556 Logopolis Part One

EPISODE: Logopolis Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 556
STORY NUMBER: 116
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 28 February 1981
WRITER: Christopher H. Bidmead
DIRECTOR: Peter Grimwade
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 7.1 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - New Beginnings (The Keeper of Traken/Logopolis/Castrovalva)

On Earth a policeman uses a police box to make a call but is cut off while it flutters visually and is pulled inside. Pacing the cloisters in the Tardis the Doctor decides to avoid going to Gallifrey, evading questions about what Romana has done, and instead suggests a trip to Earth. On Earth Australian air line hostess Tegan Jovanka is being driven to the first day of her new job by her Aunt Vanessa when the car breaks down. The Doctor decides to start the Tardis' long needed overhaul by fixing the chameleon circuit and travels to Earth to measure a real police box for use in Block Transfer Computations materialising round a Police Box on the Barnet Bypass next to the broken down car. Across the road from Vanessa & Tegan a white figure observes the events taking place, but vanishes when they try to summon him to help. The Doctor & Adric measure the police box, with the Doctor explaining about the Logopolitan Block Transfer Computations when the Doctor detects a gravity bubble. Popping out of the Tardis he sees the white figure in a field. The Doctor & Adric open up the police box, finding a darkened Tardis control room and another police box within. Tegan goes to into the Tardis, believing it to be a real Police Box, just missing the Police Box within dematerialising. She quickly becomes lost in the Tardis' maze of corridors. The Doctor and Adric penetrate the second Police Box finding another yet darker Tardis within. Vanessa approaches the Police Box on the bypass and steps inside to be confronted by an unseen figure who laughs at her. The Doctor & Adric eventually break out of the nested Tardises with the Doctor meeting a police inspector on the road who shows him the shrunken bodies of Vanessa & the police man on the seat of Vanessa's sports car. The Doctor, observed by the white clad watcher, tells the police that this is the work of the Master.

And so the end for Tom Baker's Doctor begins. Picking up the themes of entropy & decay that have been there all season the Doctor decides to fix the Tardis Chameleon Circuit and falls into a trap set by the revived Master. We've got real Police Boxes and someone stumbling into the Tardis believing it's a real Police Box just like Dodo at the end of the Massacre.

Playing airline hostess Tegan Jovanka is Australian born Janet Fielding. The character was probably designed to attract Australian money for a co-production that failed to materialise. It's not the last time that John Nathan-Turner would create a character with the intent of attracting money or audience from another country..... Tegan's character will give direction to the next year or so by wanting the Doctor to get her home in a manner similar to the original human companions Ian & Barbara. Meanwhile the Detective the Doctor meets in the lay by is Tom Georgeson, previously Kavell in Genesis of the Daleks and the Watcher, Adrian Gibbs, was a Marshman in Full Circle.

Tegan's house is Number 43, Ursula Street, Battersea, London which was at the time the home of Andrew McCulloch, where he and John Flanagan wrote Meglos. Meanwhile the "Barnet Bypass" is actually the A413 with the initial views of the bridge looking north towards Amersham and the lay by being located on the south bound carriageway roughly where the M25 now crosses it. I've driven this road many times due to at one point having a girlfriend in Aylesbury (Hello Barbara!) but never realised it was a Doctor Who location until years later when I bought Richard Bignell's Doctor Who on Location. This location is a very short distance from the field used in Reign of Terror for the very first Doctor Who location filming.

555 The Keeper of Traken Part Four

EPISODE: The Keeper of Traken Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 555
STORY NUMBER: 115
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 21 February 1981
WRITER: Johnny Byrne
DIRECTOR: John Black
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 6.1 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - New Beginnings (The Keeper of Traken/Logopolis/Castrovalva)

While Melkur completes his control over the source he orders that the three remaining Consuls, and the Doctor, be confined to their quarters. The Doctor thinks he recognises something about Melkur and Adric, sheltering in the Tardis with Nyssa, realises that Melkur has behaved just like a Tardis. They start creating a device to destroy the source manipulator. Melkur makes Proctor Neman a Consul and dispatches him to Tremas' quarters where he destroys the plans for the source manipulator. He is overcome by the Doctor who steals his Consular ring and with it he & Tremas gain access to the Keeper's chamber and start to override the source. Melkur takes control of Tremas and has him kill Neman who has failed him. The Doctor is summoned into the Keeper's presence and disappears, just as Adric arrives telling Tremas the device to destroy the source has been installed. The Doctor finds himself in the control room of his foe's new vessel and confronted by the decrepit and decayed form of his old enemy the Master who intends to drain the Doctor's knowledge and then take the Doctor's body to replace his which has exhausted it's regenerations. His hold over the Doctor is broken when Adric & Nyssa's device disrupts the source, causing explosions and a fire to break out. The Doctor dives through a panel window and finds himself back in the Keeper's chamber where Adric completes the sequence expelling Melkur from the source. Consul Luvic reluctantly takes up the post of Keeper, Tremas arriving just too late to take up the post which was meant for him. The Doctor & Adric take their leave as Nyssa goes to tidy the mess the Fosters made of their quarters. Tremas intends to follow but his eye is caught by a Grandfather clock, out of place in the Traken corridors. He goes to examine it and finds himself immobilised. Out of the clock, his real Tardis disguised, steps the Master who takes over Tremas' form, turning it into a younger version of himself before leaving in his Tardis as a bewildered Nyssa seeks her missing Father.....

Oh that's fab. It doesn't rely on you knowing who the Master is, it's obvious from what you've seen in the previous episodes that he's a nasty piece of work all of which is confirmed in the closing minutes as he seizes Tremas' body as his own.

So where was Tremas in the closing moments of the struggle that prevented him from becoming Keeper? My guess is he was in the room bellow disconnecting Adric & Nyssa's device and ensuring the continued survival of the source. It's not 100% clear what's going on there.

What is clear is that Melkur *ISN'T* the Master's Tardis. It certainly is a Tardis, the noises it makes on dematerialisation and rematerialisation are a bit of a give away there as are the roundelled walls. He refers to it as his new vessel at one point. My guess is that Melkur is the Tardis belonging to Chancellor Goth, the Master's Time Lord ally in Deadly Assassin, that the Master has purloined. The Master's Tardis is the Grandfather Clock we see at the end, which was the form it occupied at the end of The Deadly Assassin and can also be seen in towards the rear of Melkur's control room. There's a very nice little touch with the Master's grandfather clock at the end: it's four minutes to midnight. Initially I saw that and thought of The Doomsday Clock (prominently featured in Watchmen), which would make this a joke at the season 19 story Four to Doomsday. But what I believe it's referring to is that there's four episodes to go before the end for Tom Baker's Doctor. Very nice & subtle touch.

Keeper of Traken obviously sands out in the memory as "The one that brought the Master back". But up until that it's been a decent and very solid piece of Doctor Who with the sets & the costumes setting it aside from the usual fare in the same way the video effects did for Warriors' Gate. Two very different stories but each in their own way set new high standards for the series.

Keeper of Traken was repeated from 10th to 13th August 1981, the week following Full Circle's repeat completing the now traditional two story repeat season. However, as we shall see in a few days time, these weren't the only stories from this season repeated.... Keeper of Traken was novelised by Terrance Dicks in 1982. It was released on video in June 1993 and as part of the Doctor Who - New Beginnings Boxset on 29th January 2007 with the two following stories Logopolis & Castrovalva.

As hinted at above there's just four more Fourth Doctor episodes to go. Join us as we start Logopolis tomorrow!

554 The Keeper of Traken Part Three

EPISODE: The Keeper of Traken Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 554
STORY NUMBER: 115
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 14 February 1981
WRITER: Johnny Byrne
DIRECTOR: John Black
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 5.2 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - New Beginnings (The Keeper of Traken/Logopolis/Castrovalva)

Kassia has the Doctor, Tremas & Adric locked up. Melkur commands her to engineer her own succession as Keeper. Nyssa helps her father & his friends escape and they return to Tremas' quarters seeking the plans for the source manipulator, suspecting Kassia will attempt to gain control of it and seeking a way to stop her. The old Keeper dies and Kassia is summoned to the chamber as chaos breaks out over Traken. The Doctor and his friends attempt to return to the Tardis but are once again confronted by Melkur who dematerialises from the Grove. As Kassia ascends to the Keeper's throne the Doctor & Tremas attempt to stop her but Katura completes the transition granting her mastery of the source. But Kassia starts to scream as her body vanishes and then a familiar noise is heard as Melkur materialises on the throne.......

Seven year old me watching this: uggh, who is that inside of Melkur, he doesn't look that nice does he? What I didn't spot then was, in the same pull back shot, the roundeled walls behind the figure. Or notice the significance of the noise as Melkur vanished and reappeared again. I didn't know who it was in control of the Melkur. But elsewhere across the land fanboys everywhere were going wild at the return of one of their favourite villains....

The Doctor is a bit trigger happy with the ion bonder he takes off Nyssa isn't he? He's stunning Fosters with it left, right and centre almost as if this story was written for K-9 being there doing the job. It's Nyssa who gives him the Ion bonder, having taken a couple of pot shots first herself, and between Nyssa & the Ion Bonder that's K-9's plot functions covered!

The writer of this story, Johnny Byrne, was new to Doctor Who but had made a large contribution to the first year or so of Space 1999. He'd script edited All Creatures Great & Small, a series which new Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner had been a Production Unit Manager on (several other Who personnel have connections with the series as we'll see shortly). Nathan-Turner had offered him the Doctor Who script editor's position only for Byrne to turn it down but indicate he would like to write for the series.

The director of this series, John Black, is someone I know very little about. He has one more Doctor Who tale to his name and bar a few IMDB credits there doesn't seem to be a lot known about him.

553 The Keeper of Traken Part Two

EPISODE: The Keeper of Traken Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 553
STORY NUMBER: 115
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 07 February 1981
WRITER: Johnny Byrne
DIRECTOR: John Black
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 8.1 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - New Beginnings (The Keeper of Traken/Logopolis/Castrovalva)

Tremas defends the Doctor taking him into his custody. Returning to the Grove, Melkur slays two Fosters whose bodies Kassia hides. Melkur gives her a gift of a neckband, which will enable her to be his eyes and ears. Tremas falls under suspicion by associating with the Doctor but Consul Seron volunteers enter rapport with the Keeper to defend him. The Keeper appears telling Seron he is innocent and they are both betrayed: Kassia slays Seron and, interrupted by Tremas & The Doctor, orders them arrested but they flee to the Grove. The Doctor tracks the Tardis to the location in the Grove where they left it, but when they get there Melkur speaks to them, telling them recovering the Tardis won't help them. They are captured by Fosters and Kassia reports to the statue like being

It is done Melkur!

Oh no, Kassia, it is only beginning!

More of the same as the first episode. The big revelation to us as a viewer here concerns Melkur, that it isn't the evil that there is something sitting in a darkened room watching through two eye shaped screens controlling it. The full reveal of what's going on here will have to wait for another episode or so yet.

The idea of a stone man isn't a new one and as I was watching this I was reminded of the Stone Men in the Tim & The Hidden People series of books I'd have been reading at school when this story aired: compare Melkur with the book cover image here . In fact 7, nearly 8, year old me has clear memories of watching this episode (I missed the first and only caught it on the repeat) and the scenes in the dark control room, the net falling on the Doctor and Melkur addressing Kassia at the end stick *very* clearly in my mind.

Playing the Keeper if Traken is Denis Carey who'd recently failed to appear on our screens as Professor Chronotis in Shada. He'll be back as the Old Man in Timelash. Sheila Ruskin, Kassia, has a long Television career on her CV, including an appearance in the classic I, Claudius (and I really must look at all the Who thesps in that) but is best known to science fiction fans as Alta 1 in the Blake's 7 episode Redemption (alongside Genesis of the Daleks' Harriet Philpin. Consul Katura is played by Margot Van der Burgh who was Cameca in The Aztecs while her colleague Seron is a final Doctor who role for John Woodnutt who was George Hibbert in Spearhead from Space; the Draconian Emperor in Frontier in Space and both his grace the Duke of Forgill & the Zygon Leader Broton in Terror of the Zygons.

Credited as Melkur is Geoffrey Beevers, who was Private Johnson in Ambassadors of Death and is the husband of Caroline John, companion Liz Shaw. However he's only providing the voice and is actually playing the character within it, whose identity we shall not spoil for those who have not seen the story and should be buying it right now. Within the Melkur costume and, in my opinion, harshly uncredited is young actor Graham Cole who would later go on to find fame as PC Tony Stamp in The Bill. This isn't his first Doctor Who appearance, he was previously in Full Circle as a Marshman. He'll return in Kinda as a Kinda tribesman (two other Bill cast members in that one!), Earthshock as a Cyberman, Time-Flight as Melkur, The Five Doctors as a Cyberman, Resurrection of the Daleks as a Crewmember and The Twin Dilemma as a Jacondan. Over the years Doctor Who has credited actors inside Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors, Silurians, Yeti and Alpha Centauri who don't speak their lines. Melkur is a central part of the story and his performance is crucial so I think it's rather off that he's not credited here or, as it turns out, in any of his other roles!

552 The Keeper of Traken Part One

EPISODE: The Keeper of Traken Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 552
STORY NUMBER: 115
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 31 January 1981
WRITER: Johnny Byrne
DIRECTOR: John Black
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 7.6 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - New Beginnings (The Keeper of Traken/Logopolis/Castrovalva)

The Doctor & Adric are visited by the all powerful but ailing Keeper of Traken, ruler of the Traken Union. He explains how the evil Melkur was attracted to their planet but stands immobile calcifying in a grove where Kassia is appointed to tend it as it dies. Years later Kassia is appointed as one of the five consuls to the Keeper and marries one of her colleagues, Tremas, who shortly after is appointed Keeper nominate with his daughter Nyssa being given Kassia's previous duty of tending the Melkur which has lasted far longer than expected. Fearing the events that will occur in the run up to and following his death the Keeper asks the Doctor to come to Traken to aid them. Kassia, grief stricken at the prospect of loosing her new husband, pours her heart out to Melkur who unexpectedly responds. The Tardis materialises in the Grove and the Doctor & Adric are quickly arrested by the Fosters who tend it, already worried due to a recent murder. The Doctor tells his story to the five consuls: Tremas, Kassia, Seron, Katura & Luvic. However he is unable to corroborate it due to Melkur making the Tardis vanish from the grove. The Keeper is summoned to verify their story but as he materialises Melkur, unseen by anyone but the keeper, enters the chamber. The Keeper proclaims that their is evil among them and vanishes as the Doctor & Adric find themselves surrounded.

Oh that's rather good. Some fabulous design work beefs up what the script provides with the Keeper, an old bearded man in a chair, playing up to the stereotypical depiction of God and typical futuristic set & costume problems being solved by the use of stone effect sets & lavish period costume style clothing. This looks good, in a different way to how Warriors' Gate looked good. Warrior's Gate played with flashy visuals & effects but Keeper of Traken is much more lavish & solid.

Two significant figures join us in front of the camera for the first time here. Playing Tremas is Anthony Ainley. The son of actor Henry Ainley, the Godfather of third Doctor Jon Pertwee. By this stage in his career he was able to select work as he pleased, preferring to spend his time playing & watching cricket (he is, to the best of my knowledge, the only Doctor Who actor to have got his obituary in Wisden). His character's name is the first, but by no means the last, anagram to be associated with his time on the program. Playing Tremas' daughter Nyssa is Sarah Sutton. The role, initially just for this story, was liked by the producer and he decided to have it expanded into that of a new companion.

551 Warriors' Gate Part Four

EPISODE: Warriors' Gate Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 551
STORY NUMBER: 114
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 24 January 1981
WRITER: Stephen Gallagher
DIRECTOR: Paul Joyce
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 7.8 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The E-Space Trilogy (Full Circle / State of Decay / Warrior's Gate)

Held at gunpoint by Rovrik the Doctor sees Biroc through the mirror who admits his race abused their powers and tells the Doctor to do nothing. Adric threatens the ship's crew with the MZ allowing the Doctor & Romana to escape to the Tardis. The MZ is fired at the gateway but just succeeds in destroying itself. Rovrik decides to use a backblast from the ship's engines to penetrate the Gateway but damage to the ship means it will take ten minutes to come to full power. Realizing that the ship's dwarf star alloy hull is distorting the micro universe they find themselves in the Doctor & Romana go to sabotage the ship and prevent it from using the backblast. The Doctor & Romana find their way into the ship through the damaged section where the Doctor is attacked by Rovrik. Romana grants them a little grace by shorting the ship's power system using Biroc's chains. One of the crew attempts to crudely revive the Tharils but kills those he works on. Biroc himself rescues them from Rovrik while Lazlo kills the crewmember and himself properly revives the remaining Tharils. Returning to the Tardis Romana announces she will stay with the Tharils so the Doctor gives her the damaged K-9 which she and Biroc take through the gateway. The backblast comes to full power, but is just reflected back my the gateway, destroying the ship as the Tardis dematerialises and slips through the gateway. Lazlo leads his people out of the remains of the ship and through the gateway. The Tardis passes through the Tharil realm on it's way to N-Space as Romana promises to help Biroc free the Tharils enslaved on many other worlds.

Fabulous. Great end to what's been a superb set of episodes. I knew Warriors's Gate was good but this has just increased my appreciation for it.

This isn't just the end of the story, it's the end of the road for two of our supporting characters. K-9 had been an annoyance to new producer John Nathan-Turner from day 1 who had decided it had to go. Technically problems with the prop had caused delays to shooting but K-9 was a much loved part of Doctor Who at this time and a campaign in the papers had failed to save him. As a sop to viewers it was announced that K-9 would be starring in a pilot for his own television series.... and we'll be looking at that in 9 days time. Also leaving was Romana actress Lalla Ward who, feeling that the show was moving away from a family audience, had decided to move on. Throughout her time as Romana she'd been engaged in an on/off romance with Tom Baker, and shortly after she left the show the two were married for a brief time. In 1992 she married biologist Richard Dawkins, having been introduced by their mutual acquaintance former Doctor Who script editor Douglas Adams.

Warriors' Gate was adapted as a Target Novel by Stephen Gallagher under his nom du plume John Lydecker in 1982. The E-Space Trilogy, containing Full Circle, State of Decay & Warriors' Gate, was released on video in 1997 and on DVD on 26th January 2009.

550 Warriors' Gate Part Three

EPISODE: Warriors' Gate Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 550
STORY NUMBER: 114
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 17 January 1981
WRITER: Stephen Gallagher
DIRECTOR: Paul Joyce
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 8.3 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The E-Space Trilogy (Full Circle / State of Decay / Warrior's Gate)

Romana's bonds are loosened by the Tharil, Lazlo, that has been hideously disfigured, but he hides from the searching Aldo & Royce. Beyond the mirror Biroc explains to the Doctor he has passed through the Gateway, healing the Doctor's hand and restoring the Gundam's memory wafer that the Doctor is carrying. K-9 too would be restored but because he is not living matter would need to remain there. Returning to the ship to fetch the MZ cannon, Lane & Packard discover that the distance between it and the gateway appears to be shortening. The Doctor walks through the Tharils' palace and is guided by a female Tharil to an earlier version of the banqueting room. Romana escapes, and finds Adric. Examining the damage to the Hull she discovers that it's made from super dense dwarf star alloy. She is recaptured but the crewman guarding her is slain by Lazlo who takes her to the gateway passing through the mirror and healing Lazlo's horrific injuries. The Doctor sits at the Tharil feast, discussing with Biroc how the Tharils have enslaved the humans. The feast is interrupted by the Gundam robots, come to slay the Tharils and suddenly the Doctor and Romana find themselves at the later version of the banqueting room and in the hands of Rovrik & his crew.

Plotwise that's slightly confusing as time and locations jump around (what happens the female Tharil guiding the Doctor? She just vanishes!) But visually it's absolutely stunning again. Just when you're getting used to the existing setup director Paul Joyce pulls a new trick by showing the exteriors of the Tharil domain as black & white, using still photographs shot at Powis Castle with the Doctor, Romana & Tharils as the only colour walking through them with (for the time) near seamless CSO. The Doctor genuinely looks like he's walking down the path receding into the distance. And then the final trick as the banqueting room transforms from it's earlier version with the Tharils' feasting to the later one with Rovrik's crew having lunch with even the two different meals providing a neat contrast. Stunning stuff. And all along there's a hint that something's really not right as K-9 reports a Mass Conversion Anomaly and the crew feel the walk to the ship is getting shorter which is emphasised by a panning shot placing the freighter, the Tardis and the Gateway all close together when previously they'd been separate.

Writer Stephen Gallagher was a newcomer to the series and produced a storyline that (according to Script Editor Christopher H. Bidmead) needed some manipulation into a television script. To direct it Paul Joyce, another first timer to the series was appointed who took a greater than average interest in some areas of work that other directors didn't get involved in commissioning artwork for model designs and overseeing effects shots undertaken by visual effects designer Matt Irvine. Unfortunately when the story reached the studio stage his filming speed & techniques, involving shooting off set and using a set condemned as unsafe by the BBC, caused a dispute that led to him being sacked and production assistant Graeme Harper being promoted. Quite how much Harper directed is unclear but at some point Joyce was rehired and finished the serial including it's lengthy post production work. He was not invited back again which is a great shame as what he does here is truly stunning. Interviewed on the DVD he comes across as truly ahead of his time adopting methods now commonplace but just didn't fit in the BBC way of doing things at the time.

549 Warriors' Gate Part Two

EPISODE: Warriors' Gate Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 549
STORY NUMBER: 114
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 10 January 1981
WRITER: Stephen Gallagher
DIRECTOR: Paul Joyce
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 6.7 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The E-Space Trilogy (Full Circle / State of Decay / Warrior's Gate)

Romana goes outside to speak to Rovrik, hoping to obtain memory wafers to repair K-9. She volunteers to go with them to their ship. The Doctor evades the robot, which is soon joined by another reactivated compatriot, and he manoeuvres them into destroying one another. Adric & K-9 attempt to follow Romana but while triangulating a mass reading they become separated. Rovrik, convinced she is a time sensitive, attempts to force Romana into being his new navigator but all she is able to visualise is a stone gateway in the vicinity. Rovrik takes the majority of his crew to find the gateway, leaving Aldo & Royce behind to unpack another Tharil, and Romana bound to the navigator's chair. Instead the two attempt to revive it, but the Tharil screams in agony seemingly electrocuted. The Doctor, aided by K-9, reactivates the memory circuits of a robot which tells him of the slaves that built the Gundam robots to travel through the gateway to overcome their cruel masters. Rovrik and his crew arrive and want to hear more but the playback is interrupted by the second Gundam reactivating, going on a rampage and walking through the mirror Biroc escaped through. The Doctor uses the confusion to escape, passing through the mirror to the bewilderment of K-9, Rovrik and his crew. Meanwhile on the ship something is moving through the corridors and approaches the bound Romana on the bridge.

I definitely saw this on first airing (and probably the previous episode as well) as the ending of the episode left a big impression on me with the Doctor vanishing into the mirror and Romana at the mercy of an unseen thing. I think it's one of the best cliffhangers that the series produced by a long way. I've no memory of this season till this point (we were probably watching Buck Rogers on the other side) but from here on in I have solid memories of watching. And for the last three stories there's a solid increase in viewing figures indicating I wasn't the only one!

Not a lot of the cast for this story have form in Doctor Who but several are well known for other work. Clifford Rose, playing Rorvik, played the character Kessel in Secret Army while Kenneth Cope, Packard, is famed for playing Marty Hopkirk in the cult hit Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased). He's the father of Martha Cope who played the Controller in Bad Wolf. Incidentally Mike Pratt, who played Jeff Randall in the same series, was frequently doubled by our old friend Harry Fielder, as he recalls here. Jeremy Gittins, here playing Lazlo (though we've not really seen him yet) was a semi regular as the vicar in Keeping Up Appearances. Finally the actor playing Biroc, David Weston, has appeared in Doctor Who before: he was Nicholas Muss in The Massacre.

548 Warriors' Gate Part One

EPISODE: Warriors' Gate Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 548
STORY NUMBER: 114
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 03 January 1981
WRITER: Stephen Gallagher
DIRECTOR: Paul Joyce
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 7.1 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The E-Space Trilogy (Full Circle / State of Decay / Warrior's Gate)

A spacecraft attempts to take off but is damaged due to a Time Disruption, injuring their slave Tharil navigator. The Tardis too is caught in the same disruption. While being taken bellow for treatment the Tharil evades his captors and flees out into the void. The Tardis doors open mid flight, allowing the time winds to flow in damaging K-9 & injuring the Doctor's hand, but the out of phase Tharil, who introduces himself as Biroc, finds the Tardis and brings it to rest in the void. He warns them not to believe those following him and flees, followed by the Doctor, who notes to Romana that they've arrived at a location with zero co-ordinates, possibly the gateway between the negative E-Space and their home universe the positive N-Space . Biroc finds a stone doorway in the void, and entering into a cobwebbed dining hall slips his bonds and steps through the mirror. Rovrick, the ship's captain, and two of his crew, Packard & Lane, find the Tardis using a portable mass detector. The Doctor too finds the doorway, and the ruined dining room, but in adjusting a ceremonial suit of armour there he accidentally reactivates the robot within. As he examines the chains that Biroc shed the robot advances on him with an axe.

My Goodness, that was jaw droppingly good. It looks *NOTHING* like anything done on the show before. The opening shots of the sleeping Tharils has something of a Frankenstein feel to it thanks to the moving parts on the life support machines keeping them alive, followed by the long panning shot through the starkly functional vessel which, unlike the similar shot that opens Logopolis, feels like it's doing something useful. The coin tossed into the air is spoiled now by the freeze frame - we can do that so much better now, and I'm surprised that we didn't for the DVD release. The void is just that, an empty void, and much better than the similar shots in The Mind Robber that have something of a Play School Studio feel to it. Biroc running through the void, his image ghosting behind him. The Cobwebbed hall. The chains falling to the floor as he walks through the mirror. It looks superb. And in there there's a story: the Doctor's quest to get home, Romana's reluctance to return to Gallifrey (nicely sign posted at the start of the tale) and what is that spaceship doing with a hold full of enslaved Tharils?

This is the third and last of the three stories that make up the "Stories Centering Around A Crashed Space ship" trilogy, as one internet commentator put it. This wasn't the original plan though: the Trilogy should have closed with a story called Sealed Orders by noted science fiction writer Christopher Priest (not the comic writer of the same name who was formerly known as Jim Owsley) The gist of Sealed Orders would have involved a return to Gallifrey where the Doctor would be ordered to kill Romana. Quite how this fits in with getting out of E-Space I have no idea, as it seems to me that it would be a more natural substitute for Full Circle, leading straight on from Meglos.

I do wonder why they called E-Space - E-Space. Surely N-Space, for Negative Space, would have been a better name with R-Space (Real Space) being used for our universe?

547 State of Decay Part Four

EPISODE: State of Decay Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 547
STORY NUMBER: 113
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 13 December 1980
WRITER: Terrance Dicks
DIRECTOR: Peter Moffatt
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 5.4 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The E-Space Trilogy (Full Circle / State of Decay / Warrior's Gate)

Aukon restrains Zargo & Camilla from drinking Adric & Romana's blood. The Doctor persuades the rebels to help him and with K-9 they storm the castle. As the three who rule prepare to sacrifice Romana, The Doctor launches one of the castle's scoutships which falls back to the ground, piercing the great vampire through the heart and killing it. Zargo, Camilla & Aukon, freed from their master's powers, age rapidly and crumble away into dust. The Doctor promises to take Adric home to Starliner.

Lots of Tom, lots of the Vampires hamming it up. Not a bad episode at all..... with the big exception of the Scout Ship model sequence: you watch it turning round and you hold your head in your hands and weep.

Over the years I've struggled a bit with State of Decay but watching it now it's easily the most improved Tom Baker story over my expectations. It's quite interesting watching it as it's effectively a Holmes era script but done in the 80s. You sit there thinking "What would be different if it was filmed three years earlier and with Leela instead of K-9 & Romana"?

State of Decay was novelised in 1982 by it's author Terrance Dicks. Uniquely State of Decay was released on audio cassette as a story read by Tom Baker. I got a copy of it as a youngster and was very disappointed that it wasn't the audio of the story (which I didn't see) and didn't have the Doctor Who theme on it. The E-Space Trilogy, containing Full Circle, State of Decay & Warriors' Gate, was released on video in 1997 and on DVD on 26th January 2009.

Following this episode's broadcast we get 2 weeks without Doctor Who over the Christmas period with the show returning on 3rd January 1981.

546 State of Decay Part Three

EPISODE: State of Decay Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 546
STORY NUMBER: 113
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 06 December 1980
WRITER: Terrance Dicks
DIRECTOR: Peter Moffatt
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 4.4 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The E-Space Trilogy (Full Circle / State of Decay / Warrior's Gate)

Aukon offers to share their power with the Doctor, but he refuses. Aukon learns they are Time Lords and has the Doctor & Romana imprisoned to use as sacrifices when their master awakes. While in the cell the Doctor recalls a Time Lord Vampire legend and Romana recommends that he should look it up on the record of Rassilon contained in his Tardis. They are rescued by Tarak, a former Tower guard who now is with the rebels and he & Romana stay at the tower to seek Adric. The Doctor returns to the Tardis and learns of how Rassilon fought the Time Lords ancient foes the Great Vampires with "Bow ships", wiping them out but when the bodies were counted one was missing. The Doctor realises that the Vampire must be on the planet, buried beneath the tower. Romana & Tarak find Adric in Zargo & Camilla's crypt, but Tarak is killed when the vampires awake and they advance on Romana & Adric to feed on them.....

That was fab. Top marks to Emrys James for opening the show with a truly impressive piece of barking mad villainship. They could have done anything after that and I'd have still been impressed!

This is a first Doctor Who for Director Peter Moffatt and he does a decent job, with some fabulous little graphical touches like overlaying the bats on Aukon's face. We'll be seeing him regularly over the next few years. He reuses two of the actors in this story in subsequent tales: Stuart Blake, Zoldaz (who I assume is a guard or a rebel?), is the Commander in his The Five Doctors, and also Scibus in Warriors of the Deep while Clinton Greyn, head villager & innkeeper Ivo, is the Sontaran Commander Stike in The Two Doctors. Rebel scientist Kalmar is played by Arthur Hewlett and he'll be back as Kimber in Terror of the Vervoids while Stacy Davies playing Veros (again I have no idea who he is so I'm assuming he's a guard or a rebel) was Private Perkins in The Invasion. Finally this episode sees a last appearance in Doctor Who for Stuart Fell, long term actor & stuntman. His credited appearances as The Sea Devils as a Sea Devil, The Curse of Peladon and The Monster of Peladon as Alpha Centauri, Planet of the Spiders as a tramp (whom the Doctor drives the hovercraft over), The Ark in Space as a Wirrn, The Android Invasion as a Kraal, The Brain of Morbius as the Morbius Monster, The Masque of Mandragora as an entertainer, The Invasion of Time as a Sontaran and finally here, in the State of Decay as Roga, the guard that Tarak knocks out.

545 State of Decay Part Two

EPISODE: State of Decay Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 545
STORY NUMBER: 113
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 29 November 1980
WRITER: Terrance Dicks
DIRECTOR: Peter Moffatt
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 5.3 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The E-Space Trilogy (Full Circle / State of Decay / Warrior's Gate)

The Doctor & Romana are captured by guards and taken to the tower, where they meet the Three Who Rule: Zargo, Aukon & Camilla. Camilla takes a great interest when Romana cuts herself. Theorising that the tower is the remains of the starship Hydrax, the Doctor & Romana explore and find a still functioning scout ship forming the top of the tower. Aukon stages another "selection" and takes Adric from the inn. Descending to the depths of the castle the Doctor & Romana find vats of human blood and hear a pounding heartbeat from elsewhere in the underground cavern. Aukon enters and welcomes them to his domain....

That wasn't bad at all, rather enjoyed that (even though the viewing of the episode got a bit disturbed for various reasons). Some really nice stuff in there, the Castle being the ship and the rulers being the original officers. Then we get bellow for the blood and the heartbeat and we're in real Hammer Horror territory.

By an odd coincidence Bray Studios, the home of Hammer Films, isn't that far from the locations used in this story. All the exterior scenes here were filmed at Burnham Beaches just north of the M4 at Maidnehead/Slough and Bray is just a little south of the motorway.

544 State of Decay Part One

EPISODE: State of Decay Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 544
STORY NUMBER: 113
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 22 November 1980
WRITER: Terrance Dicks
DIRECTOR: Peter Moffatt
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 5.8 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The E-Space Trilogy (Full Circle / State of Decay / Warrior's Gate)

The Tardis lands on a planet supporting a medieval level civilisation. The population are under the rule of the Three Who Rule who have recently selected young villagers and had them brought to the tower. K-9 picks up a trace of high technology, but is left in the Tardis while the Doctor & Romana investigate. The Doctor & Romana visit the village inn where the headman Ivor tells him that the Lords protect them from the wasting. Adric, who has stowed away in the Tardis, goes looking for the Doctor & Romana. While seeking another village the Doctor & Romana are captured by rebels. Their presence is reported to the Three Who Rule and the Chancellor Aukon dispatches his bat servants to find them. The Doctor & Romana are taken to meet Kelner, a man who is experimenting with some advanced equipment. He tells them they intend to overthrow the Lords. Adric arrives at the inn and is given shelter by the innkeeper and his wife, whose son has recently been taken to the tower. The Doctor is told that all science and knowledge is forbidden by the Lords. The Doctor & Romana discovers that the equipment is from an Earth vessel Hydrax that they think must have passed through a CVE. One of the rebels recognises the faces of the ships officers, found in a database, as the three lords. Leaving the rebel base, the Doctor & Romana are attacked by bats!

We've got bats, we've got a castle, we've got villagers in thrall to their lords who are nice and pale. Yup Doctor Who finally does Vampires it would seem. All done very well here but nothing extra special here.

Now where were? Ah yes: 19th Feb when we did Horror of Fang Rock part 1. Then script editor Robert Holmes commissioned his old friend (and former Doctor Who script editor) Terrance Dicks to write a story based on one of the few horror tales they hadn't previously "paid homage to" over the last few years: Dracula. Dicks duly supplied the scripts for "The Witch Lords"/"The Vampire Mutation" only to then have the story spiked (staked?) when high ups at the BBC realised it would be airing at a similar time to the prestigious adaptation of the original story, Count Dracula. So Terrance Dicks was sent away to write another script in an extreme hurry and given the instruction to "set it in a light house". Dicks' original script went into a drawer where it stayed for three years until John Nathan-Turner & Christopher H. Bidmead found themselves with no other script ready to go at the start of this season. Uncle Terrance gets a call and quickly refreshes his script to take into account the change in companions and that we're in E-Space. One quick change of title later and State of Decay was ready to go as the second story filmed that season, straight after the Leisure Hive and before Meglos & Full Circle which preceded it.

543 Full Circle Part Four

EPISODE: Full Circle Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 543
STORY NUMBER: 112
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 15 November 1980
WRITER: Andrew Smith
DIRECTOR: Peter Grimwade
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 5.5 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The E-Space Trilogy (Full Circle / State of Decay / Warrior's Gate)

Marshmen attack the Starliner inhabitants. A chance remark by The Doctor makes Adric recall Draith's last words of "We've come full circle" and, coupled with Adric's accelerated healing, the Doctor comes to a startling conclusion. He retrieves K-9's head from a Marshman that was using it as a staff top and finds the infected Romana. Adric finds an image translator for the Doctor. Login proposes bringing the Starliner population into the Decider's chamber but the other Deciders hesitate, allowing the Marshmen to storm the chamber, scattering the files everywhere and injuring Nefred. The Doctor tells Adric he believes the Tardis is in E-Space. The Doctor synthesises an antidote for Romana as Nefred tells Gariff & Login to seek out the Doctor to teach them how to fly the ship and leave Alzarius and that they did not come from Terradon and then passes away in the arms of the other elders. The Marshmen storm the science lab but are contained using oxygen cylinders. Romana attacks them but is overpowered and given the serum which cures her. Varsh is slain by a marshman covering his brother Adric's escape. The Doctor finds the same cells in the spiders, Marshmen & the deceased Dexeter and theorises that all three are the same life form, subject to rapid evolution. The Marshmen are driven from the ship by flooding it with oxygen. The Doctor reveals to Login & Gariff that the Marshmen are their ancestors that entered the crash ship, evolved, learned to read and took the ship as their own. Adric hides in the Tardis, leaving the image translator for the Doctor. The Doctor teaches them how to launch & fly the ship before leaving. The Tardis dematerialises, and K-9 is repaired. The image translator is installed proving that the Tardis is in Exo-Space having passed through a Charged Vacuum Emboitment (CVE) into this other universe. Their only option to get home is to find another CVE.

The climax to the story on the planet we now know is called Alzarius isn't bad and is packed with big clever ideas like the humans are a evolved form of the Marshmen which are in turn evolved from the spiders. There's been hints at this in the previous episodes but here the full explanation comes out and in a bit of a rush. The problem is it's hard to identify with the Alzarians: the outlers are annoying wingers, the deciders are indecisive and if Adric & Login are the best characters in this bunch then you know you're in trouble!

Hands up who knows what an Emboitment is? Didn't think so. I'm guessing that since Bidmead is involved it's some piece of real science but can I find out what it means? Whatever an emboitment is, a CVE is meaningless gobbledegook, but we do know that passing through it has stranded the Tardis in another universe. Full Circle is the start of what's known as "The E-Space Trilogy" as the Tardis tries to escape from this extra dimensional realm. These three stories have another name, but I'll tell you that come the end of Warriors' Gate.

I've been sitting here trying to spot Cathy Munroe/Katy Jarret, the actress who played Zuckuss in Empire Strikes Back who says she's in this story as well as Horns of the Nimon. I've failed.

I fluctuate on Full Circle: sometimes I like it, other I don't. This viewing fell in the second category: the music was intrusive, everybody bar the Doctor was annoying and in our sequential viewing it marks the start of us being saddled with Adric and the end for Tom Baker. Thus far John Nathan-Turner's Eighties version of Doctor Who isn't working out for me.

Full Circle was repeated from 3rd to 6th August in 1981, the first of two stories from the season repeated that summer. It was novelised by Andrew Smith in 1982. The E-Space Trilogy, containing Full Circle, State of Decay & Warriors' Gate, was released on video in 1997 and on DVD on 26th January 2009.

542 Full Circle Part Three

EPISODE: Full Circle Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 542
STORY NUMBER: 112
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 08 November 1980
WRITER: Andrew Smith
DIRECTOR: Peter Grimwade
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 5.9 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The E-Space Trilogy (Full Circle / State of Decay / Warrior's Gate)

The Marshmen advance on the Starliner. The Doctor becomes interested in the maintenance work being carried out there. The Tardis materialises on the Starliner bearing the missing outlers. The Doctor takes Adric and the Tardis back to the cave where they collect a dazed Romana, the damaged K-9 and a dead spider. Dexeter wishes to experiment on captured Marshman. The Outlers are put to work on maintenance duty. The Tardis returns to the Starliner just as Dexeter is about to dissect it. In the Tardis an infected Romana detects it's pain and screams as the creature breaks it's bonds going on a rampage and killing Dexeter before it is accidentally electrocuted. The enraged Doctor reveals to Login that the starliner is ready to take off but Nefred denies they have procrastinated: they are merely missing the knowledge of how to fly the ship. The Doctor & Login examine the spiders and the Doctor recognises the sample from somewhere. Romana escapes from the Tardis descending to the depths of the Starliner where she opens the escape hatches admitting the Marshmen to the ship.

Hmmmm, as a story this is progressing quite nicely but there's something not quite right about what's going on..... and I think it's the lack of Doctor. There's not much of him in the last two episodes. What there is is good but we keep cutting to the Outlers who I couldn't give a stuff about and Romana who's getting increasingly annoying!

Playing Login is George Baker who has been in absolutely everything you'll have ever seen, but this is his first and only Doctor Who appearance. Decider Nefred is James Bree who was the Security Chief in The War Games and will b the Keeper of the Matrix in Trial of a Time Lord 13 & 14: The Ultimate Foe. This is the last appearance in Doctor Who by Alan Rowe, who plays Garif: he was previously in The Moonbase as Dr. Evans and Space Control voice, The Time Warrior as Edward of Wessex and Horror of Fang Rock as James Skinsale. Adrian Gibbs, playing Rysik (who I assume is one of the humanoids living in the Starliner) will be the Watcher in Logopolis while one of the Marshmen, Barney Lawrence, is making his first appearance (and his only credited one) going on to play a guard in State of Decay (uncredited & filmed before this), a Foster in The Keeper of Traken (uncredited), an Android in Earthshock (uncredited) and a seabase guard in Warriors of the Deep (uncredited). Finally Richard Willis, Adric's older brother Varsh, has a link to another Doctor Who cast member: he was the third husband of Kate O'Mara (The Rani).

541 Full Circle Part Two

EPISODE: Full Circle Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 541
STORY NUMBER: 112
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 01 November 1980
WRITER: Andrew Smith
DIRECTOR: Peter Grimwade
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 3.7 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The E-Space Trilogy (Full Circle / State of Decay / Warrior's Gate)

Romana gives Adric a homing device for the Tardis as he leaves to warn the other outlers. In the short time in the Tardis his injuries have healed. The Outlers decide to use the homing device to find the Tardis to shelter from the mists where they take Romana prisoner. The Doctor has K-9 follow the Marshmen. Decider Nefred, now in charge, has read the secret system files and is burdened but what he has read. Login accepts the offer to join the Deciders. From within the Tardis sudden lurches violently and when the Doctor returns he finds it gone. Exposed in the mists the Doctor uses the Sonic Screwdriver to break into the Starliner. He is followed in by a juvenile Marshman. Nefred speaks to the the people of how the Starliner brought them from Terradon and how they must labour to get it functional again. The Tardis comes to rest, Romana discovering the Marshmen have carried the Tardis to the cave the Outlers use. The Doctor and the Marshman are captured on the ship and taken before the Deciders. K-9 tracks the Tardis to the cave but the Marshmen smash his head off. Romana deduces that the Marshmen intend to use the Tardis as a battering ram to breach the Starliner. Romana goes outside to find why the Marshmen have left but he Outlers, scared by the spiders hatching from marsh fruit, shut the Tardis doors on her and accidentally dematerialise, leaving Romana in the cave where she is bitten by one of the spiders and falls unconscious.

Not bad there, with some background to the humans on the planet revealed: they're the descendants of the crashed starliner trying to escape from the planet. We've seen the Tardis physically removed before (Space Pirates & Frontier in Space spring to mind) as the Marshmen do in this episode but is this the first time the Tardis has dematerialised without the Doctor or another Time Lord aboard? The Marshmen coming out the swamp would seem to owe something to the Sea Devils coming out of water many years before. We've got a case of a familiar household object turning up in the story as something else: The walls of the Deciders room are obviously milkcrates!

All locations for this story are found in Black Park in Buckinghamshire. The director is first timer Peter Grimwade. He'd risen through the ranks at the BBC, serving as a production assistant on Spearhead from Space, The Dæmons, Robot, Pyramids of Mars, The Robots of Death (where he gave his name to the medical name for Robophobia, Grimwade's syndrome) and Horror of Fang Rock. He's almost certainly the best new director found at this stage of the season and ends up directing Tom Baker's swansong.

At 3.7 million viewers this episode has the second smallest audience of any Doctor Who episode so far and the smallest since the 3.5 million recorded for The War Games part 8!

540 Full Circle Part One

EPISODE: Full Circle Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 540
STORY NUMBER: 112
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 25 October 1980
WRITER: Andrew Smith
DIRECTOR: Peter Grimwade
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 5.9 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The E-Space Trilogy (Full Circle / State of Decay / Warrior's Gate)

While travelling to Gallifrey the Tardis passes through something. The scanner shows them on Gallifrey but stepping outside they find themselves on a lush forest world. At a nearby riverside a group of teenagers are trying to steal fruit but witness the arrival of the Decider Draith & Dexeter who examine the fruit finding traces of an insect egg. The teenagers, a group known as the Outlers, retreat to their cave where their leader Vash is joined by Adric, his younger brother who wants to join them. They challenge him to steal the riverfruit. As he does the lakes start to bubble and a mist forms: the Mistfall that the Deciders fear. The Deciders summon their people back to the starliner giving them two hours to comply. Draith witnesses Adric stealing the fruit and pursues him. They tussle and Draith falls to the ground. Citizen Logan searches for his daughter, a member of the Outlers. Draith is sucked into the water instructing Adric to tell Dexeter they have come full circle. A fleeing Adric find the Tardis and is let on board by the Doctor & Romana. As they treat his injuries the Starliner is sealed with Logan's daughter and Decider Draith still missing. The Doctor & K-9 investigate the mist, and while at the waters edge witness creatures rising from it......

A bit of a game of two halves, with both halves being good. Firstly something has happened to the Tardis: it believes it's on Gallifrey when it obviously isn't. Secondly where they are has some odd stuff going on with mist and monsters suddenly appearing. Lots of questions.

This story was written by Andrew Smith, a teenage fan of the show, and is his only produced script for the series. It's also the debut of Matthew Waterhouse as Adric. Waterhouse was also a fan of the show, having a letter published in an early issue of Doctor Who Weekly (#3 if I recall correctly but seeing as the issue is in a box, in the loft and under my Big Millennium Falcon I ain't getting to it any time soon!).

Around the time this episode aired word leaked out to the press that Tom Baker would be leaving Doctor Who.

539 Meglos Part Four

EPISODE: Meglos Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 539
STORY NUMBER: 111
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 18 October 1980
WRITER: John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch
DIRECTOR: Terence Dudley
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 4.7 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Meglos

Romana & the Savants interrupts the Doctor's sacrifice and saves him. Arriving of Zolfa Thura, Meglos positions the dodecahedron at the centre of the screens and causes it to grow to giant size filling them. Lexa saves Romana's life as she's shot at by a dying Gaztak. The Doctor takes Romana, K-9 and the savants Caris & Deedrix to Zolfa Thura, where Meglos is about to use the Dodecahedron's power to destroy Tigella. The Doctor impersonates Meglos and reprograms the instruments, moving the target away from Tigella. The Gaztaks capture both Meglos and the Doctor taking them to their ship and General Grugger starts the countdown to activate the screens. K-9 and Romana free the Doctor & Meglos, but Meglos' human host rebels, forcing Meglos to abandon it and flee. The Doctor flees with K-9, Romana, the Savants & Meglos' freed human host to the Tardis, leaving just as the structure on Zolfa Thura is destroyed. The Tigellans start to venture onto the hostile surface on Tigella, and the Doctor prepares to take the human host home as he and Romana receive a summons to Gallifrey......

Goods Lord, am I watching CBeebies here? Awful with some very silly mistaken identity hi-jinks. Uggh. Someone want to tell me why the Doctor took the savants to Caris & Deedrix to Zolfa Thura? He doesn't need them and they play no part in the plot once they're there! If you think there's something odd about the closing music to this episode then you're right: it's been played an octave lower.

And as a series Meglos isn't at all good: it's just dreary, mediocre and bland. Having checked a forum I frequent for some information I discovered that when this came out on DVD and I sat down to watch it with Liz, halfway through episode 1 we were both in the kitchen making tea and fetching food while it played to itself in the living room! The religion vs science stuff, while possibly more novel at the time, is very heavy handed and dated now. The authors wanted to do it as a comedy, the director did it straight and it's a bit of a disaster.

The ending leads us nicely into the rest of the season with the Doctor saying that the Tardis needs an overhaul (see Logopolis) and the Doctor & Romana being recalled to Gallifrey which we'll pick up tomorrow.

Meglos was novelised by Terrance Dicks and was the last Fourth Doctor book published, leaving Pirate Planet, City of Death & the untransmitted Shada missing from the Target book range. It was released on video in March 2003 and on DVD on 10th January 2010. And, if all is well, I never have to watch it again now!

538 Meglos Part Three

EPISODE: Meglos Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 538
STORY NUMBER: 111
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 11 October 1980
WRITER: John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch
DIRECTOR: Terence Dudley
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 4.7 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Meglos

Romana is taken to the Gaztak ship as the Tigellan underground city's services begins to fail. The Doctor insists to Lexa & Zastor that he didn't take the Dodecahedron and he has only just arrived: he realises he has a doppelgänger. Romana is ordered by the Gaztaks to lead them to her craft, but leads them round in circles in the Jungle. The Meglos Doctor captures one of the Savants, Caris, and has her escort him out of the city. Lexa seizes control, believing that the Dodecahedron has been taken away by their Gods and prepares to sacrifice the Doctor to appease them to guarantee it's return. Romana makes it to the city as it is sealed, finding the depowered K-9 and bringing him with her. The Gaztaks storm the city allowing the Meglos Doctor to escape and they leave for Zolfa Thura. The Doctor is tied to a stone slab with torches burning the ropes the hold a second slab suspended above him....

That was a bit better than the last two, with some good stuff as Meglos' host struggles against it. However Romana leading the Gaztaks round the jungle stank of blatant time wasting. Since we've lost time in the last two episodes having the Doctor & Romana stuck in a time loop this is unforgivable.

Meglos is the only Doctor Who story to be Directed by Terence Dudley. An experienced director, and producer he had strong links to the Doctor Who world having produced Gerry Davis & Kit Pedler's Doomwatch and Terry Nation's Survivors. In 1981 he was offered the Producer's job on Blake's 7 but turned it down. He would then go on to write three stories for Doctor Who: Four to Doomsday, Black Orchid and The King's Demons as well as the one off K-9 & Company.

Meglos is also the only shown Doctor Who story by authors John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch. They contributed a second story, Project Zeta-Sigma, which was planned to open Season Nineteen and introduce the Fifth Doctor. They continued to write for television producing scripts for (amongst other) Robin Of Sherwood: The Betrayal, Peak Practise and Heartbeat. McCulloch, has a number of acting credits to his name including a priest, Bishop Tom McCaskell, in Father Ted. According to IMDB he's the brother of actor Ian (Nilson in the story Warriors of the Deep and Greg Preston in Survivors).

537 Meglos Part Two

EPISODE: Meglos Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 537
STORY NUMBER: 111
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 04 October 1980
WRITER: John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch
DIRECTOR: Terence Dudley
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 4.2 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Meglos

While the Doctor is trapped in the Chronic Hysterisis, Meglos, impersonating the Doctor, is taken to Tigella by General Grugger & steals the Dodecahedron by shrinking it in size. The Doctor & Romana break out of the time loop by performing the actions in the loop early. They arrive on Tigella, but become separated with Romana attacked by the local plant life. The Doctor narrowly misses the departing Meglos and is arrested for stealing the Dodecahedron. Romana is captured by the Gaztaks and Lieutenant Brotadac orders her death.

Oh deary me, that was bad. The Doctor & Romana spend half the episode repeating the same actions and then it's wander about in the jungle time and oh look the Doctor's been mistaken for his doppelganger that's just stolen something. My head is in my hands.

There's one big comment to make on the cast: playing High Priestess Lexa is Jacqueline Hill, who was one of the first companions, Barbara Wright, from An Unearthly Child to The Chase. This is the first and only time a former companion returns in a different role. Bill Fraser plays General Grugger, reputedly only taking the role because he was allowed to kick K-9. He'll be back as Bill Pollock in K-9 & Company: A Girl's Best Friend where he doesn't get to kick the tin dog!

536 Meglos Part One

EPISODE: Meglos Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 536
STORY NUMBER: 111
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 27 September 1980
WRITER: John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch
DIRECTOR: Terence Dudley
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 5 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Meglos

While the Doctor & Romana repair K-9's water damage the population of Tigella, isolated underground by the vicious plant life on the surface, struggle with the dodecahedron that proceeds all their power. The scientific Savants are restricted in what they can do by the religious Deans who worship the Dodecahedron. The leader of the Savants, Zastor, summons the Doctor to help to the consternation of the Deon leader & high priestess Lexa. A group of Gaztaks led by General Grugger kidnap an Earthling taking him to the massive screens on Zolfa Thura where the plant being Meglos outlines it's plan to steal the Dodecahedron. He traps the Tardis in a chronic histeresis(time loop) and assumes the form of the Doctor.

Is this the first story where the Doctor hasn't arrived by the end of the first episode? Quite possibly. A lot of mucking about on Tigella setting the situation up, the bandits plotting with the plant to steal the Dodecahedron and all the time the Doctors & Romana are stuck in the Tardis, and for the last third of the episode they're repeating the same actions.

See the walls of Meglos' command centre? Yup, it's the triangular/hexagonal pattern first seen in The Mutants again. Last seen in Horns of the Nimon, they'll be around a lot for the next few years.

Then we get to the end of the episode and oh look, it's the return of our old favourite, the Doctor's double. See also: The Chase, The Massacre, The Enemy of the World & Android Invasion with companion duplicates also in Inferno, Terror of the Zygons, Android Invasion and Androids of Tara.

535 The Leisure Hive Part Four

EPISODE: The Leisure Hive Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 535
STORY NUMBER: 110
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 20 September 1980
WRITER: David Fisher
DIRECTOR: Lovett Bickford
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 4.5 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The Leisure Hive

The Foamasi with the Doctor unmasks Brock's assistant Klout as a Foamasi too then removes Brock's translation device and uses it to explain that "Brock & Klout" are agents of a Foamasi criminal organisation the West Lodge who have been sabotaging the Hive. The ailing Mena argues with Pangol and falls to the floor. The Doctor works out a way of overcoming the problems with the Generator with the Randomiser from the Tardis. Pangol seizes the Helmet of Theron, the legendary Argolin leader, and goes to the Generator. As he gives a speech The Doctor sneaks into the Tardis, and then the Generator. Hardin & Romana discover Mena is still alive and the Doctor has gone to the Generator. The Foamasi shuttle attempts to take off without permission and Pangol has it destroyed. Pangol dons the helmet and enters the shuttle, creating an army of duplicates of himself. Some of the duplicates take Romana away. Hardin finds Mena as Pangol orders her body disposed of. He takes her dying body to the Generator room. The duplicates reveal themselves to Romana to be duplicates of the deaged Doctor as they start deteriorate and vanish, leaving Romana with the original. Pangol orders the experiment replicated but Hardin interrupts him placing Mena in Generator. Pangol tries to have her removed but becomes locked in the Generator with her as it runs in overdrive deaging them. The Foamasi appears and reveals that it wasn't on the shuttle when it takes off and commences discussions with the youthful Mena.

This episode is a perfect summary of the entire production: it looks superb, it sounds fabulous and it's confusing rubbish. The Foamasi are completely underdeveloped, instead of being the gangster like aliens they were meant. The ending is rushed, yes you can see (just about) what's going on but there's a few real leaps needed. In the early 80s you'd have probably seen something once (this just about predates common VCR usage) and if you watch something and think "what on earth was going on there?" you're less likely to come back the next week. I think I might have been tempted to structure the story a little differently: Have the Doctor aged by accident at the end of the first episode, then at the end of the second reveal the Foamasi. To conclude the third have Pangol's proclamation that he's the child of the generator. It'd add more pace earlier on, which is too slow, and slow down the end which is rushed.

So at the end of this it's goodbye to David Fisher, who never wrote for Doctor Who again but did do some more writing with his old friend former script editor Anthony Read. This is also the only appearance for director Lovett Bickford rumoured to have hideously overspent on this serial. IMDB reckons he hasn't worked as a director since 1982.

The making of this story was covered in the book A Day in the Life of a TV Producer, which may not be a 100% accurate record of a day, showing location & studio filming on the same day plus the producer approving merchandise which had been out for several years previously!

The Leisure Hive was novelised by it's author in 1982. I can remember being given it as a present for either Christmas or Birthday and being decidedly unimpressed. I may give it another go to see if it's as bad as I remember. It was released on video in January 1997 and on DVD on 5th July 2004. The music has been released on CD, but there's an isolated score on the DVD that should now render this redundant. And the DVD is cheaper :-)

534 The Leisure Hive Part Three

EPISODE: The Leisure Hive Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 534
STORY NUMBER: 110
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 13 September 1980
WRITER: David Fisher
DIRECTOR: Lovett Bickford
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 5 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The Leisure Hive

The aged Doctor is taken to a cabin by Romana, where Pangol has their movements restricted, arguing that the Doctor is still on trial for murder. Mena hints that technology once held hope for the Argolin before. Pangol reveals to Mena that the experiments were faked. The Doctor ponders why Pangol is the only young Argolin. He and Romana deduce the Tachyon generator has a second function. Hardin asks the Doctor & Romana for help as the Doctor wonders if the Recreation Generator isn't a Re-Creation Generator. Pangol rejects the Foamasi offer document and reveals to Brock that he is the child of the generator. The Doctor distracts the Argolin so Romana can examine the Generator. Pangol detects their presence and sounds an alert. Romana is rescued from the Generator by a Foamasi who shows the Doctor a device they found within the Generator. Seeing someone on the monitor the Foamasi hurries off followed by the Doctor & Romana . Reaching the boardroom it attacks Brock, ripping his face off to reveal a Foamasi underneath....

I'm struggling with this story anyway but there's a obvious problem in this episode: Tom Baker's performance is not old enough. It's almost the same as usual, just a little slower in places and a little more subdued and doesn't match what we see on the screen in terms of the aged Doctor makeup.

OK then: Masque of Mandragora establishes the Tardis translates speech for the Doctor and his companions (and us?) so why can't Doctor understand the Foamasi?

What I did love about this episode was the fabulous music within. It's been issued on CD, but sadly is long out of print, but thank the Lord the DVD has an isolated music option!. So I'm sitting here listening to the music for the episodes as I write this.

Douglas Adams, for all his marvellous qualities, may not have been the best script editor the show has ever had. (For my money that's Terrance Dicks.) I think he did a decent job fleshing out whatever Terry Nation gave him for Destiny of the Daleks (your mileage may vary with that statement) but even there he missed a vital error in the plot that the Daleks aren't robots. Gradually as the season went his attention was drawn elsewhere and as a result when new producer John Nathan-Turner and script editor Christopher H. Bidmead took over the script cupboard was bare of usable scripts. The first two stories into production this year were The Leisure Hive, from an idea David Fisher had had about aliens running a holiday camp, and State of Decay by Terrance Dicks, which had effectively been sitting on the shelf for three years since when it had been cancelled while it was known as the Witch Lords. So while transmission order for the first half of the season is

109 The Leisure Hive
110 Meglos
111 Full Circle
112 State of Decay

production order is

5N The Leisure Hive
5P State of Decay
5Q Meglos
5R Full Circle

Apart from these two stories all the writers for this first new season of Doctor Who are new. The evidence seems to suggest that this is a concious "new broom" choice by the production team as no director that has previously worked on the series gets used this year either. Terrance Dicks will return in a few years time as will another former script editor Robert Holmes. Only one pre Leisure Hive director ever returns to the series and that's Pennant Roberts.

Several of the cast you may be familiar with. It's an early television role for David Haig as Pangol (he was in Blake's 7: Rumours of Death earlier in 1980). He'll be most familiar to you as Inspector Grim in Thin Blue Line, or as Bernard, the groom at the second wedding in Four Weddings and a Funeral. We've already mention Nigel Lambert (Hardin) and his narration of Look Around You but that's not going to stop me plugging the DVD again . Regular commentator Tim Walker reminds me that he was also in Blake's 7, in the very first episode The Way Back as the computer operator. Ian Talbot, Klout, was Travis in the Silurians and Andrew Lane the Foamasi, was a Nimon in The Horns of Nimon while David Allister, Stimson, will be Bruchner in Terror of the Vervoids.

533 The Leisure Hive Part Two

EPISODE: The Leisure Hive Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 533
STORY NUMBER: 110
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 06 September 1980
WRITER: David Fisher
DIRECTOR: Lovett Bickford
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 5 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The Leisure Hive

The Doctor escapes from the Tachyon Generator, what Romana saw having been just a Tachyon projection. The Doctor is taken to meet the newly arrived Hardin & Chairwoman Mena: he is persuaded into assisting the scientist Hardin. Mena explains to the Doctor & Romana about the 20 minute war that devastated her world and how the hive was set up to give them shelter and promote understanding between species. Another fault occurs, leading Mena to explain that there have been a number of recent faults and they suspect sabotage. She tells them that the Argolins are sterile as she herself begins the process of dying. Hardin refuses to demonstrate his process for Brock and tries to keep the Doctor & Romana away from the equipment. When Romana tells Hardin the equipment could be used to save Mena's life he confesses that his experiments don't work and he had been forced to pretend otherwise by backer Stimson. Stimson seeks out Brock, but finds a skin suit of Brock's lawyer, Klout, hanging in the cupboard. Stimson is killed by an unseen creature. The Doctor interrogates the Tachyon Generator's computer before being summoned: the Argolins have found his scarf wrapped round the neck of Stimson's corpse. Hardin's modified equipment struggles even with Romana's modifications. It temporarily runs back an hour glass but once unobserved it explodes. The Doctor is tried for Stimson death. Pangol is suspicious of Hardin's work and the Doctor volunteers to test the modifications to the Tachyon Generator having a couple of decades shaved off his age. Romana finds that the test failed but is too late to stop the test the Doctor is involved in: when the Tachyon Generator is opened the Doctor is incredibly aged.

Hmm, that ticked along nicely while I watched it but now a few hours later there's little that stands out. Yes the business with the scarf (Brock: His scarf killed Stimson. The Doctor: Arrest the scarf then.) is quite funny, and sticks out in the new, humour depleted version of Doctor Who, and the aged Fourth Doctor is a decent cliffhanger and a decent bit of make up.

Joining new producer John Nathan-Turner is script editor Christopher H. Bidmead (who you can follow on Twitter). Nathan-Turner and Bidmead both wanted a much more serious version of Doctor Who, feeling that in recent times it had all got a bit too silly. While the appearance of the Major Bloodnok's Stomach sound effect in Horns of the Nimon is a step too far, I don't think the humour in general was too much. I certainly don't think that the Nathan-Turner/Bidmead version of Doctor Who was quite what the public were looking for at the time. In fact, in the wake of the summer's release of The Empire Strikes Back what I think they wanted was spectacular space battle. And, as we saw yesterday, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century was serving that up on the other side and had nicked a further 0.9 million of Doctor Who's viewers between last week and this.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking against Bidmead and Nathan-Turner this early just for the sake of it. In fact three of my favourite Doctor Who stories make up the tale end of this season. I'm just not sure they were making the right choices to start with, so not giving what the public was expecting, IE The Tom Baker show, and indeed what they really wanted, dramatic space battles with lasers. If anything I think ESB was more of a game changer for Doctor Who than Star Wars was. Following Star Wars, Doctor Who had 3 very successful years. Following ESB it got destroyed in the ratings, couldn't do sci fi humour because Douglas Adams was doing it with Hitch-hikers, couldn't do the effects to Star Wars standards because it didn't have the money did and, partly as a result of loosing it's family audience to Buck Rogers & partly through wanting to be more serious, ended up appealing to a more niche fan market. Around this time Ian Levine's hanging round the production office and becomes the series unofficial continuity adviser, further moving the show into the fans territory and out of the area of family drama appealing to the general public. This will cause problems further down the line the root of which are some of the decisions being made here. But, given where the new production team find themselves, they aren't necessarily the wrong decisions at the time....

532 The Leisure Hive Part One

EPISODE: The Leisure Hive Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 532
STORY NUMBER: 110
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 30 August 1980
WRITER: David Fisher
DIRECTOR: Lovett Bickford
SCRIPT EDITOR: Christopher H. Bidmead
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 5.9 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The Leisure Hive

The Doctor is trying to catch the opening of the Brighton Pavilion, but they've arrived on Brighton beach in the middle of winter. K-9 is damaged trying to fetch a ball from the Sea and Romana insists they go elsewhere, to visit the Leisure Hive on Argolis, built by the Argolin survivors of a nuclear war between Argolis & the Foamasi. The Leisure Hive is struggling financially and it's chairman Morix is dying. Their Earth agent Brock has had an offer to buy the entire radioactive planet from the Foamasi. Outside the Leisure Hive several creatures attempt to tunnel their way in. The Doctor & Romana arrive to see a demonstration of Argolis' Tachyon science from the youngest Argolin Pangol. His Mother Mena arrive on Argolis to take over the chairmanship from the deceased Morix. An accident occurs during Pangol's demonstration of the recreation generator, killing a visitor. The Doctor investigates and is taken for the Earth scientist Hardin, who has been conducting experiments for Mena. The Doctor & Romana accidentally see the recording of the experiments and are convinced they're faked. They attempt to leave, and return to the Tardis, but he Doctor's curiosity is piqued by the Recreation Generator and he is trapped inside. A figure manipulates the controls and Romana sees him being ripped apart on the Generator's viewscreen.

Where do you start with this? Well I think the first thing it's necessary to do is point out that the show has a new producer, John Nathan-Turner. He'd started working on the series during Patrick Troughton's last year as a floor assistant eventually becoming production manager at the end of Tom Baker's third season. In that role he had masterminded the trip to Paris to film City of Death abroad and had become Graham Williams preferred choice to succeed him. Williams' superior, Graeme MacDonald. had preferred the experienced George Gallacio, the previous production manager, so as a compromise Barry Letts returned to Executive Produce the series over Jon Nathan-Turner, in his first job as producer. Gallacio, meanwhile, went on to produce the highly successful Miss Marple series which is great fun for spotting Doctor Who cast members in. Nathan-Turner arrived with a list of things he wanted to change.

The most obvious thing he changed is the title sequence: we big goodbye to the Tunnel sequence that's been with us for six years (and in a slightly different form for a year before that). Instead we get an animated sequence involving moving through a starfield, with the stars forming first the Doctor's face then the new logo. Thematically it's similar to the previous sequence with the idea of travelling being common to both sequences and the going towards concept of the opening titles and the receding from with the closing titles. This titles sequence, with a couple of modifications, will be with us for the next six years.

Alongside the new titles a new version of the theme music was recorded, whose end version now permanently includes the middle eight which for the last few years has only been heard on the six part stories. I'd never heard it before and was shocked by this new piece of music suddenly appearing in the middle of the Doctor Who music. I love this version of the theme and think it's aged wonderfully well. The theme was re-arranged by Peter Howell of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and the Radiophonic workshop now become responsible for the incidental music for the show with John Nathan-Turner dispensing with the services of the series regular composer Dudley Simpson, who he felt was producing scores that all sounded the same. Oddly I hear the Leisure Hive score now and immediately think of the music for The TV version of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by the Radiophonic Workshop's Paddy Kingsland, who'll score four of the eight stories this season/

Then we have the opening of the episode.... a long tracking cinematic shot over Brighton beach: I timed it and it lasts from 00:37-02:16! That's an awful lot of an 25 minute episode used up in one shot. There's one other peculiar shot in the episode, and that's used twice: The shuttle coming into land. The only way you know what's going on is the voice over telling you the shuttle is landing: the visuals show an object moving towards you but there's no way you can tell what it is! But apart from these oddities the episode isn't bad. Yes it looks & sounds different, and perhaps it's a little slow & talky but it wouldn't be the first episode like that!

Sadly there's one moment in the episode that totally takes you out of it now, but it's something that wouldn't have been an issue at the time. The time experiment demonstrating is narrated by Nigel Lambert, in his role as the scientist Hardin, and it sounds *exactly* like the narration he uses for the first series of Look Around You. If you've not seen this, or don't own a copy, then buy one now as it's fabulous.

The only location filming for this story takes place in this episode with Brighton Beach, close to the new producer's home, serving as itself. Also seen only in this episode is Laurence Payne, as chairman Morix, who was Johnny Ringo in The Gunfighters, and will be Dastari in The Two Doctors.

The rating for this episode is worth looking at: 5.9 million viewers, lower than the lowest rating for the previous season. By contrast Horns of Nimon episode 4 had 10.4 million viewers. The same night ITV was showing (thank you Encyclopaedia of TV Science Fiction) the first episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Planet of the Slave Girls shown in the UK as a single 105 minute episode. Yes I know the Awakening is the first actual episode of Buck Rogers: ITV showed this on first. Buck Rogers was networked by ITV: all the ITV stations in the UK were showing it nationwide at the same time and this has a crippling effect on Doctor Who's viewing figures for the first five stories of the season. I can remember watching the original airing of Buck Rogers: by contrast I had no idea a new season of Doctor Who had started and the first I saw of it was a small amount of one of the Full Circle episodes, and then picked up watching regularly from Warrior's Gate.

This is also the start of a massive run of episodes on DVD for us: We will watch at least the next One Hundred & Fifty Two episodes on DVD but, depending on when Greatest Show in The Galaxy is released, it may well be DVD for all the remaining One Hundred & Seventy One episodes of Doctor Who. And the one of K-9 & Company. Speaking of K-9, this is the episode where John Leeson returns as the dog's voice, after a year off. OK, this is the only episode of the story he's in.....