Doctor Who — Destiny of the Daleks, City of Death, The Creature From The Pit, Nightmare of Eden, Horns of Nimon, Shada

Posted on October 30, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Remember when I was writing about classic Doctor Who for Halloween? Let’s get back to that with a look at the 17th season of the original series. This season is a controversial one. It featured some of the show’s worst serials but also one of its best. Today, it’s remembered for introducing Lalla Ward as the second Romana and for featuring Douglas Adams as the script editor.

One frequent complaint about this season is that, under Adams’s influence, the season featured more comedy than before and it sometimes felt more like a version of Hitchhiker’s than Doctor Who. There’s some truth to that but Adams’s influence also made Season 17 into a season unlike any other. Many of Adams’s ideas didn’t work but he did give us City of Death.

Destiny of the Daleks (1979, directed by Kim Grieve)

Destiny of the Daleks will always have a place in my heart because it opens with Romana regenerating into Lalla Ward. I will admit right now that, as a kid watching Doctor Who on PBS, I had a huge crush on Lalla Ward. So did Tom Baker. He ended up marrying Ward, though the marriage did not last for long. The relationship between Baker and Ward often seemed to reflected in the relationship between The Doctor and Ward’s Romana. Long before the Doctor Who reboot had people buzzing about the Doctor and Rose, fans of the original series knew that the Doctor and Romana were in love.

Destiny of the Daleks opens with Lalla Ward’s Romana cheerfully informing the Doctor that she’s decided to regenerate because she was bored and she’s decided to look like Princess Astra. The Doctor points out that Princess Astra is a real person and Romana can’t just take on her appearance. Romana then tries out several other appearances before The Doctor tells her to go with Astra. This goes against everything that the show had established about Time Lords and regeneration but at least we end up with Lalla Ward as Romana.

It’s too bad that the rest of the serial itself isn’t that interesting, even if it does feature the first appearance by the Daleks since Genesis of the Daleks. Davros returns as well, though he’s now more or less just another generic villain. The Daleks have a new enemy, a group of robots called the Movellans. The war between the Daleks and the Movellans are at a standstill because both are governed by logic. That goes against everything we know about the Daleks.

This was Terry Nation’s final script for Doctor Who. Reportedly, he was angered when Douglas Adams extensively rewrote the script. Nation moved to America and later created the original MacGyver.

City of Death (1979, directed by Michael Hayes)

City of Death is a Doctor Who classic. Romana and the Doctor visit modern-day Paris and the BBC found the money to allow the production to shoot on location. The Doctor and Romana walk around Paris, hand-in-hand. Count Scarlioni (Julian Glover) is actually an alien who wants to steal the Mona Lisa so that he can use it to fund his time travel experiments. Countess Sacrlioni (Catherine Schell) is a classic femme fatale. An American private investigator named Duggan (Tom Chabdon) wears a trench coat and solves problems by punching first and asking questions later. John Cleese and Eleanor Bron appears as museum patrons who think the TARDIS is a work of modern art. Douglas Adams later reworked bits of his script into Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Agency.

Even people who cannot stand the rest of season 17 will agree that City of Death is one of the best of Tom Baker’s serials. City of Death balances humor and drama and it features an excellent villain in the form of Julian Glover. Tom Baker and Lalla Ward are at their best, the story is genuinely interesting, and — much like Jago and Lightfoot from The Talons of Weng-Chiang — Duggan deserved his own spin-off.

The Creature From The Pit (1979, directed by Christopher Barry)

This serial features the season’s first appearance by K-9, who is now voiced by David Brierley. Though this serial was third to be aired, it was the first to be filmed.

It’s not much of a serial. The TARDIS materializes on yet another feudal planet where Lady Adastra (Myra Frances) rules through fear. Lady Adastra’s critics are thrown in the pit, which is said to be home to a great monster. Instead, it’s home to a gentle blob that was sent to the planet as an ambassador. The Doctor helps the blob gets its freedom while Romana and K-9 are briefly detained by a group of bandits. Whatever potential the story had is short-circuited by the very unconvincing monster.

Nightmare of Eden (1979, directed by Alan Bromley and Graham Williams)

Two ships materialize in the same location and end up locked together. Then the TARDIS materializes and the Doctor offers to find a way to unlock the two ships. One of the ships is a luxury space liner and the passengers are soon being menaced by clawed monsters that look like stuntmen in rubber suits. The other ship is a trade ship that the Doctor comes to suspect is involved in a drug-running operation.

Once again, the monsters were not at all convincing but the Doctor investigating the interstellar drug traffic was at least something different. Much like City of Death, Nightmare of Eden, with its luxury spaceliner, had a few moments of satire that worked. Unlike City of Death, the supporting characters were not that interesting and Tom Baker himself just seemed to be going through the motions. Nightmare of Eden was better than a lot of Season 17 but it still ultimately comes across as being rather muddled.

The Horns of Nimon (1979 — 1980, directed by Kenny McBain)

The Horns of Nimon, is it terrible or is it great? Some defend it because of its allusions to Greek mythology, its deliberate humor, and the over-the-top performance of Graham Crowden as Soldeed, the leader of the Skonnan Empire. Others, like me, point out the turgid pacing, the bad creature effects, and the fact that the majority of the serial is just people walking around. Based on the myth of the minotaur, The Horns of Nimon looks and feels cheap. Crowden splits his pants at one point and I guess there was no time to stitch them back up. The whole thing is just too slapdash.

Shada (2018, directed by Pennant Roberts and Charles Norton)

For decades, Shada was the Holy Grail of Doctor Who. The final serial of the 17th century, Shada was in the process of filming when the BBC’s technicians went on strike. With 50% of the serial filmed, production was suspended and eventually canceled.

Afterwards, Shada developed a legendary reputation. It was often described as being a potential masterpiece, despite the fact that Season 17 was not one of Doctor Who‘s best. Footage of the Doctor and Romana visiting Cambridge was widely released and even used in The Five Doctors. The footage itself did look good but that was because it was mostly just Tom Baker and Lalla Ward relaxing and trading funny quips. There was very little of the actual plot to be found in those scenes.

Finally, in 2017, Shada aired. Animation was used for the unfilmed sequences and a white-haired Tom Baker even returned to shoot some new linking scenes. Shada was finally broadcast in the U.S. And, it wasn’t bad. It may not have been the masterpiece that so many assumed it would be but it was certainly an improvement on The Creature From The Pit, Nightmare on Eden, and the Horns of Nimon.

The Doctor and Romana travel to Cambridge to help out another timelord, Prof. Chronitis (Denis Carey). After Chronitis is apparently killed, The Doctor and Romana discover that space criminal Skagra (Christopher Neame) is seeking a Time Lord named Salyavin who is somewhere on the prison planet, Shada. Things get muddled once the Doctor actually travels to Shada but the Cambridge scenes are a definite highlight of the serial, a very British diversion for a very British show. Much as with City of Death, the best moments are the ones where Tom Baker and Lalla Ward just get to play off of each other without having to deal with any sort of intergalactic menace. Also, as with City of Death, Douglas Adams would borrows bits and pieces of Shada for Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Agency.

Shada may not have been a masterpiece but it would have been a decent end for the seventeenth season.

Doctor Who — The Daleks (1963-1964, directed by Christopher Barry and Richard Martin)

Posted on October 1, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

It’s easy to forget that Doctor Who was originally meant to be an educational show for children.

When the BBC’s Head of Drama, Sydney Newman, first developed Doctor Who, he envisioned it as being a show in which an eccentric old man known as the Doctor and his granddaughter, Susan, would travel to past eras and meet actual historical figures and witness great events firsthand. Accompanying them would be two teachers, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, who would make sure the kids at home understood what they were watching. While Newman allowed that, in order to keep the kids watching, there would be occasional episodes that would focus more an adventure than learning, he also said that the show would not feature any “bug-eyed monsters.”

The first serial, An Unearthly Child, stayed true to Newman’s concept. After stumbling across the TARDIS while investigating the homelife of their newest pupil, Ian and Barbara found themselves traveling to pre-historic times with The Doctor and Susan. Susan was played by Carole Ann Ford while Ian and Barbara were played by William Russell and Jacqueline Hill. Playing the role of the Doctor was veteran actor William Hartnell. Hartnell was 55 years old when he first played the Doctor but he looked and came across as being much older. He played the Doctor as being a crotchety old man, one who resented being saddled with two new companions and who could be quite rude to those he considered to be his inferior. This was early in the series so there was no talk of Time Lords or anything else that Doctor Who fans now take for granted. Susan even took credit for naming The TARDIS, the Doctor’s time machine that, on the outside, appeared to be a blue police call box.

An Unearthly Child introduced the UK to the Doctor. It got respectable ratings and reviews. Viewed today, it’s also pretty boring and it’s easy to see the limitations in Newman’s original concept. Hartnell plays the Doctor as being so ill-tempered that it was a surprise that he didn’t just jettison Ian and Barbara into space. (I used to watch Doctor Who on PBS with my father. The first episodes that we got were the Tom Baker years, followed by the Peter Davison and the Jon Pertwee episodes. It was only then that PBS started showing the Hartnell episodes. To go from Baker, Davison, and Pertwee to the grouchy Hartnell was indeed jarring.) If the show had continued in the style of An Unearthly Child, it probably would not have lasted for more than two series.

Fortunately, the second serial changed everything.

Written by Terry Nation and originally called The Mutants, the second serial introduced The Daleks, the shrill-voiced cyborgs whose cries of “Exterminate! Exterminate!” made them almost as popular as The Doctor himself. Squid-like creatures who lived in tank-like robotic shells and who spoke in electronic voices, the Daleks lived on the planet Skaro. Centuries of nuclear war against the Thals had left the Daleks mutated and trapped in their shells but they were still obsessed with exterminating all of the Thals and eventually conquering the universe. With their robotic exteriors, the Daleks were bulky and often moved awkwardly. (The recurring joke is that all the Doctor has to do to escape the Daleks is find a staircase.) But because the Daleks were so relentless and so determine to exterminate everyone who wasn’t a Dalek, they were still intimidating. Writer Terry Nation based the Daleks on the Nazis, a comparison that was undoubtedly easy for British audiences in 1963, less than 20 years after the end of World War II, to see.

A seven-episode serial, The Daleks premiered on December 21st, 1963 and ran through February 1st, 1964. While the serial was airing, word spread about The Daleks. The first episode was watched by six million viewers. The seventh and final episode was watched by ten million. Four million people were brought to the show by The Daleks. Sydney Newman may not have wanted bug-eyed monsters on Doctor Who but no one could argue with ratings like that. While the First and the Second Doctor would still have a few strictly historical adventures, The Daleks paved the way for the future of the series. The Daleks would return many times. The cavemen from An Unearthly Child were never seen again.

The Daleks opens with TARDIS materializing on the planet that will later be identified as Skaro. The Doctor and Susan want to explore. Ian and Barbara are upset because they want to go back to 1963. (Ian and Barbara always annoyed me but, of all the companions on the original series. they probably did have the most realistic reaction to being swept up in the Doctor’s adventures.) The Doctor flat-out lies about needing to get mercury to repair the TARDIS and uses it as an excuse to explore a nearby city. Soon, The Doctor, Ian, and Barbara are the prisoners of the Daleks while Susan meets the peaceful Thals in the forest. The Daleks and the Thals have been at war for centuries and it has destroyed their world. The Doctor tries to broker a peace, which just leads to the Daleks killing even more Thals. The Doctor can be excused because this was his first meeting with the Daleks. The Thals should have known better than to trust the people who specifically decided to become cyborgs because they didn’t want to ever have to stop fighting.

Seen today, The Daleks holds up fairly well. At seven episodes, it runs a bit long and, for those of us who grew up with Tom Baker and Peter Davison in the lead role, William Hartnell’s Doctor takes some getting used to. The nonstop bickering between The Doctor and Ian gets old quickly. The Thals are almost too naive to be believed.

But the Daleks themselves remain a brilliant creation and, even when seen in grainy, black-and-white, it is easy to understand why they became a phenomenon. Their relentless determination to destroy and exterminate make them intimidating but what really stands out about the Daleks is how forthright they are about what they want. It’s not just that the Daleks want to exterminate you. It’s that they’ll tell you that they want to exterminate you, as if it’s the most reasonable desire that any creature could have. (One reason why The Thals are so unsympathetic is that they keep falling for Dalek tricks, despite the Daleks being pretty honest about their hatred of the Thals.) From the minute that the Daleks make their first appearance, cornering Barbara in their city, they give Doctor Who a jolt of energy that it very much needed.

This serial ends with The Doctor convinced that the Daleks have been destroyed and will no longer be a threat. Of course, The Doctor had never been so wrong. The Daleks would return and Doctor Who would never be the same.