Tag Archives: John Leeson

Doctor Who — The Leisure Hive, Meglos, Full Circle, State of Decay, Warrior’s Gate, The Keeper of Traken, Logopolis

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The 18th season of Doctor Who started with the show getting a new producer, John Nathan-Turner.  Depending on who you ask, Nathan-Turner was either the best or the worst thing that ever happened to Doctor Who.  He pushed the series away from what he felt was the “silliness” of the previous season and, in doing so, he alienated both Tom Baker and Lalla Ward.  (Ward was close friends with Douglas Adams, whom Nathan-Turner blamed for turning the show silly.)  Nathan-Turner pushed for more serious stories and for better production values.  He also hated K-9, which upset a lot of younger viewers.  My personal feeling is that Nathan-Turner was not a good producer for Tom Baker’s Doctor but he was a great producer for Peter Davison’s interpretation of the character.  As for the Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy years, let’s keep things cheery and not go there.

By the end of the 18th season, Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, and John Leeson (the voice of K-9) had left the show.  Completing my look back at Doctor Who, here are Tom Baker’s final serials.

The Leisure Hive (1980, directed by Lovett Bickford)

John Nathan-Turner hated K-9.  If there was any doubt about that, consider that his first serial as the show’s producer opens with the Doctor and Romana on holiday Brighton.  K-9, for some reason, rolls out to the ocean and explodes, taking him out of commission until the Doctor can rebuild him.

Personally, I would have been happy if this entire serial had just been Tom Baker and Lalla Ward on that beach in Brighton.  Nathan-Turner may not have been a fan of the Doctor and Romana working together by Baker and Ward but viewers like me definitely disagreed.  Alas, it is not to be.  Romana wants a real holiday (Brighton, in a reminder of just how British Doctor Who really was, doesn’t count) so she and the Doctor and the remains of K-9 go to the leisure planet of Argolis.  Unfortunately, Argolis is having financial problems and is at risk of being taken over by the Foamai.  When the Doctor is framed for a strangulation murder that was committed with a scarf, he is forced to stand trial and become an experimental test subject.

It’s an okay start for Season 18, though Tom Baker, for the first time since taking over the role of the Doctor, was starting to look disinterested.  John Nathan-Turner was eager to get away from the “silliness” of the previous season but, ironically, a story set on a leisure planet and featuring an intergalactic crime syndicate would have very much benefitted by Douglas Adams’s sense of humor.

Meglos (1980, directed by Terence Dudley)

The Doctor is asked to help broker a peace between two warring planets.  Unfortunately, Meglos — a sentient cactus — traps the TARDIS in a time loop and then plots to thwart the peace.

When viewers think of this serial, they usually remember Meglos taking on the form of the Doctor and Tom Baker wearing makeup that made him look like a humanoid cactus.  That’s because the plot is nothing special, though I do appreciate that we finally got to see what it’s like to be stuck in a time loop.  Jacqueline Hill, who played Barbara when the serial first began, appears as Lexa, a high priestess of the planet Tigella.

Full Circle (1980, directed by Peter Grimwade)

Having been ordered to return Romana to Gallifrey, the Doctor instead materializes on a swampy plant that is located where Gallifrey should be.  The TARDIS has slipped into E-Space, a small pocket universe.  As for the planet that they’ve landed on, it’s inhabited by swamp monsters, a group a humans who live around a crashed starliner, and a mad scientist.

The idea of E-Space was an interesting one and Lalla Ward gives one of her strongest performances of the series, as Romana is briefly possessed in this episode.  Unfortunately, this episode also introduced Adric (Matthew Waterhouse), an annoying child genius who became the Doctor’s newest companion.  Adric was one of the least popular of John Nathan-Turner’s additions to Doctor Who.  A few seasons later, Adric would be blown up while fighting the Cybermen and there would not be a dry eye in the house.

Tom Baker, unhappy with Nathan-Turner’s ideas and annoyed with Waterhouse decided to leave the role while filming this serial.  Waterhouse reportedly cursed at Baker while filming one scene.  They should have left the little punk behind just for doing that.

State of Decay (1980, directed by Peter Moffatt)

Still trapped in E-Space, The TARDIS materializes on a planet where the villagers live under the shadow of a dark tower. Ruled over by three cruel lords, Zargo, Camilla, and Aukon, the villagers are forced to regularly sacrifice their young to appease their rulers. The Doctor, Romana, K-9, and Adric investigate and discover that Zargo, Camilla, and Aukon are vampires! After being defeated by the Time Lords, the vampires retreated into E-Space, where they found a new planet to rule. Of course, that little tosser Adric wants to become a vampire. Why Romana and the Doctor didn’t leave Adric behind on the vampire planet, I’ll never understand.

Even the weaker seasons of Doctor Who usually featured at least one classic serial and, in the case of Season 18, it was State of Decay.  For all of the justified criticisms of John Nathan-Turner time as producer, he did make an attempt to improve the show’s production design and it paid off with this atmospheric serial that paid homage to the great vampire films while also retaining its Doctor Who identity.  Tom Baker seems to be rejuvenated by the clever script and he and Lalla Ward’s chemistry is allowed to shine.  K-9 even gets to do something other than getting kicked around.  State of Decay is a Doctor Who classic.

Warrior’s Gate (1981, directed by Paul Joyce and Graeme Haper)

Still trying to escape E-space, the TARDIS materializes on a similarly trapped spaceship that is run by Captain Rorvik (Clifford Rose).  Learning that the ship is carrying an enslaved race known as the Tharils, the Doctor set them free.  The Tharils help the Doctor reenter N-Space.  However, Romana decides to stay behind to help the Tharils.  The Doctor gives her K-9 and then leaves with Adric.  The Doctor should have left Adric behind too.

This was Lalla Ward’s final episode and both she and Romana deserved a better send-off.  Romana deciding to disobey the Time Lords, I can understand.  Leaving the Doctor, even to help the Tharils, doesn’t seem like something Romana would have done.  John Nathan-Turner finally got his wish, though.  K-9 stayed with Romana.  What are Romana and K-9 going to do in an alternative universe?  They don’t even have a TARDIS.

The only highlight of this episode was Clifford Rose’s manic performance as Captain Rorvik.  Otherwise, it was a forgettable send-off for two great companions.

The Keeper of Traken (1981, directed by John Black)

The Doctor and annoying Adric are summoned to the planet Traken, where the Master (Geoffrey Beevers) is attempting to capture a power source that will give him a new set of regenerations.  (The Master doesn’t look as badly decayed here as he did during The Deadly Assassin.)  With the help of the Keeper of Traken, Tremas (Anthony Ainley), and Tremas’s lovely daughter Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), the Doctor is able to stop the Master.  However, as soon as the Doctor leaves, the Master emerges from a long clock and somehow merges with Tremas’s body, giving him a new set of regenerations.

Despite the presence of Adric, this is not a bad story.  The Master makes his return and, in the final minutes of the serial, Anthony Ainley takes over the role.  Ainley would play The Master for the rest of the original show’s run.  While Ainley’s Master was always more cartoonishly evil than Roger Delgado’s, he still proved to be a worthy adversary for the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctors.

Logopolis (1981, directed by Peter Grimwade)

This is it.  This is final serial to feature Tom Baker as the Doctor.  Things start with the Doctor materializing the Tardis around an actual police box in an effort to fix his chameleon circuit.  The Master then materializes his TARDIS around the Doctor’s.  It all fun and games until the universe starts to unravel and the Doctor sacrifices his life while literally holding space and time together.  Along the way, the Doctor gets two new companions, Nyssa (who has been traveling with the Master under the impression that he’s her father) and Teagan (Janet Fielding), an outspoken Australian flight attendant who entered the TARDIS thinking that it was a police call box.

Whatever else you might want to say about season 18, it gave Tom Baker a fitting send-off.  After seven years of saving civilizations and planets, the Fourth Doctor finally saved the entire universe.  Perhaps knowing how traumatized viewers would be to see the Fourth Doctor die, this episode featured Peter Davison (familiar to viewers as Tristan Sebring from All Creatures Great And Small) as the Watcher, a mysterious figure who merged with the Doctor at the end of the serial and turned out to be his Fifth Incarnation.

I had hoped to discuss some of the Fifth Doctor’s adventures this October but time has caught up with me.  (It’s a pity because Peter Davison more than made the role of the Doctor his own and several of his serials — Kinda, Snakedance, and Enlightenment to name just three — are worthy of being considered classics.)  For me, as someone who to watch Tom Baker’s Doctor on PBS while growing up, this does seem like the right place to stop.

For now.

Doctor Who — The Ribos Operation, The Pirate Planet, The Stones of Blood, The Androids of Tara, The Power of Kroll, The Armageddon Factor

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The sixteenth season of Doctor Who featured the usual six serials but, for once, they were all a part of a much bigger story.  Season 16 would open with the Doctor being assigned to find the six segments of the Key of Time and it would end with an appearance from Lalla Ward, who would not only play one of the Doctor’s companion but who would (albeit briefly) become a companion to Tom Baker himself.

The Ribos Operation (1978, directed by George Spenton-Foster)

The Ribos Operation begins with the White Guardian (Cyril Luckham) materializing in the TARDIS.  He has come to give the Doctor (Tom Baker) and K-9 (voiced by John Leeson) a mission.  The balance of the universe is maintained by the White Guardian and the Black Guardian.  The balance is at risk of collapsing unless the Doctor can track down the six segments of the Key of Time.  Each segment has been hidden on a different planet, disguised as something native to that world.  The White Guardian gives the Doctor a locater to help him find each planet.  He also gives the Doctor a new assistant, a Time Lady named Romanadvoratrelundar (Mary Tamm).  The Doctor calls her Romana.

And so stars the Key of Time saga.  As played by Mary Tamm, Romana was a new type of assistant for the Doctor.  As a fellow Time Lord (though referred to as being a “Time Lady” because this serial was filmed in 1978), Romana has just as much knowledge as the Doctor and she does not view him with the awe that other companions viewed him.  The sophisticated and almost haughty Romana is not with the Doctor for adventure.  She is there to complete their assignment.

Their first mission takes them to the icy planet Ribos and finds them getting involved with a scheme by a human named Garron (Ian Cuthbertson) to sell the largely worthless planet to an exiled tyrant named Graff Vynda-K (Paul Seed).  (In this case, “operation” means swindle.)  When Graff discovers that he’s been cheated, he comes after both Garron and the Doctor.

The Ribos Operation is an enjoyable story.  Graff is a great megalomaniacal villain and I liked the idea of trying to trick him into buying a worthless planet.  It was the future equivalent of selling swampland.  Mary Tamm also makes a strong impression as Romana.  The Key to Time saga got off to a good start.

As for the first segment of the Key to Time, it was a piece of the fake crown jewels of Ribos.

The Pirate Planet (1978, directed by Pennant Roberts)

The Doctor and Romana are next directed to a planet called Calufrax that is known for being cold and boring.  When they land, they find themselves in an apparent paradise.  It turns out that they are actually on a hollowed-out planet called Zanak that materializes around other planets and, in the style of Galactus, plunder their resources.  Zanak is apparently controlled by the one-eyed Captain (Bruce Purchase) but the Doctor and Romana discover that it is actually the Captain’s nurse (Rosalind Lloyd) who is calling the shots.

The Pirate Planet is famous for being one of the serials written by Douglas Adams.  The loud but stupid Captain and his long-suffering assistant, Mr. Fibuli (Andrew Robertson), certainly do seem like they would be at home in one of Adams’s novels and the story overall has more humor than even the typical Tom Baker episode.  It’s a clever script, though and both Purchase and Robertson give good performances as the two pirates.

The entire planet of Calufrax turns out to be a segment of the Key to Time.  When I first saw this episode as a kid, that struck me as being very weird.  It still seems weird but that’s Doctor Who.

The Stones of Blood (1978, directed by Darrol Blake)

The Doctor, Romana, and K-9 are brought to modern-day Cornwall, where Prof. Emilia Rumford (Beatrix Lehmann) and her friend Vivien Fay (Susan Engel) are studying a stone circle.  For the first two episodes of this serial, it appears that the main villains are going to be a group of modern-day druids but it turns out that the stones are actually aliens who feed on blood, and Vivien Fay is a galactic war criminal named Cessair and that she has stolen the Great Seal of Diplos, which also happens to be the third segment of the Key of Time.

This serial sees the Doctor returning to Earth for the first time since Image of Fendahl.  The first two episodes have an almost gothic horror feel to them before the serial heads in a different, more intergalactic direction during its second half.  In a clever twist, it turns out that the “stones of blood” were actually just red herrings.  After spending four episodes convincing the viewers that the key would be one of the stones, it instead turned out to be the Great Seal of a planet that no one had ever heard of.  This was another enjoyable serial, featuring a memorable villainess and a clever story.

The Androids of Tara (1978, directed by Michael Hayes)

Romana finds the next segment within minutes of landing on the planet Tara but the Doctor wants to take a break and do some fishing.  While he is doing that, Romana is attacked by a bear and rescued by Count Grendel (Peter Jeffrey).  Grendel takes Romana back to his castle, where he soon reveals that he’s not as kind as he seems.

The Androids of Tara is an adventure story that takes place on a planet where a feudal society is matched with androids and electronic weapons.  This episode gives Mary Tamm quite a lot to do as she plays not only Romana but also the Taran Princess Strella and the android versions of Strella and Romana.  Grendel hopes to marry Romana-as-Strella and become the ruler of Grendel.  The Doctor, along with Price Reynart (Neville Jason) and the swordsmen Zadek (Simon Lack) and Farrah (Paul Lavers), works to rescue Romana.  The Doctor even fights a duel with Grendel.

The Androids of Tara is a bit silly but it’s all in good fun.  Tom Baker seems to enjoy playing the swashbuckler and Peter Jeffrey, a familiar character actor, is an appropriately melodramatic villain.  This serial allows Mary Tamm her chance in the spotlight and she makes the most of it, reminding us that Romana could be just as strong as the Doctor.

The Power of Kroll (1978-1979, directed by Norman Stewart)

The TARDIS travels to a swamp planet where a crew of humans are running a methane refinery and the planet’s inhabitants (called Swampies, by the humans) worship a giant squid named Kroll.  Kroll is giant because it ate a segment of the Key of Time.  Kroll attacks both humans and Swampies until the Doctor manages to extract the Key of Time.  Kroll explodes and, since Kroll was also the main source of methane on the planet, the refinery closes.

This serial made the mistake of focusing on Kroll.  Like so many Doctor Who giant monsters, Kroll is not at all convincing.  That and some poor acting from the guest cast and a largely humorless script all combine to make this the most forgettable part of the Key to Time saga.

The Armageddon Factor (1979, directed by Michael Hayes)

The search for the final segment leads the TARDIS to the warring plants of Atrios and Zeos.  Atrios and Zeos have both been scarred by nuclear weapons.  Princess Astra (Lalla Ward) of Atrios wants end the war but the fanatical Marshal (John Woodvine) is determined to continue the war.  A mysterious figure known as The Shadow (William Squire) steals the TARDIS and abducts Princess Astra, who is revealed to also be the sixth segment of the Key of Time.  The Shadow is working for the Black Guardian (Valentine Dyall).  In pursuing The Shadow, the Doctor meets yet another renegade Time Lord and classmate, Drax (Barry Jackson).

The Armageddon Factor is about two episodes too long and is often needlessly complicated but there were a few clever moments, like the discovery that Zeos was no longer inhabited by humans and that the missiles were being launched by a super computer.  (K-9 was able to communicate with it and broker a peace.)  For viewers of the series, The Armageddon Factor is best-remembered for introducing Lalla Ward.  Dissatisfied with the way Romana was developing, Mary Tamm announced that she was leaving at the end of the season.  When Romana regenerated in the following season, she ended up looking a lot like Princess Astra of Atrios.

Doctor Who — The Invisible Enemy, Image of the Fendahl, The Sun Makers, Underworld, The Invasion of Time

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Having survived the Horror of Fang Rock, the Doctor and Leela resumed traveling through space and time.  Along the way, they picked up a new companion named K-9.  Here is the rest of the fifteenth century, which began in a British lighthouse and ended on Gallifrey.

The Invisible Enemy (1977, directed by Derrick Goodwin)

This the one where K-9 makes his first appearance.

As a story, The Invisible Enemy is no great shakes.  The Doctor (Tom Baker) and Leela (Louise Jameson) materialize on a spaceship that has been infected by a sentient virus.  Everyone, except for Leela, gets infected.  The virus wants the Doctor to lead an infection of the entire universe.  When the virus orders the Doctor to kill Leela, he breaks free from its control.  He and Leela go to a space medical center, where Prof. Marinus (Frederick Jaeger) uses Leela’s natural immunity to help create a cure for the virus.  At one point, the Doctor and Leela are cloned and the clones are injected into the Doctor to fight the virus.  It’s a fantastic voyage for all.

Prof. Marinus’s assistant is a boxy robot dog named K-9 (voice by John Leeson).  Since Marinus has to go back to Earth, he gives K-9 to The Doctor and Leela as a gift.

How you feel about K-9 says a lot about how you will feel about the remainder of Tom Baker’s time as the Doctor.  Some fans consider the introduction of K-9 to be the show’s jump the shark moment.  A lot more, myself included, have always liked K-9 and view him — along with the sonic screwdriver — as being an essential part of the original show’s charm.  Love him or hate him, K-9, who come figure out any puzzle and who could shoot a loser from his nose, became one of the most recognizable symbols of the Tom Baker years.

Image of the Fendahl (1977, Directed by George-Spenton Foster)

The Doctor and Leela are drawn back to modern-day Earth, where scientists, witches, and cultists are all being influenced by skull that is estimated to be at least twelve million years old.  The scientists assume that the skull is human but actually, it’s the skull of a Fendahl, a race of psychic vampires who developed on the legendary “Fifth Planet.”  The Time Lords tried to destroy the Fendahl but one escaped in the form of a skull.  It first killed all the life on Mars.  (But what about the Ice Warriors and the Pyramids?  Doctor Who continuity rarely added up.)  Then it landed on Earth, where it influenced human evolution to create a race that it could use to its own advantage.

Image of the Fendahl feels like a spiritual descendant of The Daemons, with the same emphasis on rural British atmosphere and paganism (Leela teams up with a white witch) but without the assurance of UNIT waiting on the sidelines to take care of the threat.  Image of the Fendahl, with its suggestion that humanity was specifically developed to be food, is considerably darker than The Daemons and Tom Baker, so often criticized for playing up the humor of the Doctor’s character, gives one of his more serious performances.  When one of the scientists who has been possessed by Fendahl seeks to kill himself and bring an end to the threat, the Doctor hands him a gun.

Image of the Fendahl is yet another Doctor Who serial in which the main threat is revealed be the result of the Time Lords meddling.  The Fourth Doctor spent a lot of time cleaning up Gallifrey’s messes.

The Sun Makers (1977, directed by Pennant Roberts)

The Doctor, Leela, and K-9 materialize on Pluto, where they discover that colonists and workers are expected to pay exorbitant taxes to the Company or risk being exiled to the Undercity.  The Company’s tax collector is the Controller, who turns out to be a quivering mass of seaweed.

The Sun Makers is Doctor Who at its most satirical, poking fun at the British tax system.  Apparently, the original script was much more pointed in its attacks on the Inland Revenue services but the BBC, being the BBC, demanded that the script be watered down.  In human form, the Controller still clearly resembles Denis Healey, the then-Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The Sun Makers is Doctor Who at its most straight-forward, an enjoyable diversion from the more serious episodes.

Underworld (1978, directed by Norman Stewart)

The TARDIS materializes on the R1C, a spaceship that has been on a millennia-long quest to find a missing ship that was on its away to Minyos 2 and which contained the genetic files of the original Minyans who lived on Minyos 1.

This is another story where the Doctor has to deal with the bad decisions of the Time Lords.  Before adapting their policy of non-intervention, the Time Lords meddles in Minyan evolution and the end result was that the Minyans viewed the Time Lords as gods and the Minyans also used all of the Time Lord technology that they had been given to fight a civil war.  The Doctor feels a responsibility to help the crew of R1C complete their quest.

The R1C eventually ends up going through a space nebula and crashing into a planetoid, where they discover the ship they were searching for.  The crew of the ship is being used as slaves by the Oracle, a super computer.

Underworld is one of the more boring of the Fourth Doctor’s serials.  The story feels slapdash and the idea of a supercomputer was a well that the Doctor Who had already gone to far too many times.

The Invasion of Time (1978, directed by Gerald Blake)

The Doctor returns to Gallifrey and assumes his position as President of the Time Lords.  He also seems to go through a total personality change, exiling Leela and announcing that a group of psychic aliens known as the Vardans will be the new masters of Gallifrey.

Leela, even after being exiled, is convinced that this is all a part of some plan on the Doctor’s part and it turns out that she’s right.  The Doctor is only pretending to be allied with the Vardans so that he can discover the location of their planet and put them into a time loop.  What the Doctor does not realize is that the Vardans are themselves being used by the Sontarans, who are planning on invading Gallifrey.

In retrospect, it seems inevitable that the 15th season would end on Gallifrey.  It also seems inevitable that the Sontarans would eventually try to invade Gallifrey.  The main threat of the Sontarans has always been that they are so stupid that they will try to invade any planet.  The most surprising thing about this serial is that Leela stays behind on Gallifrey so that she can marry Andred (Chris Tanchrell), the head of the Citadel Guard.  The idea of Leela living with the Time Lords has been responsible for a lot of fan fiction and it does seem unfortunate that the show didn’t do more with the idea.

Louise Jameson had already decided to leave the show and originally, Leela was to die while fighting the Sontarans.  This was changed because it was felt Leela’s death would be too traumatic for younger viewers.  Instead, the younger viewers were traumatized by K-9 announcing that he would be staying on Gallifrey with Leela and Andred.  Luckily, for them, the final shot of the fifteen season was The Doctor looking at a crate labeled “K-9 Mark II” and smiling.

Little did the Doctor suspect that the quest for the Key of Time was waiting in his future.