October 5: Logopolis Parts One & Two

It's the beginning of the end for the fourth Doctor, as I watch the first two episodes of his final story.  There's definitely a theme of endings running through these two parts, as the Doctor (somewhat more somber than usual) reflects on the unstoppable force of entropy.  But we get some firsts, as well: it's the first time we hear the Cloister Bell (that toll of doom that persists into the 21st century version), and the first time we hear the TARDIS's (broken) ability to disguise itself as being the result of the chameleon circuit.  And it's this circuit that arguably sets these events in motion, as the Doctor resolves to fix it by measuring a real police box and taking the dimensions to a place called Logopolis, where the locals there can help the Doctor fix the problem.

But despite this feeling of somberness and decay, it doesn't really seem to affect the Doctor himself until halfway through part two, and before that he seems more or less his usual self.  He does seem awfully worried about the gravity bubble that results from materializing around the police box that's actually a TARDIS (the Master's TARDIS, in fact; it's not made 100% clear, but it's not exactly a big secret either), though, and while we've seen something of this sort before in The Time Monster (where the Master's TARDIS is inside the Doctor's and the Doctor's is inside the Master's), it hasn't been as fully explored as here, with some memorable imagery of TARDISes inside TARDISes.  (And note that they've pulled the old seasons 14-17 TARDIS prop back into service for this: you can tell by the windows and the lack of a door handle, among other things.)

There's also the stuff about the Master being back ("So he did escape from Traken"), and, as About Time points out, the Watcher figure is likely meant to be a bluff, to make us think that that's in fact the Master (even though the last shot of The Keeper of Traken spoils this).  But we're back to shrinking people as a method of killing.  And while all this is going on, an Australian air hostess named Tegan Jovanka, of all things¹¹⁴, accidentally wanders into the TARDIS and spends the better part of two episodes trying to find her way back out again.

There are still some nice moments -- I like the part where the Doctor and Adric brace themselves against the TARDIS doors, expecting the Thames to rush in and flush the Master out, only to find they've landed on a barge instead of in the river, and the weary way in which the detective knocks on the police box's door, fully expecting the Doctor and Adric to be inside, is understated genius.

But once the Doctor meets up with the Watcher on the bridge, there is a real sense of inevitability about the proceedings ("I've just dipped into the future.  We must be prepared for the worst," the Doctor tells Adric), as the Doctor heads to Logopolis.  Of course, even with that there's still time for a terrible pun (after Tegan asks about her aunt, whom the Doctor has seen the shrunken corpse of, the Doctor replies that he's seen "a little of her"), but still, on to Logopolis, where mathematics is the all-important language of the universe.  But the Master is wreaking havoc on the planet (having hitched a ride in the Doctor's TARDIS), and Nyssa, from the last story, is there too for some reason.  And then the cliffhanger (which seems to show the Doctor planning on leaving Adric and Tegan behind on Logopolis) instead focuses on a problem with the Logopolitans' calculations: the TARDIS is rapidly shrinking...







¹¹⁴ Tegan is a Welsh name, while Jovanka is the name of a Slavic nymph.  Allegedly, producer John Nathan-Turner was trying to decide between the two when script editor Christopher H. Bidmead saw the two names and mistakenly thought it was a first and last name.

October 4: The Keeper of Traken Parts Three & Four

These two episodes don't feel quite as magical as the first two: there's more of a focus on the science-y side of things, and because there's not enough of the fantasy elements to compensate, it does feel a bit lopsided.  Oh, and apparently we get a different motivation for Kassia's actions: it's not simply because of the Melkur's influence, but because she doesn't want to lose Tremas to the Keepership.  (That said, I'm willing to acknowledge that maybe this reason was in the first two parts and I just missed it, and so maybe it's not as casually mentioned as it seemed to me.)  Nevertheless, this makes Kassia one of those more frustrating adversaries that the Doctor faces from time to time, the person who is 100% committed to carrying out this evil plan and cannot be persuaded otherwise, and who seems to constantly be thwarting any plans the Doctor may be making.

Fortunately for our heroes, Tremas's daughter Nyssa is still free and able to overpower some of the Fosters (aka guards) and free the Doctor, Adric, and Tremas, which leaves them able to make plans to stop Kassia, and therefore the Melkur, from acquiring the full power of the Source.  They fail, of course, and after a quick reveal of who's actually inside the Melkur statue (a person who kind of looks like the Master from The Deadly Assassin; it's genuinely unclear if this was supposed to be an "aha" moment or not, as the reveal doesn't really matter, plot-wise -- is this for the benefit of long-time viewers, or just to give Geoffrey Beevers some screen time?  But while we're here, let's take a moment to appreciate the view through the Melkur's eyes, which aren't exactly the same as each other and thus actually look like stereoscopic vision), we see Kassia assume the Keepership, only to be replaced (in the cliffhanger to part three) by the Melkur.

The still-decaying Master brings the Doctor inside his TARDIS.
(The Keeper of Traken Part Four) ©BBC

This leads to an odd scripting choice in part four, and that's how all the Trakenites (except for Tremas and Nyssa) seem to be completely okay with the Melkur being the new Keeper; no protests, no cries of "How can this be?!", just acceptance.  "Ok, guess a thing that came to Traken and was calcified because it was evil is totally fine as the supreme ruler of the entire Traken Union."  They can't all believe the Melkur's "No, it's cool, the last Keeper told me (and not you) that it would be me" speech, can they?  But in any case, the Melkur has all the power, but he can't quite use it yet, which gives Tremas and the Doctor time to stop him.  Only they don't quite succeed, and the Melkur takes the Doctor inside himself, to be revealed as the Master.  He doesn't look as horrifyingly disfigured as last time, does he?  And someone's decided to paint teeth on his lips, with the result almost never looking like what was presumably intended.  But the basic conceit is nice, even if he and the Doctor hardly get a chance to exchange more than a few words before Adric and Nyssa's independent bit of Source sabotage spells the end of the Master's plan.  Traken is safe, and even the Source is okay now, with a new Keeper in the form of the young Consul with the low opinion of himself (the last time he was offered the Keepership, he said, "Oh, I do not have such greatness about me").  All, it seems, has been set to rights.

Except then we get a bizarre tag scene where Tremas is paralyzed by the Master's grandfather clock, while the Master comes up behind him and gives him such a great big bear hug from behind that he fuses with Tremas's body (and I defy you to come up with a better explanation for what we see).  "A new body at last," says the rejuvenated Master (as played by the same actor as Tremas, Anthony Ainley), and off he goes as well.  It doesn't pay to name your children anagrams of the word "master", it seems.

But other than that tag, The Keeper of Traken has been a delightful stroll of a story.  It's pitched at just the right balance between fantasy and SF, and while the reveal of an old enemy threatens to overbalance things (and make this story seem More Important (in fandom terms) than it sets out to be), said reveal doesn't really happen until the last seven minutes, which leaves plenty of time to enjoy everything that's come before.  It looks gorgeous, it's well-acted (again, this is Matthew Waterhouse's best performance yet), and there's enough lyricism in the writing to leave you with a smile.  The Keeper of Traken is best remembered as a suitably charming tale.

October 3: The Keeper of Traken Parts One & Two

It's been commented on before, but the opening moments of The Keeper of Traken really do feel more like a fairy tale than like what we've come to expect from the show.  The sudden intrusion of the Keeper (played by Denis Carey, allegedly as a sort of apology for Shada not going through), and his recounting of previous events on Traken, is played more like a gentle narrator than an unwelcome presence, and even the Doctor treats him deferentially.

But what's perhaps more impressive is that this fairy tale feeling persists throughout these first two episodes.  The deal that Kassia has seemingly made with the Melkur is that of an innocent corrupted by evil, rather than anything more pragmatic, and the whole meeting of the Consuls feels pleasantly at a distance from reality.  This is not the same style of writing that we had in Warriors' Gate, but here it works.  This is the story of how corruption came to the perfect world of Traken (where "the atmosphere there was so full of goodness that evil just shriveled up and died"), and the light fantasy feel makes this a compelling tale with a touch of inevitability about it.

The acting is generally good all around, with everyone slipping easily into this mode of storytelling -- it seems like Matthew Waterhouse gets better and better, and here he seems quite at home with Tom Baker's Doctor.  Denis Carey is really good too, playing an old man who is nevertheless recognizably different from his portrayal of Professor Chronotis in Shada, and Anthony Ainley does a good job of playing a kind yet keenly intelligent man -- note the way in which he's constantly watching everyone around him, and the way he lights up when he learns that the Doctor is a scientist.  Oh, and look; John Woodnutt is in this too, being as good as ever.  I'd forgotten that.  Sheila Ruskin is somewhat less successful as Kassia, but really, she's doing exactly what the script needs her to do, so she can't really be faulted for that.  And it's not exactly a performance, but the Melkur is a gorgeous piece of design, isn't it?

And lest you think that Christopher H. Bidmead has relinquished his "more science less fantasy" position, we find that there is in fact a scientific underpinning to the goings-on on Traken -- Tremas is unabashedly a scientist, and we learn that all the magical things we've seen are the result of a piece of bio-mechanical engineering called the Source.  It's a bit more uneasy a balance than in, say, State of Decay, but it still just about works.  The fantasy doesn't end up overwhelming the science, but neither does the science overwhelm the fantasy, and that's a good thing.

Plus it gives that second cliffhanger ("It is done, Melkur."  "Oh no, Kassia.  It is only beginning") an additional edge, as it reenforces the feeling of inevitability, of a fairy tale land's downfall thanks to evil.  It will be interesting to see if the next two episodes can maintain that feel.

October 2: Warriors' Gate Parts Three & Four

This story continues to impress, both in terms of the script and the visuals.  It looks gorgeous, with the inspired use of Tharils and Time Lords moving through black-and-white photographs, and the script is incredibly clever -- the scenes near the end of part three, which show the Tharils' empire at its height, mixed with their cobwebbed decline, are an intelligent example of scripted interlocking scenes brought to life by dynamic direction (and the touch of the Doctor in part three knocking over the over-flowing goblet that he had previously righted in the future is a fabulously subtle one) -- plus it gives us that great cliffhanger where the Doctor, who'd been previously with the Tharils just before the Gundans had attacked, suddenly finds himself back in the present, surrounded by Rorvik and his men.

The script also does clever things by making the wounded Tharil (Lazlo, according to the credits) friendly towards Romana, and by using the mirror as a gateway only for the Tharils (who've learned how to "travel on the time winds") and those they allow to pass with them.  Thus it's not a gateway that Rorvik can use, even though he's seen the Doctor pass through.  The portrayal of Rorvik's people (where he has to keep yelling at them to pay attention to him, while they're more focused on lunch) is also really well done; none of your well-oiled Star Trek-esque crews here, but a somewhat unruly bunch of slavers.

And it all comes together so well in part four, as the Doctor and Romana try repeatedly to stop Rorvik from destroying everything (which he's already doing by having an incredibly dense ship in the gateway), only to be repeatedly told by Biroc to do nothing ("It is done").  This means that we get some great scenes, such as the Doctor taunting Rorvik's crew with the MZ and the Doctor and Romana's futile efforts to stop Rorvik from initiating a backblast (because, as Romana puts it, "The backblast backlash will bounce back and destroy everything!"), which even allow Rorvik to get in some mad ranting ("I'm finally getting something done!").  Then there's the moment where Lazlo rescues all the imprisoned Tharils after killing Sagan -- who really has been quite ruthless in his attempts to revive a Tharil for navigational purposes, but who nevertheless dies in a surprisingly shocking way: it might be the open-mouthed scream left unvoiced, but it's quite a brutal death.  And, atypically for Doctor Who but entirely in keeping with this story, the Doctor and Romana finally realize that the solution really is to do nothing -- "if it's the right sort of nothing", as the Doctor puts it.

Biroc and Romana watch the TARDIS depart. (Warriors'
Gate Part Four) ©BBC

And at the very end, Romana decides not to travel on with the Doctor, but to help the Tharils free their enslaved brethren instead.  It's a bit sudden a departure (although there is some set-up in the story, particularly in part one), but it feels right, and the dialogue we get is so much better and neater than any more emotional, drawn-out scene would have been.  "What a moment to choose!" the Doctor cries.  "But it is, isn't it?" Romana replies.  "A moment to choose."  And so the Doctor gives her K-9 (who will presumably be repaired on the other side of the mirror) and the TARDIS leaves as Rorvik's backblast does indeed destroy everything.  "Will Romana be all right?" Adric asks afterwards.  "All right?  She'll be superb," the Doctor replies with a grin.  And farewell to K-9, a prop that the show has clearly become increasingly less fond of (witness K-9's treatment throughout season 18, and note that Warriors' Gate -- a story that includes him failing to shoot Rorvik and has Packard chucking him bodily out of the slaver ship -- is his best story of the season), but which is nevertheless still endearing.  Doctor Who has clearly moved on and outgrown the tin dog, but for much of the audience it just won't be the same without him.

It's a script that sparkles with class and wit (some great lines from parts three and four: "One solid hope's worth a cartload of certainties"; "Soon we won't be better off than that chap over there [indicating an ancient skeleton].  When the pickles run out"; "You've seen our past, you've seen our present.  You were right.  We abused our power.  But judge whether we've not suffered enough." "As you said, the weak enslave themselves." "The time of our enslavement is over"; and so many more), and it's beautifully directed by Paul Joyce (his only directorial job of Doctor Who, largely for the same reasons Lovett Bickford only directed The Leisure Hive¹¹³).  Chris Bidmead must have been thrilled to get a story like this, both poetic and scientific, as it's everything he's been trying to achieve this season.  It's frankly astonishing that this story isn't more highly regarded in fandom (115th out of 241 in the most recent Doctor Who Magazine poll), but that's okay; it will just take time, as more people discover (or rediscover) this gem of a tale.  The rest of us already know that Warriors' Gate is utterly fantastic.







¹¹³ Which, as my brother pointed out, I didn't actually explain.  Both Lovett Bickford and Paul Joyce, interested in providing a new dynamic look for the show, ended up falling behind schedule as a result of their directorial choices -- in Bickford's case, an additional (and expensive) studio block had to be booked.  This didn't happen on Warriors' Gate (possibly because it had happened on The Leisure Hive), but the result instead was, it seems, an increasingly tense production that was visibly taking its toll on Joyce -- and at one point apparently production assistant Graeme Harper took over a great deal of the work.  The visuals on both stories would seem to justify the problems (Nathan-Turner was pleased with how they both turned out), but nonetheless neither director was asked to return to the show.

October 1: Warriors' Gate Parts One & Two

You can tell right from the start that this is going to be something special; the slow pan around the "cargo" hold of Rorvik's ship, and then down the (graffitied) corridors and up to the bridge, shows that, if nothing else, Warriors' Gate will be a lot more interesting to look at than other shows -- the obvious comparison is with the look of The Leisure Hive.

But then the script really begins, and we see that just as much care has gone into the writing as into the direction.  The crew of Rorvik's ship seem much more realistic than other crews we've seen, with unenthusiastic cheers and problems going wrong with their navigation -- thanks to a leonine man strapped down in a chair.  The end result is a ship thrown through (into?) a time rift and ending up nowhere -- a problem that the crew of the TARDIS also face...

Warriors' Gate is full of striking imagery -- or at least these first two episodes are: the leonine man, Biroc, is constantly shown as a series of images (not unlike a flip-book) rather than with smooth movement ("He's out of phase," Romana says, as Biroc operates the controls of the TARDIS) -- as is the coin that one of the crew tosses right as they go into the time rift (less convinced about the zoom-in, though, which just ends up being a blocky, low-resolution digital blob); everything outside the TARDIS is a very effective white void; and the place where Biroc heads (followed by the Doctor) is a ruined stone structure that appears, like the TARDIS, to be bigger on the inside -- and that interior is as atmospheric a set, with lots of dusty cobwebs and abandoned furniture, as anything you might hope to see.  And not only that, but this story is full of great dialogue too: "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it"; "And why believe Biroc?" "Because he was running"; "All the gateways are one"... even the mundane dialogue seems to have an extra bit of sparkle to it.

Lane, Rorvik, and Packard examine the TARDIS. (Warriors'
Gate Part One) ©BBC

All this and an interesting storyline as well, with the mystery of the gateway combining with the casual villainy of Rorvik and his crew (particularly their treatment of the Tharils and of Romana) to create an engrossing couple episodes.  That white void and the gateway provide an interesting backdrop for two episodes that are, essentially, all about trying to get out of this place -- the Doctor is more interested in learning the secret of returning to N-Space than in the story of how the Gundans overthrew the Tharils long ago, but we the viewers are just as interested in both.  This is also Matthew Waterhouse's best performance yet -- he seems much more at home interacting with K-9 and behaving naturally with Romana than he does pretending to betray our heroes or delivering know-it-all dialogue (so maybe making his character a wunderkind was a bad move).

And while the first cliffhanger isn't anything too special, that second one is fantastic: the Doctor disappears inside a mirror, while Romana, still strapped into the chair that Rorvik left her in, is menaced by a badly-burned Tharil (thanks to Aldo and Royce's accidental electrocution while waking it up -- another example of casual villainy, as they don't care about bonuses the way the rest of the crew does if the Tharils are killed, as they're "on the all-in contract").  If that doesn't get the audience tuning in next week, I don't know what will.  (And what do you know, there was a 1.6 million increase in viewing figures between parts two and three.)

September 30: State of Decay Parts Three & Four

Camilla and Zargo hold Romana and the Doctor while Aukon listens
to the Great One. (State of Decay Part Three) ©BBC

This story really does an excellent job of evoking the mood of an old Hammer horror film while still retaining that scientific grounding that Bidmead prefers.  The Three Who Rule themselves are wonderful, looking like they've stepped out of a medieval castle, and the impending rise of their master, the Great One (not the leader of the Metebelis spiders), is treated as a cause for great concern, and it's not hard to imagine a version of this story during the Hinchcliffe years (or, indeed, as the opening story of season 15).

It's unlikely that there would have been quite such an emphasis on technology in that older version, though; the sequence with the Doctor telling Romana the legend of the Great Vampires would have probably remained the same (and can we just pause for a moment to talk about how wonderful it is when Tarak enters their cell to rescue them and smacks the Doctor in the face?  I'm still not sure how much of that was intentional and how much was accidental, but it makes me laugh every time I see it), and there would have been similarities with the stuff in the TARDIS and the Record of Rassilon, about how the king of the Great Vampires disappeared, but one wonders if the climax of the story -- the idea of using one of the Hydrax's scoutships as a giant stake -- would have been at all like what we get here.  And there's also the matter of using the old Hydrax scanner to see what the Great Vampire looks like, but probably the less said about that less-than-successful effect the better.  But those Record of Rassilon scenes are a nice touch, by making the Great Vampires into a threat that even the Time Lords took very seriously -- which means that they must be a grave threat indeed, and as viewers we put the king of them in the same category as Sutekh or the Fendahl ("If it escaped into our universe," the Doctor says at one point, "billions of lives would be lost").

Part four isn't quite as good just because it's concerned more with tying things up rather than continuing the mood.  There's also the odd subplot where Adric seems to be going over to the vampire side but not really, which just doesn't feel properly motivated in either the set-up or the execution.  And, finally, there's the way in which the Doctor builds up K-9 as "a very useful tool.  Armoured.  Immune to hypnotism. ... And a dead shot with a nose laser," only for K-9's appearance to be met with dubious looks and something of a "sad" cue from the music.  The show's not taking him very seriously anymore, is it?

However, the attack on the tower is pretty well staged, and the shots of the Great Vampire being "staked" by the Hydrax scoutship are surprisingly well done (particularly given the earlier shots of the vampire on the scanner).  And the deaths of the Three Who Rule are horrifying and effective -- it might be the best "turned to dust" effect we've ever seen on the series.

It's well-written and -directed, and the mash-up of styles (Dicks's older, Hammer horror-tinged approach, and Bidmead's more serious, scientific one) works very well, setting the vampires up as ancient powers preventing scientific knowledge and progress from blooming.  To be honest, it's hard to find much of anything really at fault with State of Decay.  So far this E-Space story arc has turned up trumps for the show.  Can they keep it up?

September 29: State of Decay Parts One & Two

Welcome back to Terrance Dicks, who hasn't written for the show since 1977's Horror of Fang Rock -- which was itself a last-minute replacement for his vampire tale The Witch Lords.  And this story is in fact that same Witch Lords script, dusted off and revised for the current TARDIS team.  The upshot is that for the first time in a while, we get another Gothic horror-style story.

Well, except that this is now being edited by scientifically-minded Christopher H. Bidmead, which means that there's a tension between fantasy and science in this story, with the Three Who Rule holding back the development of the peasants by forbidding any sort of scientific knowledge.  Bidmead was reportedly very unhappy with the more fantastic elements and kept stripping them out, only for director Peter Moffatt to keep putting them back in.  But the final result is a good balance between the two positions, with the more horror/fantasy elements placed in opposition to the peasants' attempts to acquire forbidden knowledge.

Another advantage this story has is that the production team has made a concerted effort to rein in Tom Baker and Lalla Ward, which means that there's a seriousness to events that probably would have been missing a year before.  The danger that the Three Who Rule represent is much more palpable as a result, and when combined with the moody direction from Moffatt, the result is a compelling story.

It's not perfect, of course; there are some draft artifacts from earlier incarnations that get some emphasis (namely that the Three in the tower protect the peasants from something called the Wasting) before being completely forgotten (so good luck figuring out what the Wasting is about), and there's also Adric.  He's stowed away, it seems, and worryingly, his first scene shows that he can't even walk across the TARDIS console room convincingly, instead smiling fatuously and deliberately looking at nothing as he jauntily strides across the room.  It's a cringe-inducing moment, and while it doesn't seem to be the norm for the remainder of Adric's scenes in these first two episodes (in which he veers from acceptable to quite good), it doesn't exactly endear him to the audience. 

But his interaction with the script is actually quite limited thus far, and it's far more interesting to watch the Doctor and Romana, as they discuss Grimm's law and the implications of language change in regards to the crew's original names and that of their descendants¹¹², and then go about exploring the tower (which is actually an Earth vessel called Hydrax, which, weirdly, seems to have left in the 1990s), discovering some nasty things along the way.  All the bats, stored blood, and general oddities of the three leaders have brought the Doctor to some unpleasant conclusions: "Do you know, it just occurs to me; there are vampire legends on almost every inhabited planet. ... Creatures that stalk in the night and feast on the blood of the living.  Creatures that fear sunlight and running water and certain herbs.  Creatures that are so strong they can only be killed by beheading, or a stake through the heart."  And while they're trying to work out why they can hear a giant heartbeat down at the base of the tower, they're confronted by Aukon, the chancellor member of the Three Who Rule, in the cliffhanger to part two.  "You are in the resting place," he says.  "I am Aukon.  Welcome to my domain."







¹¹² It's a good thought, but there are some anomalies if we take seriously the Doctor's suggestion that this is Grimm's law at play -- it would be incredibly strange, for instance, for the [k] in "Sharkey" ([ʃa:ki]) to become the [g] in "Zargo" ([za:go]), as that's the exact opposite direction of the law (in which voiced stops like [g] becomes voiceless like [k]).  Still, at the very least it shows that someone (likely Bidmead) was thinking about this topic, and maybe it caused kids to look up Grimm's law, in the spirit of the best Hartnell historicals, and thus introduce them to the broader idea of language change.  Well, I looked it up, at least.