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...
- Terror of the Vervoids (Trial of a Timelord)
- Delta and the Bannermen
- Paradise Towers
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