Doctor Who — The Deadly Assassin (1976, directed by David Maloney)

Posted on October 15, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Having had a vison of the President of the Time Lords being assassinated, the Doctor returns to his home planet to prevent it from happening. Instead, he ends up framed for the crime. The Doctor insists that he is innocent and then announces that he will be a candidate for the presidency. Under Time Lord law, a candidate for president cannot be prosecuted for any crimes in the run up to the election.

The Doctor’s investigation leads him into the Matrix, a virtual reality world that is the collection of all the Time Lords’s consciousnesses. He discovers that the assassination was actually masterminded by The Master (Peter Pratt, replacing the late Roger Delgado). Having used up all of his previous regenerations, The Master is now a decaying skeletal figure who can barely speaks and wears a black hood. 12 lifetimes of evil appear to have caught up with him. The Master’s plan is steal the black hole nucleus that was captured by the first Time Lod, Rassilon (sorry, Omega!), and use it to give himself a new set of generations. Doing so will also destroy Gallifrey.

This was an important serial for many reasons. It was the first serial to feature The Doctor on his own, with no other companions. Having a companion usually gave the Doctor a chance to explain things that might seem strange or alien to the audience at home. For The Deadly Assassin, we learn that Gallifrey has a BBC-like television service that provides coverage of political events and helpfully explains what is happening even though the audience of Time Lords would presumably already know. The Doctor also spends a good deal of time talking to himself. Normally, that could have been awkward but Tom Baker was a great talker and very good at handling solo conversations. This serial also fully introduced us to Time Lord politics and featured the first appearance of the Doctor’s former teacher, Borusa (Angus MacKay). Finally, and most importantly, it featured the return of the show’s greatest villain, The Master. The Master hadn’t been seen since Roger Delgado’s tragic death in 1973.

The Deadly Assassin was one of the more violent of the Doctor Who stories. The President was assassinated. Time Lord anchorman Runcible (Hugh Walters) ended up with a dagger in his back. The Master’s ally, Chancellor Goth (Bernard Horsfall), attempted to drown the Doctor in The Matrix. After receiving outraged letters from parents, the BBC actually edited out the scene of Goth holding the Doctor’s head underwater from rebroadcasts. The Deadly Assassin was also one of the scarier serials of the classic era. The Master was truly a frightening figure with his raspy voice and his burned-out, skeletal appearance.

I’ve always liked The Deadly Assassin. It features a genuinely interesting story and Tom Baker gives one of his best performances. (Baker had specifically asked to do one serial without a companion.) The serial’s cynical view of politics almost made it ahead of its time. The Deadly Assassin ends with The Doctor being told that he’s won the election and that he is now President of the Time Lords. He’s also told that it’s far too early for him to even think of resigning. Of course, the Doctor makes a run for his TARDIS.

Film Review: The Shoes of The Fisherman (dir by Michael Anderson)

Posted on January 5, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1968 film, The Shoes of The Fisherman, opens in a snowy Siberian labor camp. For the past twenty years, this camp has been the home of Kiril Pavlovich Lakota (Anthony Quinn), the Ukrainian archbishop of Liviv. Kiril is unexpectedly released by Russia’s new leader, Piotr Ilyich Kamenev (a very British Laurence Olivier). After explaining to Kiril that Russia and China are on the verge of nuclear war due to a famine that has been instigated by U.S. sanctions, Kamenev tells Kiril that he is being released on the condition that he tell no one about the conditions at the Russian labor camp. Kiril starts to protest just for Father Telemond (Oskar Werner), the Vatican’s representative, to say that the conditions have already been agreed to.

In Rome, Kiril meets the Pope (John Gielgud), who makes the humble Kiril a cardinal, over Kiril’s objections that he just a “simple man.” Later, when the aged Pope suddenly dies, Kiril is unexpectedly elected, as a compromise candidate, to succeed him. Still humble and considering himself to be a simple man with a simple mission, Kiril suddenly finds himself as one of the most revered and powerful men on the planet. With Father Telemond as his secretary, Kiril tries to make the Vatican responsive to the needs of the people and sets out to bring peace between the Russians and the Chinese. That turns out to be easier said than done, especially when Telemond himself is eventually accused of heresy for his progressive views.

(And yes, Telemond is a Jesuit….)

The Shoes of the Fisherman is a type of film that should be familiar to anyone who has any knowledge of the Hollywood studios in the 60s. It’s the type of big and self-serious film that was meant to tell audiences, “You won’t find anything this opulent and important on television!” The cast is designed to appeal to everyone. Anthony Quinn and Laurence Olivier are there for the older viewers (especially the older viewers who made up the majority of the Oscar voters in 1968) while, for the younger voters, there’s handsome Oskar Werner as a Jesuit who interpretation of the Gospels is so radical that even Pope Francis would probably tell him to step back a little. For the older, anti-communist viewers, there are scenes that portray the harsh conditions at a Siberian labor camp. The commies put Kiril in prison so he must be one of the good guys. And for the younger, more liberal viewers, there was the suggestion that the threat of World War III was largely due to the actions of the American government. And, just in case there was still anyone who thought that television was preferable to a prestige picture, TV star David Janssen shows up as a cynical reporter whose wife (played by Barbara Jefford) is a doctor who Kiril helps to get some medicine for one of her dying patients. Director Michael Anderson includes enough sudden zoom shots to let younger viewers know that he’s with them while still directing in a stately enough manner to appeal to the older viewers.

The end result is a film that is big and grand but also rather slow. The film gets bogged down in subplots that don’t really add much to the overall story. We spend way too much time with the reporter and his wife. Anthony Quinn does a good enough job as Kiril, giving a rather subdued performance by Quinn standards. (A scene where Kiril recites a Jewish prayer for a dying man is wonderfully acted by Quinn, who seems to truly be emotionally invested in the film’s message of togetherness.) Laurence Olivier is not at all convincing as a Russian but still, he has the stately bearing of a man used to being in power. Like many of the studio productions of the late 60s, The Shoes of The Fisherman tries a bit too hard to strike a balance between old school Hollywood and the counterculture and the film ultimately feels rather wishy-washy as a result. It’s a noble film with good intentions but it’s not particularly memorable.