An Hour of Who a Day

September 28: Full Circle Parts Three & Four

Adric and the Doctor check on Romana in her room. (Full
Circle Part Three) ©BBC

Full Circle continues to impress in its last two parts, as we learn more about Mistfall and the Alzarians. There's also some drama with Romana being infected and somehow linked telepathically with the Marshmen. Well, the Marshchild, at least. It's genuinely distressing, seeing Dexeter beginning his scientific operation on the unanesthetized Marshchild over the Doctor's protests ("That's not scientific understanding, it's cold-blooded murder!"), and while it's a bit difficult to feel bad for Dexeter when the Marshchild breaks free and kills him, it's much more affecting when the Marshchild sees the image of the Doctor, the only person who showed it any kindness, and electrocutes itself breaking the screen in an effort to get to him. This would be something of a feat even if it were a person, but the fact that it's someone who looks like a monster makes it even more impressive.

But then Full Circle is full of moments like this, deaths that seem to mean more than just cannon fodder for the Marshmen. Varsh's death is obviously a crucial moment for Adric, as Varsh is the only family he has, but even a death like Tylos's, where he's killed while saving one of the technicians, is treated as something meaningful. Compare this with Lexa's death in Meglos and the difference is clear. All the characters in Full Circle matter.

All this and a good plot too. The stuff about Romana being taken over is primarily just to provide a reason for the Marshmen to successfully enter the Starliner, but the stuff with the Deciders and with the Doctor, as the Doctor works out that the Starliner has been ready to leave for centuries, and that the people inside the Starliner are in fact descended from the Marshmen (and look like the Terradons because they adapted to live in the Starliner) is both entertaining and interesting, and even the E-Space set-up for the next couple stories leaves the viewer curious. It's a very well-written story, and at no point do you feel less than satisfied with its development.

Up to this point, season 18 has had a distinctive new style, but it hasn't quite had stories to match. Full Circle feels like the first time that the new style comes through in the storyline as well as the visuals. Add in the fact that Andrew Smith was seventeen when he wrote this, and Full Circle becomes even more impressive. This is a story by someone who understands the show and who's in sync with the more serious direction that Nathan-Turner and Bidmead are looking for, and it's directed by another newcomer (well, as far as the Doctor Who directing chair goes) in the form of Peter Grimwade, who's able to make this all dynamic and smooth. The end result is an excellent story that finds the new production team beginning to hit their stride.

September 27: Full Circle Parts One & Two

Big news in contemporary terms: the day before Full Circle Part One aired is the day it leaked that Tom Baker was leaving the series. The fourth Doctor is now on borrowed time...

It was, coincidentally, during the making of Full Circle that Baker decided not to return for an eighth season -- but that's not a commentary on the serial itself, which (at least on the basis of these two episodes) is one that's generally firing on all cylinders. There's a cleverness and momentum about the script that makes it very entertaining, and there's also a sense of drama that was missing from the last two stories. Romana's unhappiness at being summoned back to Gallifrey is understated but affecting, and the main scenario at play on Alzarius -- the coming of Mistfall -- is nicely compelling too. Mistfall, much like Alzarius in general, is presented in an interesting way, and writer Andrew Smith makes a good move by having a band of rebellious Alzarians, the Outlers, remaining outside the Starliner, as this means that there are people for Romana to interact with outside the ship while the Doctor is inside. The main outsider Alzarian, Adric, is passable -- some moments are a little wooden, but Matthew Waterhouse also has a few rather good moments: his waking up in the TARDIS, alarmed about Mistfall, is one such moment.

Mistfall is treated well, as I mentioned before, and not only is it presented as a serious concern for the locals, but it's filmed in an effective manner as well -- all the bubbling mist that hangs over the place at the end of part one and all throughout part two looks fabulous. Plus, it really helps sell that first cliffhanger, as the Marshmen rise from the water. The Marshmen also look great, and there's some fine acting going on from the people inside; the Marshchild that follows the Doctor inside the Starliner is especially good, and the fact that the Doctor can see that the Marshchild is terrified but harmless is another great moment.

Really, Tom Baker in general gets to be very good here, even in exposition scenes with K-9. And his first meeting with the Deciders is also great: "Why can't people be nice to one another, just for a change?" the Doctor says, after noting that the Marshmen dragged Decider Draith under the water. "I mean, I'm an alien, and you don't want to drag me into a swamp, do you? ...You do." Romana fares less well: she maintains her cool under pressure, after the Outlers attempt to hijack the TARDIS, but the cliffhanger to part two involves her trying to defend herself from some large spiders by grabbing a riverfruit (a type of melon), only for a spider to hatch out of it and attack her. Which might be excusable if she hadn't just witnessed a bunch of spiders hatching out of other riverfruits. And K-9 does well for a bit, but then he enters a cave and loudly announces his presence to the Marshmen, which leads to one knocking his head clean off.

But overall, it's an entertaining story and a compelling script. If the last two episodes are like this, then Full Circle will be something special indeed.

September 26: Meglos Parts Three & Four

For some reason these episodes are getting shorter and shorter; not only are parts three and four both around 20 minutes long, but the cliffhanger reprises are getting longer too -- there're two full minutes of footage from part three at the start of part four. And then the whole thing ends early, meaning that the last episode of Meglos only has 15 minutes of new footage.

The real Doctor listens to Lexa's accusations. (Meglos Part Three)
©BBC

And yet even with this there's still padding; Romana leads the Gaztaks around in circles in part three, and there's some stuff with the two Tom Bakers (one the Doctor, the other Meglos) wandering around the screens of Zolfa-Thura in part four. Part three in particular feels like one great big stalling moment; other than the Doctor working out that he has a doppelgänger and Lexa taking over, the episode is waiting for Meglos to leave the city and get on with the main plot. Even the part of the plot that should be really dramatic (the Deons are staging a revolution and driving all the non-Deons out onto the inhospitable surface!) feels more like a damp squib, and it doesn't help that it's apparently undone three minutes into part four.

Fortunately Tom Baker is still worth watching, and his performance as Meglos is very good, full of nuances that we don't really expect from Tom. It's a tribute to his skills that you're never in doubt as to whether you're watching Meglos or the Doctor, and he's just about the most watchable thing in a story that often feels pointless. Things happen on Tigella just so that something happens, rather than for a good reason. Oh sure, there are nice moments here and there, but too often things occur in such an undramatic manner (witness, for instance, the death of Lexa in part four, which feels so arbitrary and meaningless that it verges on insulting) that it's hard to care.

When Gareth Roberts was writing "The Lodger" for the eleventh Doctor, in one draft he apparently had the main villain be Meglos, with the joke being that the Doctor had completely forgotten who he was. That's sort of the position of this story in fandom ("oh right, that story does exist"), and it's not hard to see why. It's not a story that's been written with any real intent in mind beyond (barely) filling four episodes; the direction is more workmanlike than inspired, and there's no drive or passion behind the writing -- new writers John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch seemingly more interested in writing in generic clichés of the sort of thing they think should be in Doctor Who rather than anything personal. In fact, it goes further than that. In the past there have been stories that haven't worked for one reason or another, but it's generally felt like there was at least some care and style going into the writing, even when it was Terry Nation just turning in another Dalek tale. Meglos, however -- despite the efforts of the cast and the actual production crew -- feels like the first serial that has contempt for its audience, interested more in the paycheck at the end than in anything in the story; all too often, it feels like "eh, good enough".

September 25: Meglos Parts One & Two

Meglos doesn't look quite as strikingly different as The Leisure Hive did -- hardly surprising, given all the work Lovett Bickford put into it -- but enough of the changes are carried over to make it clear that, no, The Leisure Hive wasn't a fluke; this is how things are going to be now.

Yet Meglos is a bit of an odd story; while there continues to be some new technical trickery used here (The Leisure Hive introduced Quantel, which allowed digital manipulation of the video, Meglos introduces a technology called Scene Sync, where two cameras move in sync with each other -- in other words, you can now pan across CSOed backgrounds without the actors appearing to slide around), the actual storyline seems rather perfunctory. We get two storylines, both of which we're introduced to in the middle of events -- the Gaztaks (aka space pirates) have kidnapped a human and brought him to the planet Zolfa-Thura for some reason, while the civilization on the nearby planet of Tigella is on the brink of collapse. This latter plot seems mainly to provide a rather tedious argument about science versus religion -- particularly since neither side's views are presented in any sort of interesting manner, but instead consist of each side literally shouting at the other.

But holy hell, it's Jacqueline Hill, not seen on the show since 1965! And not as Barbara this time, but as Lexa, the leader of the Deons (the religious side). It's a first for the show, bringing back one of the stars in a different supporting role (and a last for the show, as John Nathan-Turner decided he only wanted old stars back in their former roles¹¹¹), and Hill is very good as the unhappy Deon leader. She's certainly a lot more watchable than any of the Savants (the scientist side), who're all wearing blonde wigs that make them look like Sela, the Romulan-human daughter of an alternate universe Tasha Yar from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Crawford Logan, as Deedrix, only seems capable of sarcasm and angry yelling at the Deons, and while Colette Gleeson, as Caris, is rather better, she doesn't get much screen time in these first two episodes. Zastor (as played by Edward Underdown) often looks like he can't quite believe he has to try and mediate between these two sides instead of just sending them both to their rooms.

And while all this is going on, the Doctor and Romana are in the TARDIS, initially fixing K-9 but then caught in a "chronic hysteresis" (because apparently "time loop" doesn't sound exciting enough for the new scientifically-minded script editor, Christopher H. Bidmead) that's been caused by Meglos of all people -- Meglos being the cactus that the Gaztaks brought the human to Zolfa-Thura for. Meglos apparently has the ability to affect time, yet he's relying on the grubby Gaztaks for help. Oh, and it seems he can shape-shift (with the human's help), turning into the Doctor at the first cliffhanger.

The cactus part of Meglos is breaking through his Doctor form.
(Meglos Part Two) ©BBC

So part two involves Meglos impersonating the Doctor in an effort to steal the Dodecahedron, the source of Tigella's power, while the real Doctor is stuck in a time loop which is escaped from in an incredibly silly manner. You can sort of see what they were going for with the mention of phase cancellation, but as shown it's really astonishingly stupid, as both the Doctor and Romana ham their way through a recreation of the beginning of the time loop in order to cancel out the hysteresis. It also means that our heroes are sidelined from the action for the vast majority of these first two episodes, which means that lots of things are happening without their knowledge. Still, it does mean that Tom Baker gets to play the baddie, as Meglos-as-the-Doctor, and it does look like he's enjoying it ("I, swear allegiance to Ti?" he says in a very un-Doctor-like manner after Lexa tells him he needs to do so to see the Dodecahedron) -- although I'll bet he was less happy about the spiny make-up required at times.

So these first two episodes are best summed up as a bit fun but ultimately inconsequential-feeling, and while there are some good moments (such as Zastor's description of the Doctor: "He sees the threads that join the universe together and mends them when they break"), it's hard to truly stay engaged with this story. Let's hope things pick up in parts three and four.

¹¹¹ A policy that's continued thus far in the 21st-century version -- allowing both for Billie Piper technically playing a different character (but one that's meant to look like Rose Tyler) and for the deliberate ambiguity of the identity of Tom Baker's character in "The Day of the Doctor".

September 24: The Leisure Hive Parts Three & Four

One of the more striking things about the second half of The Leisure Hive is that part two's cliffhanger, with the Doctor now incredibly old, isn't immediately reversed at the start of part three. No, instead they leave the Doctor as old and wizened for an episode and a half. It's a bold move, and while you might have reason to be worried about essentially sidelining the Doctor for that long, given how little was going on in the first two parts, these two episodes fortunately pick up the pace and provide a good deal more in terms of incident. Pangol starts getting bloodthirsty, declaring that a new Argolis will dawn that will once again be war-like (apparently he missed the lesson about the futility of war that all his fellow Argolins learned), and our heroes start to wonder why Pangol looks twenty-five when the Argolins became sterile forty years ago. We also get a great lead-in to the cliffhanger, as we're finally introduced to a Foamasi that the Doctor then takes to the Argolin boardroom, and part three's cliffhanger gives us possibly the best literal unmasking we've seen on the show yet, as the Foamasi removes Brock's face to reveal another Foamasi.

That unmasking is hampered somewhat by the follow-up sequence in part four, where we get a lot of shots of Foamasi being undressed and revealed, and we learn that there is no way such (frankly) fat creatures could have fit into fake human skins. And there's some stuff about independent Foamasi parties trying to buy Argolis under the legitimate government's beak that's apparently related to gangsters in some way (famously, "Foamasi" is an anagram of "mafiosa", which is close enough to "mafioso"), but this is honestly so far down in the mix that it's difficult to notice, even when you know about it.

No, part four is all about Pangol revealing that the experiments in tachyonics have led to successful cloning techniques that mean Pangol can make an army of himself, which leads to his now-explicit warmongering -- including blowing up the departing Foamasi shuttle. It's reasonably exciting, even if we learn early on that the Doctor has thrown a spanner in the works and created tachyon images (as seen in the first episode) instead of long-lasting clones, and that this process has also de-aged the Doctor. Nevertheless, the dying Mena is taken into the Recreation Generator along with Pangol, and a revitalized Mena emerges with a baby Pangol to lead Argolis into a better future. And the good Foamasi are okay! ("You mentioned Foamasi?" the ambassador says -- a line that's oddly popular in fandom.) Everything can be left in safe hands as the Doctor and Romana depart.

The difference between seasons 17 and 18 is one of the most startling style shifts in all of Doctor Who, and the new direction is made abundantly clear in The Leisure Hive. Not only does this look and sound unlike anything we've seen and heard on the show before, but it also strikes a significantly more serious tone than what we've been used to. It's a little too unengaging as a story in its own right to be a real success (the action is lopsided and Pangol's actions, while striking, aren't built up as the threat they probably should have been), but in purely aesthetic terms The Leisure Hive impresses. A qualified success, then, and one that makes us interested to see what happens next -- is this a fluke or the shape of things to come?

September 23: The Leisure Hive Parts One & Two

Wow, lots of changes going on as we enter season 18; a brand-new starfield title sequence (complete with new neon tubing-style logo) and a brand-new arrangement of the theme tune (in a higher, more triumphant key) -- something that's been essentially the same (give or take a few tweaks here and there) since 1963. And so, immediately after this exciting new intro, we get... ninety seconds of slow panning across a beach. Er... yes. It even has Tom Baker snoring over the shot as we linger over beach chairs and changing tents before we finally see the new version of the TARDIS; it's not that different (the roof is stacked again, for one thing), but they've finally attached the door handle that's been missing since the last redesign, for The Masque of Mandragora. And look, the Doctor has a new outfit, primarily in shades of burgundy. The coat and scarf are really quite nice, but this is also the debut of those damn question marks that are going to plague the Doctor for the rest of the '80s -- here, they're stuck on the points of his collar.

So, new titles, new TARDIS, new outfit, old voice for K-9 in the brief moments he has on screen before he stupidly heads into the sea to get shorted out (but hooray! John Leeson is back)... and new incidental music, as it turns out. Instead of the familiar sounds of Dudley Simpson, we get synthesizers from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (and Peter Howell in particular -- the man who also redid the theme tune). It's a bold new sound for the show, and one that's honestly quite welcome; not to disparage Dudley Simpson at all, but it is nice to have some fresh blood.

The whole thing also looks different too. The leisurely (sorry) pace that characterizes the first couple of minutes of the show continues throughout. This isn't an action-packed, frenetic story; instead, first-time (and last-time, as it would turn out) Doctor Who director Lovett Bickford chooses to use lots of slow-yet-constantly moving shots to give things an almost sensuous feeling (well, as much as a story about plant people running a tourist haven while fending off a takeover from reptile people can be sensuous) -- and this is aided by lots of handheld shots and unusual (for Doctor Who, at least) framings, with extreme close-ups and out-of-focus foreground elements often the order of the day. Plus, set designer Tom Yardley-Jones has (presumably at Bickford's request) elected to put ceilings in most of the sets. This means both that Bickford gets a lot more low-angle shots, and that even the lighting is different as a result, which just continues to add to the feeling that a new and different stylistic change has occurred.

Of course, the problem with these first two installments of The Leisure Hive is that there's not actually much going on story-wise. We learn a bit about the Argolins and their Leisure Hive, and about the war that led to the downfall of their race ("How long did the war last?" the Doctor asks Chairman Mina as they look out over the radioactive wastes of Argolis. "Twenty minutes," she replies. "As long as that," says the Doctor, somewhat impressed), and we know that something (almost certainly a Foamasi) is skulking about the Hive causing problems and killing people. Oh, and there's an Earth scientist named Hardin who's playing about with experiments involving tachyonics (a real theoretical field involving faster-than-light particles) and time. And that's about it. There are so many elegantly-paced shots and camera moves that it occasionally feels like they're trying to make up for the slight plot, and with Tom Baker and Lalla Ward both firmly reined in as far as humor goes, it does come across sometimes as rather dull.

Still, two great cliffhangers: the first shows the Doctor apparently being torn apart and in agony (something of a shock for those who'd become used to the untouchable Doctor of recent seasons), and then, after an experiment in tachyonics gone wrong, his coming out of the Recreation Generator cabinet looking incredibly old and decrepit. The superhuman Doctor is, it seems, a thing of the past...

September 22: Shada Parts Four, Five, & Six

It's significantly harder to piece the story together based on these last three parts than it was for the first three, as there's so much that went unfilmed. Parts four and five only have something like five minutes of footage a piece, and while there's more of part six it's almost entirely confined to Chronotis's TARDIS. It's like watching clips from missing episodes, except here there aren't even any soundtracks to listen to in between scenes. There is some nice material in what we have (such as the stuff on the derelict Think Tank), but the general sense, watching the stuff for parts four through six, is that there was an awful lot of tea drinking going on. And one of the all-time stupid Doctor Who moments also exists in what they recorded; no, not the medal ceremony (although that is awfully self-indulgent), but the part where Claire Keightley, trying desperately to hold on to an increasingly hot control, suddenly decides to abandon her station (which has been already emphasized as incredibly important) in order to fetch a pencil so that she can hold down that control. It's an unbelievably silly way to force the TARDIS controls to explode, and had this story actually aired it would likely be infamous in its execution.

But yes, it's very hard to get a sense of what Shada would have been like, and so it's nice to have the Ian Levine version to help fill in the gaps. Obviously, as before, it's not a perfect solution (and why did they decide to give the Krargs glowing eyes, given that there's no evidence of this in the one scene with a Krarg that they shot?), but you do get a decent sense of the overall story. In this version the virtues of the existing scenes become more apparent when spaced out -- instead of all smushed together -- and you get a better sense of what the storyline is and the threat that Skagra represents. The idea of Skagra trying to put his mind into everyone else's ("With the aid of the sphere I shall make the whole of creation merge into one single mind, one godlike entity ... The universe, Doctor, shall be me!") is a nice one, and if Shada had been filmed the way it appears in the animation, with dark red corridors and lots of shadows (and there's no reason to think it wouldn't have been, since Williams was holding back money for this), then this might have been a winner. There's also some great unfilmed dialogue (such as Skagra scoffing at the idea of taking over the universe: "How childish. Who could possibly want to take over the Universe?" "Exactly! That's what I keep on trying to tell people," the Doctor replies. "It's a troublesome place, difficult to administer, and as a piece of real estate it's worthless because by definition there'd be no one to sell it to"), and it would have been neat to see the mental battle between the Doctor and Skagra. If nothing else, the animated scenes suggest that this would have been worth doing -- more interesting than, say, The Creature from the Pit or The Horns of Nimon.

But despite narrations, novelizations, animations, and audio adaptations, we'll never truly know what Shada would have been like. It's fun to speculate (and, incidentally, has anyone ever talked to designer Victor Meredith about what the unmade sets were going to look like? He had to have designed them, right?), but that's all we can do. What we do know about it suggests that it probably wouldn't have been the all-conquering gem that its reputation often claims it would have been -- it has some good ideas, but there's an awful lot of season 17-ness floating around (the milk/sugar joke, the medal ceremony, what one imagines the walk through the vortex would have been like), and there are a number of plotting problems as well (Chronotis's casual revelation to Skagra that he's actually Salyavin, the perfunctory manner in which Skagra is defeated). But there's enough here to tantalize as well, to suggest that this would have been worth doing. It would have been hugely flawed, of course, but the strength of the basic storyline makes it look like it would have been compelling despite the flaws. In effect, it would have been the quintessential season 17 story.