises from the sea.

The Doctor and Leela take a detour when the TARDIS gets lost in said fog, and it's not long before they discover that the lighthouse is being terrorised by the so-called "Beast of Fang Rock".

The lighthouse keeper - Ben is found dead and they are the prime suspects.

Strange things begin to happen when the power keeps tripping out and poor Ben's body disappears and gets dissected.  The superstitious lighthouse deputy - Reuben fears the worst.

Things are shaken up a bit when a yacht crashes into the rocks.  The survivors are brought to the lighthouse to recover.  It turns out that a well-to-do Lord Palmerdale is desperately trying to get back to Southampton to capitalise on an account of blackmail he's got on Colonel Skinsale, and make a load of money.  In his haste, they crashed, stranding Skinsale, himself, his secretary, Adelaide and the shipman Harker.

The Doctor for the most part ignores Palmerdale's attempts to get back to the bank by daybreak, instead focusing on the presence of static electricity around the generator, and working out the plans of their would be killer, a monster that is skulking around outside.

The monster manages to kill and take the form of Reuben, and begins to off the survivors one by one, until the Doctor faces it.  It turns out to be a Rutan, sworn enemy of the Sontaran's.

Although crashed into the sea, the Rutan intends to call its mates and use Earth as a staging area for a final attack on the Sontaran's, even though the planet will probably be wiped out as a consequence.

The Doctor uses the contents of his pockets and a flare gun to kill the creature, and uses a diamond that Lord Palmerdale extorted out of Colonel Skinsale to annihilate the Rutan mothership that arrives.

The resulting blast affects Leela's eyes, turning them blue.

 
Trivia

• Robert Holmes turned to his friend Terrence Dicks to write this serial.  It was originally going to be a vampire story, but the BBC were doing an adaptation of Dracula, and forbade the Doctor Who Production Team from doing such a story.  This script was put to one side, but used later (see The Sate of Decay).

• Terrence was asked to go back to the drawing board and Robert Holmes told him he wanted a story about a lighthouse.  Terrence told him he knew nothing about them and so it would be difficult.  Some speculate that Robert took perverse pleasure in getting revenge on Terrence by telling him to get a kids book of lighthouses and doing some research, in reference to how Dicks had treated him when he was forced to write the Time Warrior.

• The disagreements between Tom and Louise came to a head around this story, with Director Paddy Russel forcing them to thrash the situation out, and telling Tom in certain terms that he would have to have a companion and that was that (presumably with the agreement of incoming producer Graham Williams).  Tom begrudgingly accepted the situation but called Paddy "Sir" from that point on (Paddy was a woman). 

• As noted in the previous story, part of Louise Jameson's conditions for staying on for another year was her getting rid of the contact lenses that caused her discomfort.  A hasty reason was concocted and used at the end of the story.

• In 1987, the story was being re-broadcast in the Chicago area when it was interrupted by a strange event.  A TV hacker in a Max Headroom mask appeared on the screen and began spouting a lot of random sentences and getting his bottom spanked by a french maid!  To this day, no one knows who the culprit was, or why they did it.

The Review
Given that in the previous story, I argued that Victorian era Doctor Who feels right because the resonances with Sherlock Holmes fit very well, it's no surprise that I'm going to say this is a good story.  What might surprise you is how much of a good story I think it is.

On the surface of it, this is a standard base under siege story that was done to death in the Patrick Troughton era, so what makes it stand out above those?  Atmosphere my friend, atmosphere.  Troughton's bases were more often than not a space station with the odd oil-rig thrown in.  "Well, this is just a lighthouse" you might say.  Yes, it is, but it's a Victorian lighthouse.  That means lots of darkened sets and fog, and that is excellent stuff for ramping up tension and fear.  Plus, the lack of any identifiable weapons raises the stakes even further.  Okay, Leela has her knife, but she's thrown it in every story she's been in and it's never killed a monster once, so we know this will be no use.

The Horror of Fang Rock excels at raising the stakes.  You never doubt that the Doctor will get out of it, but it does make you consider the cost.  When we start to see humans dropping like flies, there's no guarantee Leela will be so lucky.  This is compounded by the fact that Terrence Dicks puts the Doctor in a situation where he hasn't much sense of the monster's goals at all until right at the end, indeed he makes him fallible by locking the monster inside.

Another thing that's great about the Horror of Fang Rock is the sub-plot.  Most stories waddle along with the main plot until the Doctor pulls a mcGuffin out of his pocket and saves the day, with any side-characters being restricted to interacting with the main plot.  This story takes it to the next level where almost every character feels real.  They have motivations and goals and most of them don't have a thing to do with the monster outside.  This is a superb feat to accomplish in four episodes. Each character has a unique and definable personality, and has flaws too - Palmerdale is too greedy, Skinsale is too proud, Adelaide is...well, too annoying.

None of this is token nods such as the love interests in the Wheel in Space. This is good plotting, pure and simple.

I mean, the story structure is just great.  This is a family show, yet the death toll is huge, to the point where Eric Saward could have written it!  And that's good.  It never talks down to you, and as a result, you feel the tension.  Anyone could die at any point, especially if you're in the generator room on your own.

So, is there any problems with this story?  Yes, and they mainly come at the end.  The diamond death ray is one, as is the eye colour shift.  Both seem to be last minute additions to the script just to get it over and done with.  You could also say that the inability for everyone to just stay in one room and shore up the door a lot earlier, but I would argue that the Doctor didn't want to scare the inhabitants and he was still figuring things out at that point so wanted to be able to move about.

As with any story, some love it, some don't.  On measure, I LOVE this story.  It offers everything that the Talons of Weng-Chiang does, and keeps it tightly compacted into four episodes.  For that reason, I would argue that this is possibly the best Doctor Who story that has been created so far and I think it's an absolute tragedy that the story hasn't received as much praise as it should.

Rating

10 out of 10!

Rewatchability Factor

10 out of 10!

Watch this if you liked...

• The Moonbase
• Fury from the Deep
• The Talons of Weng-Chiang
• The Crimson Horror (Doctor Who, Series 7)

The Talons of Weng-Chiang

6 Episodes
Aired between 26th February 1977 and 2nd April 1977

Written by Robert Holmes
Produced by Phillip Hinchcliffe
Directed by David Maloney


Synopsis

The Doctor takes Leela to Victorian London, and is soon witness to a murder of a London "Cabby" by the Tong of the Black Scorpion, a Chinese cult that worships the god of abundance, Weng-Chiang.

The Doctor decides to help the local Police to solve the mystery, and soon finds out that local girls are going missing, and the disappearances all link back to the palace theatre, and a particular Chinese performer there called Li-H'sen-Chang.

Together with the local pathologist, Professor Litefoot, the Doctor and Leela begin putting the pieces in place.

It turns out that Chang is behind the missing people, he is working to help his master, Magnus Greel who needs the life essences of the girls to restore him to full health.  It turns out that Greel is behind the myth of Weng-Chiang.  He is really a scientist from the 51st Century who undertook many immoral experiments and was named the butcher of Brisbane.  His regime was overthrown in his own time, and he was forced to use his experimental time machine that operated on Zigma beam energy.  The trip messed his physiology up and he began to mutate without the transfer of human energy.

Using his first minion, the Peking Homonculus (a murderous android doll with the brain of a pig), he recruited Chang to his side, but lost his time cabinet.

Trapped in China, Greel searched for the cabinet for 20 years, finally finding it in the possession of Professor Litefoot who's parents had inherited it as a gift in Hong Kong.

As the story progresses, Mr Henry Gordon Jago, owner of the theatre, ends up working with Professor Litefoot, the Doctor and Leela in tracking down Greel and the Homonculus.

Greel manages to retrieve his time cabinet and tries to kill the heroes but eventually is forced to flee again into the machine.  The Doctor warns him that the Zygma energy is unstable and will destroy the world if he tires to use it but he doesn't listen, so the Doctor is forced to shove him into the energy transfer machine which kills him.

Trivia

• Magnus Greel was going to be the Master, but Phillip Hinchcliffe changed it because he didn't want the same villain to pop up twice in a single series.

• You don't have to look too hard to see that this story is somewhat of a mash up between Sherlock Holmes, The Phantom of the Opera and Fu Manchu.

• One of the concepts for Leela coming to Victorian London was because the writers wanted to mimic an Eliza Doolittle character

• Some have speculated that because he knew he was going, Phillip Hinchcliffe approved huge overspends on this story, as he wouldn't have to deal with the consequences 

• The relationship between Louise Jameson and Tom Baker wasn't great by this point.  Graham Williams, in-coming Producer tried to persuade Jameson to stay on for Season 15, something that Hinchcliffe had promised Tom Baker wouldn't happen.  Louise was reluctant to stay, not only because of Tom, but because of her contact lenses (they were very irritable for her).  Graham Williams in the end convinced her to stay on the proviso that they did away with her contacts (see the next story for how they got around it).

• It's worth mentioning that there's a full series of Audio drama's featuring Jago and Litefoot as Victorian super-sleuth's: https://www.bigfinish.com/ranges/released/jago-litefoot 

The Review

This is without a doubt one of the best Doctor Who stories ever devised.  If you don't believe me, ask any fan.  It's consistently amongst the higher echelons of fan polls and I can see why.

First, it's set firmly in the golden era of the show, with an average of 11 million viewers  tuning in per episode, meaning a lot of people saw it and remember it.  It's also written by Bob Holmes and is amongst one of his great pieces.  Coupled with the fact that it was also produced by Phillip Hinchcliffe puts it square in the golden era, gothic horror section (albeit one of the final ones).

Thank god Hinchcliffe approved of going over budget because the sets are beautiful.  They are dark and foggy and full of atmosphere.

The incidental music is fantastic and the characters are full of life.  I mean, there's no wonder it's memorable when you've got Henry Gordon Jago and Litefoot in it.  These are meant to be supporting, almost inconsequential characters!  They are brilliant, as is Mr Sin, who is as menacing as the doll from Terror of the Autons.

Admittedly, the story loses points a bit for Li H'Sen Chang not being authentically Chinese, but there's nothing I find wrong with the actor's performance in particular other than an over the top accent.

So, the sets are great, costumes, music, characters, all great.  What else?  Tom Baker, that's what.  His interactions are as good as they'll ever get on Doctor Who.  His witty one liners, grumpy protests and down right eccentricity are all on top form.  Not enough for you?  How about Leela?  Her character hasn't been really relevant since she first appeared.  The Talons of Weng-Chiang allows her to be pro-active and true to herself.  She's not sitting around and asking questions or passing screwdrivers about, she's diving through windows and stripping off!

I think what I like most about this story is that it feels right.  What if I told you that the Doctor hadn't really visited Victorian London up to this point (except for Evil of the Daleks)?  You would be forgiven for being fooled into thinking he had.  The correlation between Sherlock and the Doctor is remarkable, and it just all falls into place in this story far more than say the Horror of Fang Rock, because it's the quintessential environment for a Holmes story to thrive.  Robert Holmes clearly knew this, as can be seen from the Doctor and his Deer Stalker.

Although for me, there's little this story can do wrong, there are a few things of note.  The first is the length of it.  I would without a doubt place this as the best Doctor Who story ever if it was only four episodes.  As with so many others, the additional fifty minutes of time seems to make the story drag a little too long and force characters to make puzzling decisions, such as Greel and his cult leaving the heroes alive, when they've happily killed everyone else.

The other thing is that this story does have a lot of coincidences in it.  The fact that Litefoot has the time cabinet, the fact that Greel turns up in London at all.  Thing is, if you're anything like me, those things just don't register.  The atmosphere and tension feels enough to immerse me in the story, so I just don't notice it.  Same with how the explanations for creating large rats in the sewers seem like convenience than anything else (oh, and they looked embarassingly crap).

This is Tom Baker's Doctor Who at its finest.  No wonder they carried on the Victorian theme for the next story.

Rating

10 out of 10!

Without a doubt, this story falls within the top three best Doctor Who stories of all time

Rewatchability Factor

7 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Evil of the Daleks

• The Ice Warriors

• The Horror of Fang Rock

• The Visitation

• The Unquiet Dead (Doctor Who, Series 1)

• The New Doctor (Doctor Who, Christmas Special)

• The Crimson Horror (Doctor Who ,Series 7)