Doctor Who: Planet of Fire

Part One

“For our people to survive, we must have faith.”

Another script by Peter Grimwade, a writer with a decidedly mixed reputation. But it’s a positive start; filming in Lanzarote allows the programme to create an alien planet which looks very different. We’re instantly introduced to the cultural and religious fault lines of Saudi Ara- er, Sarn, with a conflict between Timanov (Jason King!) and his belief in the god Logar, and a new generation of sceptics. Sadly, this aspect of the plot is rather perfunctory as there is no real hint of any cultural hinterland to this religion beyond what is requited by the plot, but this is more or less acceptable given that this turns out not to be the main aspect of the plot.

The Doctor’s a bit upset over the circumstances of Tegan’s departure, but it’s notable that when Turlough asks if he missed Tegan he only replies “Well, we were together a long time.” I still maintain that the Doctor never particularly liked Tegan but just put up with her out of politeness!

Amazingly, Kamelion pops up again. I’d quite forgotten about him. And Turlough sabotages the TARDIS to prevent the Doctor hearing about a distress signal from his home planet of Trion. Well, well, well! I’d quite forgotten about Turlough’s sneaky tendencies, too, but even at this late stage it’s all quite in character- another reminder that in an exception from the norm the scripts generally develop the character superbly. Although I’m not sure how this fits in with his apparent wish to return home back during The King’s Demons.

We’re introduced to Peri and her guardian Howard, both of whom have absolutely 100% convincing American accents. They have a bit of an argument, the upshot of which is Peri taking off most of her clothes so she can go swimming. Mmm. Following which Turlough decides to keep his shirt on while swimming for some reason.

More plot stuff happens, as Turlough and Malkon both turn out to have a “chosen one” symbol on their arms, the TARDIS ends up on Sarn, and Kamelion turns into the Master…

Part Two

“I’m Perpugilliam Brown and I can shout just as loud as you can!”

Kamelion’s wearing the Master’s body but the real Master is here too, watching from behind a screen just as he was during The Keeper of Traken. Kamelion can’t maintain his form after mental pressure of Peri, but instead of turning back into his normal form he becomes a silver version of Howard, which is much cheaper.

We see the Master’s TARDIS again, and there still see to be a few light bulbs that need replacing. Lots of stuff happens which is entertaining enough- the planet’s going to blow up, the equipment kept underground is probably from Turlough’s father’s ship- but it all feels like a bunch of set pieces in search of a plot.

Part Three

“Gullible idiots!”

Full marks for finally getting Turlough to ditch that awful uniform, but the Doctor’s question mark braces are quite the fashion faux pas.

It turns out that Turlough and Malkon are probably brothers. This is an excellent departure story for Turlough, penned by his creator. I particularly like the scene with the Doctor warning him that if he holds back anything important then their friendship is at an end- in this situation more than any other Turlough has to choose between his natural deviousness and his decent side. 

The plot’s all over the place again this episode- the Doctor wanting to materialise around the Master’s TARDIS a la Logopolis, a healing flame a la The Brain of Morbius- but froth though it is it’s enjoyable all the same.

That’s quite a cliffhanger- the Master’s all little!

Part Four

“Leave us in peace. We wish to die with our faith.”

So, Sarn's a prison planet to which Turlough’s family were dispatched for being on the wrong side. It’s a little cursory, perhaps, but at least Turlough gets an origin. Apparently Trion has agents on every civilised world, including “an eccentric solicitor in Chancery Lane”. We finally learn that Turlough’s first name is Vizlor and that for him the English public school is “the worst place in the universe”.

Kamelion asks the Doctor to kill him, is a faintly embarrassing scene that reaches for pathos but doesn’t quite manage it as the prop was sadly never very mobile or suggestive of a personality. Timanov’s dignified exit is rather more effective. And as for the Master’s demise- well, that looked rather permanent. I feel absolutely sure that in the unlikely event we ever see the Master again we can expect a full and detailed explanation of his survival.

Turlough, it seems, is no longer a political prisoner. His leaving scene is most satisfying in terms of his character arc; in returning to Trion to face his responsibilities he’s finally grown up.

Peri, meanwhile, has been welcomed aboard…

That was entertaining enough, if a little slight. The plot was a little disjointed, but it was all good fun and Turlough got a good exit. A solid 3/5.

Doctor Who: Logopolis

Part One

“I sometimes think I should run a tighter ship.”

We begin with what we assume to be the TARDIS, but it’s a real police box, in content. It’s surprisingly late for the show to be pulling this trick for the first time. But distracting from this somewhat is a “Take your litter home” sign placed right above a bin! We also get our first instance of the “not a real phone” situation. That worked quite well- perhaps it might be worth another go in, say, 24 years’ time?

Meanwhile the Doctor and Adric are wandering morosely around some part of the TARDIS we’ve never seen before, bedecked with gloomy tendrils of ivy which seem rather in keeping with the Doctor’s mood. The Doctor muses on the inevitability of entropy increasing on account of the Second Law of Thermodynamics… perhaps one of the more reactionary laws of physics? It is, of course, essentially what this entire season has been about, but it’s also a rather apposite metaphor for the Doctor’s fate. And, indeed, his mood.

We meet Tegan. And her Aunt Vanessa, who has a car with a choke, cos it’s 1981. Blimey, that reminds me of my early childhood, as Doctor Who is going to do rather often from now on. Anyway, Tegan wants to be an air hostess, and I’m sure she’ll get to London airport on time and definitely without anything bad happening. I like her- unlike Adric and, to get slightly ahead of ourselves, Nyssa, she has an actual personality.

The Doctor suddenly wants to repair the TARDIS’s “chameleon circuit” for some reason (it’s the first time it’s ever called that, right?), which apparently involves materialising around an actual police box and measuring it exactly so something called “block transfer computations” can be done on it. Fair enough, it seems to fit in with the story’s themes, but why is the Doctor suddenly doing this, exactly?

More continuity porn as we get another peek at Romana’s now deserted room and the Doctor refers to the fact the TARDIS has been stuck as a police box ever since it was in “a totter’s yard”. Apparently he should have waited for the “chameleon conversion” before leaving Gallifrey but “there were pressing reasons at the time”. Still, it seems he at least waited long enough for the TARDIS BBC micro to be installed.

One of the season’s more minor themes is referenced as the Doctor says that “The TARDIS and I are getting rather deter at these short hops.” But mainly it’s all doom and foreboding. Especially after the Doctor catches sight of the Watcher. Brrr.

Still, things soon perk up a bit as the TARDIS materialises around a police box which turns out to be another TARDIS. A bit of an homage to that rather fun and silly story The Time Monster then ensues as the Doctor and Adric walk from TARDIS to TARDIS, nicely balancing out the gloom and doom a bit.

There’s some more intentional but rather less successful comic relief thereafter as Tegan wanders into the TARDIS and asks to speak to the “pilot”. Er, why? Still, the cliffhanger’s a biggie: the Master’s at large. Which we, er, knew at the end of the last story anyway.

Oh, and it’s interesting that the Doctor only killed people by shrinking them in one story, Terror of the Autons, when he was Roger Delgado, but after The Deadly Assassin and now this it’s become a calling card.

Part Two

“I’ve just dipped into the future. We must be prepared for the worst.”

The Doctor has to jettison Romana’s room. How very symbolic. Now the Doctor’s even mardier than he was before, if that’s possible. Especially after her receives a message from Traken telling him that the Master’s escaped. How far we’ve come from the series’ origins- the Doctor is now receiving messages from the planet he just left. Apparently the Master knows exactly what the Doctor’s going to do because, bizarrely, “he’s a Time Lord- in many ways we have the same mind”. Er, is this an allusion to Gallifreyan telepathy or, as I suspect, is it just a lazy narrative shortcut?

Now the Doctor wants to “flush out” the Master by flooding the TARDIS. He’s now clearly gone beyond morose to suicidal. Poor Adric! Fortunately for the special effects budget, it doesn’t work. And the Doctor gets to have a proper chat with this Watcher fellow- a chat we’re not privy to, naturally. It doesn’t seem to cheer him up much.

We finally get to the much-heralded planet Logopolis, which in some bizarre fashion exactly resembles the video to David Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes. Tegan’s great during all this, demanding answers from the Doctor and actually intimidating him a bit. This elicits the only comic acting we see from Tom throughout this entire story, and for that I’ll be eternally grateful.

The Doctor, in another narrative shortcut, is expected on Logopolis, and indeed well known and trusted. They’re mathematicians who refuse to use computers (ah, traditional educational values!) and whose sums are capable of producing actual solid objects. More unexpected is the arrival of Nyssa, brought along by “a fiend of the Doctor.”

Part Three

“Our numbers were holding the universe together.”

The Watcher’s arrived on Logopolis. Ooh! Meanwhile, the Doctor’s in a spot of bother. Still, through a combination of Logopolitan ingenuity and the TARDIS mysteriously being much lighter than it was in Full Circle the problem is solved, but not before taking up half the episode so the plot can be rationed out more slowly. 

Still, this story may be overly serious by a long way and structured very oddly, but there’s no denying it’s crammed with great concepts. The conversation between the Monitor and Adric is great; the Logopolitans can’t use computers because their calculations affect the physical world and would therefore affect the computer. Only the living mind, for some reason, is immune. I’m not sure how all this works, but it’s great, a sort of Schrödinger’s cat as applied to mathematical calculation- a mind-blowing concept.

I’m still puzzled as to why the chameleon circuit needs fixing now, as you’d imagine the threat of the Master would be much more urgent. The bit with Tegan accusing the monitor of running a sweatshop is problematic too- it’s a nice character moment for her, but she doesn’t get anything like a satisfactory answer.

There’s something most effective and disturbing about the Master posing as Nyssa’s father- the fact he’s wearing Tremas’s body adds an extra level of cruelty and horror. But poor Nyssa’s day is going to get even worse…

The master has destroyed Logopolis, but knows not what he did, the plonker. Without Logopolis using its maths to open CVE’s into other universes to stave off the eventual heat death of the universe (there’s the ultimate in another theme of the season- procrastination!), our heroes are beset by the terrifying threat of entropy! Things are so bad that the Doctor and the Master are forced to work together. But not before the Doctor has a right whinge at his companions. He really is in a bit of a mood.

Part Four

“It’s the end. But the moment has been prepared for…”

A whirl of activity, as everyone heads to the real Pharos Project on Earth to do some sums and save the universe. Oh, the drama. The Doctor addresses the Master as “Master” here, which feels very wrong. I can’t remember him ever doing that before.

Entropy completely destroys Traken, which is truly horrible for Nyssa. It feels quite wrong to me how much the script underplays the horror of this- surely Nyssa should be traumatised?

We get a lot of tiresome running from guards, and then it’s time for the Master’s cringeworthy “Peoples of the universe…” broadcast, followed by the kind of villainous cackling that is the aural equivalent of moustache-twirling.. This is pure unintentional silliness, and in no way a threat worthy of this great era’s final moments. Fortunately, the build-up to the regeneration, the old clips, the revelation of the Watcher, and the effect of the regeneration itself, are all wonderful.

Well, that had loads of great concepts in it. But it seemed very oddly structured, in a way which was very aesthetically displeasing for me. Bidmead’s good on themes and concepts, but his grasp of character is no more than functional, and he seems to have little conception of the narrative beats needed to make a story exciting. And where was the action here? The ideas were good, but unfortunately a lot of the fundamental elements of Doctor Who scriptwriting are absent. So Tom’s era, perhaps the greatest of them all, finishes on an anti-climax. It just scrapes a 3/5 for the ideas and the development of the themes.

As for the season as a whole… an average of 3.429/5, which places it third from bottom. That’s a surprise, as the E-Space trilogy earned three 5/5s in a row from me, and there were a lot of good things about this season. But ultimately I think there was just too much that was po-faced, and not enough excitement or humour.

Doctor Who: Full Circle

Part One

“Well, of course I’m better than you. I’m an elite.”

Romana’s been summoned back to Gallifrey, which gives us an excuse for some references to Leela and Andred and the like. But Romana’s upset by this, and goes to her previously unseen room to be alone, the Doctor seemingly oblivious to how depressing the prospect must be. The Doctor’s attitude is that you can’t fight Time Lords and Romana will have to do as she’s told, and however much this may echo the end of The War Games it just feels wrong and out of character. Still, it’s in keeping with the Doctor’s subdued and sombre mood.

Gallifrey is not to be, though, as something odd happens to the TARDIS and, although they’re in the right coordinates and the scanner is showing images of Gallifrey, as soon as the Doctor and Romana leave the TARDIS they’re somewhere else, an alien planet much more blatantly like southern England than the usual quarry landscape. This is very good indeed, a uniquely mysterious situation as well as lots of character stuff. Oh, and the music is quite peculiar in the context of what’s gone before, but I like it. It sounds very much of it’s time now and unfortunately dated, but then things from twenty of thirty years ago always do. In another ten years’ time it’ll have receded too far into the past to be dated, much as the Sixties have, and instead become simply period.

The society and situation of this planet is sketched out with admirable economy in this episode, telling us everything we need to know while also holding back a lot of stuff to be revealed later on. We’re introduced to the Outlers, the Deciders, the concept of Mistfall, and the Starliner. Oh, and Adric, who from the start is quite badly portrayed by Matthew Waterhouse. Still, we get George Cole and James Bree (putting in a much less mannered performance than he did in The War Games) to make up for this.


Part Two

“How odd. I usually get on terribly well with children”

The Marshmen look quite good- yes, they’re obviously in rubber suits, but this is Doctor Who- but they look as though they’ve come from the Black Lagoon.

This episode keeps up the quality and increasingly makes it clear how well-plotted this is. Characterisation is good, too; I love the moment where Romana hands the knife back to an Outler- very Doctorish.

Revelations trickle out at an appropriate place; this is Alzarius, but the crew of the starliner supposedly come from Terradon. But there’s a great and terrible secret, known only to the First Decider.

K9 is once again beheaded (grr!) but Romana gets a fourth wall-busting line bemoaning his fate this season: “In fact, we always seem to be repairing him”.


Part Three

“These short trips don’t usually work.”

Nice cliffhanger- shame that this results in Romana being pretty much written out of the rest of the story, though.

We get some real bombshells this episode: the maintenance being carried out on the ship is completely unnecessarily as the ship has been ready to fly for centuries, but no one knows how to pilot it. It’s a nice reversal of a trope of the show to see the Doctor lambasting the Deciders for their duplicity and to see them implicitly accepting his criticisms. It’s becoming clear just how good this story is- when a third episode successfully manages to unfold more bits of the backstory at an appropriate pace you know you’ve got something unusually good.


Part Four

“We’ve come full circle.”

It’s unusual in Doctor Who for the final episode to be the best of a story, but for once this is the case. In a couple of nicely done early scenes we first see the Doctor holding back the Marshmen by exploiting their apparent religious reverence for K9’s head (pre-empting Return of the Jedi there?) and then we get an excellent scene between the Deciders in the library. There are Marshmen clamouring to get in and presumably kill everyone, yet Nefred prefers to spout management speak (“a holistic approach”) instead of doing anything, to Login’s disbelief.

The final big revelation, from Nefred’d dying words, is a corker; the ship’s crew are not descended from the original Terradonian crew at all, but from Marshmen (themselves descendents of spiders) who got in and killed them all, eventually evolving to their present form, reading the manuals and eventually coming to believe themselves to be from Terradon. Of course, even someone like myself with a pathetically arty education knows this isn’t how evolution really works, but there actually seems to be enough of the right kind of somehow sciencey dialogue to get away with it.

There’s a great moment where the two Deciders are about to press the button for the ship to take off but Garif can’t resist the temptation to procrastinate: “But you will agree, it does require some thought.”
Meanwhile, the Doctor and Romana now realise they’re trapped in E-Space, unless they can find a Charged Vacuum Emboitment™. And unbeknown to them, they have a stowaway…


Absolutely brilliant, which comes as something of a relief after the first two stories of the season. 5/5, in fact. At last we have a script that doesn’t feel like a script from the previous regime with all the humour taken out but instead does something new, and in that context the new seriousness starts to make a lot of sense. This is the sort of “proper” sci-fi that Doctor Who doesn’t actually do that often (it’s the first story since The Mutants that I can imagine being adapted as a “straight” sci-fi short story) and so it feels very fresh and new. And Andrew Smith seems quite a find, coming up with a great central premise and handling structure and characterisation very well indeed, albeit possibly with help from Bidmead. Perhaps the show might want to consider more scripts by fans in, say, 25 years time?