Category: Doctor Who

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Classic Season 17 Doctor Who

The Horns Of Nimon – Part 4

Doctor WhoRomana emerges from the transmat pod on the planet Crinoth, and is immediately surrounded by more Nimon…until she finds that she’s not the only one on Crinoth who isn’t a Nimon. Sezom, Soldeed’s predecessor, has been trapped here, and has spent years evading the Nimon on their home planet – a ruined husk of a world that they now seek to escape by invading another world. Sezom helps her get back to the pod and return to Skonnos. Soldeed has now learned that the Nimon lied when it claimed to be the last of its race, but in the course of trying to do the Nimon’s bidding, accidentally sets the Nimon’s power systems to overload. The Doctor and friends must now rely on K-9 to help them find their way out of the maze before the Nimon complex destroys itself.

Order this story on DVDDownload this episodewritten by Anthony Read
directed by Kenny McBain
music by Dudley Simpson

Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Lalla Ward (Romana), David Brierly (voice of K9), Simon Gipps-Kent (Seth), Janet Ellis (Teka), Graham Crowden (Soldeed), Michael Osborne (Sorak), Malcolm Terris (Co-pilot), Bob Hornery (Pilot), Clifford Norgate (Nimon voices), John Bailey (Sezom), Robin Sherringham, Bob Appleby, Trevor St. John Hacker (Nimon)

Notes: The Nimon return to do battle with the Doctor in the Big Finish audio story Seasons Of Fear. The eleventh Doctor would encounter a species related to the Nimon in The God Complex (2011). Though intended to be followed by the six-part story Shada, The Horns Of Nimon was the final season 17 episode to be broadcast, and therefore marks the end of producer Graham Williams’ tenure, as well as being the final use in the original series of Delia Derbyshire’s arrangement of the theme music, which had been opening each episode of Doctor Who since 1963, sometimes in edited and lightly remixed forms. (It would next be heard at the beginning of The Day Of The Doctor (2013). This is also composer Dudley Simpson’s final musical contribution to the series for which he had been creating music since 1964’s Planet Of Giants.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 18 Doctor Who

The Leisure Hive

Doctor WhoThe Doctor and Romana, after an unsuccessful attempt at a Brighton vacation, pay a visit to the war-torn planet Argolis. Laid to waste by a war between the native Argolins and the reptilian Foamasi, Argolis is now not much more than a deadly environment whose sole artificial structure – the Leisure Hive – is a holiday resort with an anti-war theme. The Argolins themselves are sterile, and have been sponsoring tachyon experiments conducted by a human named Hardin. Hardin boasts that he can use tachyonics to reverse the aging process of the Argolins, but in truth he’s nowhere close to that goal. The arrival of two Time Lords seems to coincide with a wave of violence, including a man who appears to have been strangled with the Doctor’s scarf. But the presence of two seasoned time travelers also threatens to unravel a plan to sell the defective tachyon technology to the Argolins…and the Doctor and Romana soon become targets themselves. To make matters worse, the brash young son of the Argolins’ leader has plans to lift his people from a dying, pacifist race to conquerors of the galaxy.

Season 18 Regular Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Lalla Ward (Romana), Matthew Waterhouse (Adric), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Janet Fielding (Tegan), John Leeson (voice of K9)

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by David Fisher
directed by Lovett Bickford
music by Peter Howell

Guest Cast: Adrienne Corri (Mena), David Haig (Pangol), Laurence Payne (Morix), John Collin (Brock), Nigel Lambert (Hardin), Martin Fisk (Vargos), David Allister (Stimson), Ian Talbot (Klout), Andrew Lane (Chief Foamasi), Roy Montague (Argolin Guide), Harriet Reynolds (Tannoy voice), Clifford Norgate (Generator voice), David Bulbeck, David Korff, James Muir (Foamasi), Alys Dyer (Baby)

Original Title: The Argolins

Broadcast from August 30 through September 20, 1980

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 18 Doctor Who

Meglos

Doctor WhoA power crisis in the underground habitat of the planet Tigella revives an age-old debate between science and religion. Tigella’s scientists want to examine their power source, the otherworldly Dodecahedron, more closely to see if it can help to avert the impending crisis that would force the Tigellans back to their planet’s uninhabitable surface. But the planet’s religious faction, led by Lexa, refuses to allow anyone access to the Dodecahedron, which they claim is a sacred relic. Zastor, Tigella’s leader, comes up with an unorthodox compromise: call for the Doctor’s help. But just as the TARDIS responds to the call, another plan is set into motion: Meglos, the last surviving member of the cactus-like Zolpha-Thuran race, has enlisted the aid of Gaztak pirates to take over the physical form of a hapless human. Once Meglos has this ability, he uses it to impersonate the Doctor, go to neighboring Tigella, and steal the Dodecahedron for himself. To ensure that the real Doctor doesn’t interfere with his plan, he traps the TARDIS in a chronic hysteresis – a time loop – from which the Doctor and Romana have to devise an ingenious escape. But by the time the real Time Lords arrive, the damage is done – the Dodecahedron is missing, and the Doctor is arrested for the gravest crime possible on Tigella.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by John Flanagan & Andrew McCulloch
directed by Terence Dudley
music by Peter Howell and Paddy Kingsland

Guest Cast: Edward Underdown (Zastor), Jacqueline Hill (Lexa), Crawford Logan (Deedrix), Colette Gleeson (Caris), Bill Fraser (Grugger), Frederick Treves (Brotadac), Simon Shaw (Tigellan Guard), Christopher Owen (Earthling)

Notes: This marks the only time that a former companion has returned to televised Doctor Who in a completely different role. Jacqueline Hill was one of the three original TARDIS travelers, Barbara Wright, in the earliest seasons of the series. Guest star Bill Fraser made himself infamous by claiming, during the publicity for Meglos, that he only took the part of General Grugger on the condition that he would get to kick K-9 onscreen. Apparently he was such a good adversary for the robot dog that he took on K-9 without the Doctor around to stop him in K-9 & Company.

Original Title: The Last Zolfa-Thuran

Broadcast from September 27 through October 18, 1980

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 18 Doctor Who

Full Circle

Doctor WhoThe Doctor and Romana are en route back to Gallifrey when something strange happens to the TARDIS. Though it takes time for them to realize it, the TARDIS has fallen through a kind of wormhole into the alternate universe of E-space. Instead of Gallifrey, the Doctor has arrived on Alzarius, a planet whose small humanoid population is threatened by the onset of a deadly mist. During the time of mistfall, legend has it that spiders emerge from the indigenous fruit and deadly creatures appear. A troubled kid named Adric is trapped outside during mistfall, but stumbles into the TARDIS and befriends the Doctor and Romana. The Doctor soon finds that the horrific creatures that roam Alzarius during mistfall are more closely related to the besieged humanoids than either party realizes.

Download this episodewritten by Andrew Smith
directed by Peter Grimwade
music by Paddy Kingsland

Guest Cast: Richard Willis (Varsh), Bernard Padden (Tylos), June Page (Keara), James Bree (Nefred), Alan Rowe (Garif), Leonard Maguire (Draith), George Baker (Login), Tony Calvin (Dexeter), Norman Bacon (Marsh child), Andrew Forbes (Omril), Adrian Gibbs (Rysik), Barney Lawrence, Steve Kelly, Stephen Calcutt, Keith Guest, Graham Cole, James Jackson, Steven Watson (Marshmen)

Broadcast from October 25 through November 15, 1980

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 18 Doctor Who

State Of Decay

Doctor WhoStill trapped in E-Space, the Doctor, Romana, K-9 and – unbeknownst to them – stowaway Adric arrive on a planet whose nomadic people live in deference to a trio of well-dressed royals – but their rulers are, in fact, vampires who worship an even more powerful vampire known as the Great One. The Doctor knows of the Great One too, recalling passages of ancient Gallifreyan history involving a pitch battle between Rassilon and the vampire race. The Doctor also realizes that the pieces are in place here to defeat the Great One once and for all, but before he can put his desperate plan into action, he may have already lost Adric to the vampires.

Download this episodewritten by Terrance Dicks
directed by Peter Moffatt
music by Paddy Kingsland

Guest Cast: William Lindsay (Zargo), Rachel Davies (Camilla), Emrys James (Aukon), Iain Rattray (Habris), Thane Bettany (Tarak), Arthur Hewlett (Kalmar), Stacy Davies (Veros), Clinton Greyn (Ivo), Rhoda Lewis (Marta), Dead Allen (Karl), Stuart Blake (Zoldaz), Stuart Fell (Roga), Alan Chuntz (Guard)

Original Title: The Wasting

Broadcast from November 22 through December 13, 1980

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 18 Doctor Who

Warriors’ Gate

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS is boarded in mid-flight – a virtually unthinkable event – by Biroc, a lion-like Tharil who seems to be on the run from something. He brings the TARDIS to the zero point – an intersection between E-space and N-space that could finally get the Doctor back to his home universe. This is also of interest to Rorvik, the captain of a space freighter carrying a load of Tharil slaves. Rorvik’s ship has been stranded here for some time, and his plans for escaping are growing more desperate and impractical. A mysterious and seemingly ancient gateway appears as space at the zero point begins to fall in upon itself. Romana is determined to free the Tharils from slavery, even if it means missing the chance to escape from E-space… but the Doctor learns the oppressed were once the oppressors, and there may be no justice for either party this time.

Download this episodewritten by Stephen Gallagher
directed by Paul Joyce
music by Peter Howell

Guest Cast: Clifford Rose (Rorvik), Kenneth Cope (Packard), David Weston (Biroc), Jeremy Gittins (Lazlo), Freddie Earle (Aldo), Harry Waters (Royce), David Kincaid (Lane), Vincent Pickering (Sagan), Robert Vowles (Gundan)

Broadcast from January 3 through 24, 1981

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 18 Doctor Who

The Keeper Of Traken

Doctor WhoThe dying Keeper of the harmonious Union of Traken summons the Doctor to help his world as his reign comes to a close. Normally the Keeper would never summon outside help, but in this case an otherworldly evil is slowly preparing to take control of the Union, and otherworldly help will be needed to defeat it. But as betrayals and complacency allow a malignant alien to assume the Keepership – and with it enormous power – the Doctor is slow to realize that this particular adversary is known to him personally. Though he is able to preserve Traken’s people, the Doctor is unaware that his greatest adversary has gained a new lease on life.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Johnny Byrne
directed by John Black
music by Roger Limb

Guest Cast: Anthony Ainley (Tremas), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Sheila Ruskin (Kassia), Denis Carey (The Keeper), John Woodnutt (Seron), Margot Van De Burgh (Katura), Robin Soans (Luvic), Roland Oliver (Neman), Geoffrey Beevers (Melkur)

Broadcast from January 31 through February 21, 1981

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 18 Doctor Who

Logopolis

Doctor WhoAfter he takes complete measurements of a British Police Box, the inspiration for the exterior appearance of the TARDIS, the Doctor plans to visit Logopolis to seek the help of the mathematical geniuses there, whose near-mystic incantations of intricate mathematical formulas actually keep the universe from dying a premature death. Thanks to the interference of the Master, the Doctor becomes trapped, and an Australian stewardess named Tegan wanders into the TARDIS, assuming it to be a real Police Box. The Doctor also receives a distress call from Nyssa, whose father has gone missing on Traken. A mysterious ghostly figure appears and disappears, but the Doctor remains silent as to its identity, and the Master finally emerges from the shadows on Logopolis, poised to destroy the universe by eliminating its guardians. All the while, the TARDIS cloister bell counts down last remaining hours of the Doctor’s fourth life.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Christopher H. Bidmead
directed by Peter Grimwade
music by Paddy Kingsland

Guest Cast: Anthony Ainley (The Master), John Fraser (Monitor), Dolores Whiteman (Aunt Vanessa), Tom Georgeson (Detective Inspector), Christopher Hurst (Security Guard), Ray Knight, Peter Roy, Derek Suthern (Policemen), Robin Squire (Pharos technician)

Broadcast from February 28 through March 21, 1981

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 19 Doctor Who

Castrovalva

Doctor WhoChaos ensues in the wake of the Doctor’s regeneration. Security guards at the Pharos Project arrest Tegan, Nyssa and Adric, who are just beginning to try to comprehend what has happened to the Doctor, let alone help him. They manage to divert the guards and get the Doctor back to the TARDIS, but at the last moment, the Master’s TARDIS appears, blocking Adric’s escape. The Master then disappears again, and Adric returns to help the Doctor, who is trying to find the recuperative Zero Room. Adric has also gotten the TARDIS underway to its next destination – which turns out to be the explosive event which created the Milky Way. The Doctor, still experiencing sudden changes of personality, is barely able to help Tegan and Nyssa evade disaster by jettisoning parts of the TARDIS, and Adric is nowhere to be found. But when the Zero Room is accidentally blasted away in the emergency, the Doctor’s friends must find a place where he can recover. And all too conveniently, the relaxing planet of Castrovalva is at the top of the list.

Season 19 Regular Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Matthew Waterhouse (Adric), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Janet Fielding (Tegan)

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Christopher H. Bidmead
directed by Fiona Cumming
music by Paddy Kingsland

Guest Cast: Anthony Ainley (The Master), Derek Waring (Shardovan), Michael Sheard (Mergrave), Frank Wylie (Ruther), Dallas Cavell (Head of Security), Souska John (Child)

Broadcast from January 4 through 12, 1982

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 19 Doctor Who

Four To Doomsday

Doctor WhoThe Doctor, trying to return Tegan to Heathrow Airport, manages to get the TARDIS to the correct time and date – but in the wrong place, landing aboard a vast spaceship which is slowly making its way toward Earth. The Doctor and his friends eventually meet Monarch, ruler of the alien Urbankans, who are preparing to visit Earth on what Monarch claims is a mission of peace. But it seems that the Urbankans have already paid Earth a visit – representatives of various periods and cultures in the planet’s past. But none of it is real – the “abductees” aren’t really human, and Monarch’s mission is one of conquest, not peace.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Terence Dudley
directed by John Black
music by Roger Limb

Guest Cast: Stratford Johns (Monarch), Philip Locke (Bigon), Paul Shelley (Persuasion), Annie Lambert (Enlightenment), Burt Kwouk (Lin Futu), Illario Bisi Pedro (Kurkutji), Nadia Hammam (Villagra)

Broadcast from January 18 through 26, 1982

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 19 Doctor Who

Kinda

Doctor WhoOn the planet Deva Loka, an investigation team studies the primitive native Kinda people, and are rather alarmed when the Doctor and Adric are rounded up by an automatic security device. The Doctor has brought the TARDIS to Deva Loka so Nyssa can rest and recover from her expeiences aboard Monarch’s ship. Tegan, in a nearby forest, drifts off to sleep and is visited by the Kinda, and her body is inhabited by an evil spirit from their lore, the Mara. The Doctor learns that, pending the final report from the increasingly unstable investigators, the Kinda could be displaced by human colonization of their world…unless all of them are destroyed by the Mara first.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Christopher Bailey
directed by Peter Grimwade
music by Peter Howell

Guest Cast: Richard Todd (Sanders), Nerys Hughes (Todd), Mary Morris (Panna), Simon Rouse (Hindle), Adrian Mills (Aris), Lee Cornes (Trickster), Sarah Prince (Karuna), Anna Wing (Annatta), Roger Milner (Anicca), Jeffrey Stuart (Dukkha)

Broadcast from February 1 through 9, 1982

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 19 Doctor Who

The Visitation

Doctor WhoThe Doctor finally lands the TARDIS at Heathrow – in the 1600s, long before air travel – and immediately becomes the object of hostility from the locals, who fear for their lives since a falling star heralded the coming of a new and virulent plague. They befriend a rogue named Richard Mace, who is helpful as a guide, but is almost useless as a protector when they find an android lurking in an abandoned house. Tegan is stunned and Adric is taken prisoner, while the Doctor, Nyssa and Mace escape. Tegan and Adric are interrogated by a hideously wounded Terrileptil creature, the master of the android, and self-declared destroyer of mankind.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Eric Saward
directed by Peter Moffatt
music by Paddy Kingsland

Guest Cast: Michael Robbins (Richard Mace), Michael Melia, David Summer, Michael Leader (Terileptils), Peter Van Dissel (Android), James Charlton (Miller), John Savident (Squire John), Anthony Calf (Charles), John Baker (Ralph), Valerie Fyfer (Elizabeth), Richard Hampton (Villager), Neil West (Poacher), Eric Dodson (Headman), Jeff Wayne (Scytheman)

Broadcast from February 15 through 23, 1982

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 19 Doctor Who

Black Orchid

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS brings the Doctor and his friends to a railway station in 1925, where a car is waiting for them – and the Doctor seems to be expected by name. He and his companions are taken to Lord Cranleigh’s estate, where the Doctor turns the tide in a game of cricket. But as all the guests prepare for a fancy dress party, the Doctor’s costume is stolen and his curiosity leads him down a hidden passage in the house. By the time the Doctor emerges, he is the prime suspect in at least two murders – and due to his own disappearance into the house’s secret passageways, he has no alibi. Someone in the house does know who the real killer is, but if she tips her hand, other dreadful secrets could destroy the Cranleigh family.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Terence Dudley
directed by Ron Jones
music by Roger Limb

Guest Cast: Vanessa Paine (Ann Talbot), Barbara Murray (Lady Cranleigh), Michael Cochrane (Lord Cranleigh), Gareth Milne (George Cranleigh), Moray Watson (Sir Robert Muir), Ivor Salter (Sergeant Markham), Ahmed Khalil (Latoni), Brian Hawksley (Brewster), Andrew Tourell (Constable Cummings), Timothy Block (Tanner), James Muir (Police driver), Caron Heggie (Ann’s maid), Derek Hunt (Footman), David Wilde (Digby)

Broadcast from March 1 through 2, 1982

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 19 Doctor Who

Earthshock

Doctor WhoA 26th century geological expedition is ambushed underground, leaving only a single survivor. When she crawls her way back to the surface camp, she reports the massacre. A squadron of security troops arrives to investigate, but they also consider her a suspect. However, when the troops return to the subterranean caves to look for the evidence, they first find a pair of killer androids…and then they find four people claiming to be time travelers, who instantly become the prime suspects. But these travelers – the Doctor and his unharmonious trio of companions – are more of a threat to the plans of the Cybermen (once again wearing new suits of high-tech armor). It seems that, fearing an upcoming conference of interplanetary superpowers that could spell the end to the Cybermen’s war effort, the silver ones plan to slam a huge space freighter into the Earth, obliterating a large portion of the planet’s surface. But when Adric manages to thwart the Cybermen’s plans by accidentlly sending the freighter back in time (but still on the same trajectory), he’s either helping to prevent the human race from coming into existence…or ensuring that event.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Eric Saward
directed by Peter Grimwade
music by Malcolm Clarke

Guest Cast: Beryl Reid (Briggs), James Warwick (Scott), Clare Clifford (Kyle), June Bland (Berger), David Banks (CyberLeader), Mark Hardy (Cyber Lieutenant), Steve Morley (Walters), Suzi Arden (Snyder), Ann Holloway (Mitchell), Anne Clements (Trooper Bane), Mark Straker (Trooper Carter), Alec Sabin (Ringway), Mark Fletcher (Crewmember Vance), Christopher Whittingham (Crewmember Carson), Carolyn Mary Simmonds, Barney Lawrence (Androids), Jeff Wayne, Steve Ismay, Peter Gates-Fleming, David Bache, Graham Cole, Norman Bradley, Michael Gordon Brown (Cybermen)

Broadcast from March 8 through 16, 1982

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 19 Doctor Who

Time-Flight

Doctor WhoThe authorities at Heathrow Airport are suspicious when a Police Box appears in their terminal within moments of the disappearance of a Concorde aircraft in mid-air. The Doctor drops the name of U.N.I.T. and is allowed to help in the search for the whereabouts – or, he suspects, the whenabouts – of the missing plane. The Doctor, with Nyssa, Tegan and the TARDIS in tow, takes the next Concorde flight on an identical vector, and soon finds himself on prehistoric Earth, along with the passengers and crew of the other plane. A strange being called Kalid has hijacked the two planes into Earth’s past to use their passengers and crew as slave labor for a sinister task – and Kalid is also very interested in the Doctor’s TARDIS.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Peter Grimwade
directed by Ron Jones
music by Roger Limb

Guest Cast: Anthony Ainley (The Master/Kalid), Nigel Stock (Professor Hayter), Richard Easton (Captain Stapley), Keith Drinkel (Flight Engineer Scobie), Michael Cashman (First Officer Bilton), Peter Dahlsen (Horton), Brian McDermott (Sheard), John Flint (Captain Urquhart), Judith Blyfield (Angela Clifford/Tannoy voice), Peter Cellier (Andrews), Hugh Hayes (Anithon), Andre Winterton (Zarak), Matthew Waterhouse (Adric illusion), Graham Cole (Melkur illusion), Chris Bradshaw (Terileptil illusion), Tommy Winward (Security man), Barney Lawrence (Dave Culshaw)

Broadcast from March 22 through 30, 1982

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green