Tag: The Fourth Doctor

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4th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Exploration Earth: The Time Machine

Doctor Who: Exploration Earth / Genesis of the DaleksThe TARDIS tumbles backward billions of years, alarming the Doctor and Sarah. But the Doctor is able to show Sarah the origins of her planet, from the formation of the solar system to the beginnings of life itself. But they’re not the only visitors from another time there – an alien named Megron has arrived to bring chaos to the young planet Earth, possibly even to disrupt the history of human evolution.

Order this CDwritten by Bernard Venables
music by Dick Mills

Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), John Westbrook (Megron)

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 14 Doctor Who

The Deadly Assassin

Doctor WhoThe Doctor collapses in the TARDIS as it takes him back to his home planet of Gallifrey, experiencing a vivid premonition of the assassination of the President of the Time Lords’ High Council – a vision in which he seems to play the part of the gunman. Since the Doctor’s TARDIS is a stolen vehicle, he has to evade security guards upon his return to Gallifrey, trying to reach the President to warn him of his impending fate. When the Doctor tries to stop the assassin at the fateful moment, the only thing that any of his fellow Time Lords see is that he’s the man with the weapon. The Doctor uses a legal loophole to buy enough time to find the real killer, who turns out to be his oldest enemy – but this time, the Doctor isn’t the target. The Master, struggling at the end of his final regeneration, plans to take revenge on all of Gallifrey.

Download this episodewritten by Robert Holmes
directed by David Maloney
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Peter Pratt (The Master), Llewellyn Rees (President), Angus Mackay (Cardinal Borusa), Bernard Horsfall (Chancellor Goth), George Pravda (Castellan Spandrell), Derek Seaton (Commander Hildred), Eric Chitty (Coordinator Engin), Hugh Walters (Commentator Runcible), John Dawson, Michael Bilton (Time Lords), Maurice Quick (Gold Usher), Peter Mayock (Solis), Helen Blatch (Voice)

Broadcast from October 30 through November 20, 1976

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 14 Doctor Who

The Face Of Evil

Doctor WhoThe Doctor arrives on a distant world populated by two tribes, the Sevateem and the Tesh. He quickly bumps into a Sevateem woman named Leela, who has been banished from her village for denying the existence of Xoanon – an entity whom the Sevateem worship as a god. The Doctor can only stand by helplessly as the Sevateem mount a suicidal attack upon the more advanced Tesh. The Doctor soon realizes that these primitives are the descendants of an interstellar exploration detail: the survey team and the technicians. Both tribes recognize and revere him as the Evil One…but despite the bloodshed, no one will allow him to go near Xoanon, a sentient computer whose tyrannical rule is a result of the Doctor’s past interference.

Download this episodewritten by Chris Boucher
directed by Pennant Roberts
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Leslie Schofield (Calib), Victor Lucas (Andor), Brendan Price (Tomas), Colin Thomas (Sole), David Garfield (Neeva), Lloyd McGuire (Lugo), Tom Kelly, Brett Forrest (Guards), Leon Eagles (Jabel), Mike Elles (Gentek), Peter Baldock (Acolyte), Tom Baker, Rob Edwards, Pamela Salem, Anthony Frieze, Roy Herrick (voices of Xoanon)

Original title: The Day God Went Mad

Broadcast from January 1 through 22, 1977

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 14 Doctor Who

The Robots of Death

Doctor WhoThe Doctor and Leela arrive in a mobile sand refinery on a distant planet at precisely the wrong time – a murder has just taken place. Since they’re the only newcomers among a bunch of paranoid miners who have been cooped up together for months, the Doctor and Leela are naturally the prime suspects, but even while they’re under guard, members of the crew continue to turn up dead. The Doctor is the first to propose an outrageous theory – that the ships large complement of robots have somehow been programmed to override their built-in inability to harm human beings. But by the time he is able to convince anyone of the merit of this idea, most of the crew have fallen victim to the robots’ onslaught – leaving the Doctor, Leela, and the surviving crew as the next victims.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Chris Boucher
directed by Michael E. Briant
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Russell Hunter (Commander Uvanov), Pamela Stern (Toos), David Bailie (Dask), Rob Edwards (Chub), Brian Croucher (Borg), Tariq Yunus (Cass), David Collings (Poul), Tania Rogers (Zilda), Miles Fothergill (SV7), Gregory de Polnay (D84)

Broadcast from January 29 through February 19, 1977

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 14 Doctor Who

The Talons of Weng-Chiang

Doctor WhoThe Doctor brings Leela to Victorian-era London to give her some exposure to what he considers civilization, though things quickly become less than civilized when a Chinese man makes an attempt on the Doctor’s life. Relations between the natives of London and the city’s growing Chinese population are equally strained elsewhere, as allegations of kidnapping surround stage magician Li H’sen Chang during his residence at a local theater, run by Henry Gordon Jago. Numerous men confront Chang with accusations that he hypnotized their wives and ladyfriends during his magic show – and every woman disappeared shortly afterward. The Doctor investigates Chang’s magic show and discovers that the magician is using more than sleight-of-hand to accomplish his amazing feats – he is receiving technological help too advanced for the Victorian era, in exchange for which Chang is performing murderous services for his master – from the future.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Robert Holmes
directed by David Maloney
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: John Bennett (Li H’sen Chang), Deep Roy (Mr. Sin), Michael Spice (Weng-Chiang / Greel), Trevor Baxter (Professor Litefoot), Christopher Benjamin (Henry Gordon Jago), Tony Then (Lee), Alan Butler (Buller), Chris Gannon (Casey), John Wu (Coolie), Conrad Asquith (PC Quick), David McKail (Sergeant Kyle), Patsy Smart (Ghoul), Judith Lloyd (Teresa), Vaune Craig-Raymond (Cleaning Woman), Peggy Lister (Singer), Vincent Wong (Ho), Stuart Fell (Giant rat)

Original Title: The Talons Of Greel

Broadcast from February 26 through April 2, 1977

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 15 Doctor Who

The Horror Of Fang Rock

Doctor WhoLeela is unimpressed when the TARDIS once again arrives on Earth, and on another foggy night to boot. But this time, she and the Doctor have landed near a lighthouse on a particularly treacherous rocky shoreline at the turn of the 20th century. The lighthouse’s three-man crew is having trouble keeping their beacon lit, which leads to a ship running aground shortly after the Doctor and Leela make their presence known. But something else has made its presence known to at least one of the men – by killing him and assuming his shape. The survivors of the shipwreck make their way to the lighthouse, each with their own agenda blinding them to what could be the beachhead of an alien invasion. By the time the Doctor reveals the true nature of the threat to them, the alien visitor has claimed more victims.

Season 15 Regular Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Louise Jameson (Leela), John Leeson (voice of K9)

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Terrance Dicks
directed by Paddy Russell
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Colin Douglas (Reuben / voice of the Rutan), John Abbott (Vince), Ralph Watson (Ben), Alan Rowe (Colonel Skinsale), Sean Caffrey (Lord Palmerdale), Annette Woollett (Adelaide), Rio Fanning (Harker)

Broadcast from September 3 through 24, 1977

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 15 Doctor Who

The Invisible Enemy

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS encounters a huge, fibrous mass in space, and as it attempts to pass through the obstruction, a violent discharge from the central console knocks the Doctor out. He manages to set a course for a medical outpost, the Bi-Al Foundation. Barely able to explain the Doctor’s predicament, Leela leaves the Time Lord in the capable hands of Dr. Marius, a brilliant but eccentric pathologist (he has fashioned his portable computer in the shape of a dog and christened it K-9). But whatever affected the Doctor soon spreads to others at Bi-Al, and the Doctor is now clearly the center of a hive mind directing the actions of the infected. The fight to save the doctors and nurses at Bi-Al is a losing battle; the Doctor and Leela must take the fight to the source of the problem: inside the Doctor’s own body!

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Bob Baker & Dave Martin
directed by Derrick Goodwin
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Michael Sheard (Lowe), Frederick Jaeger (Professor Marius), Brian Grellis (Safran), Jay Neill (Silvey), Edmund Pegge (Meeker), Anthony Rowlands (Crewman), John Leeson (Nucleus voice), John Scott Martin (Nucleus operator), Neil Curran (Nurse), Jim McManus (Opthalmologist), Roderick Smith (Cruikshank), Kenneth Waller (Hedges), Elizabeth Norman (Marius’s Nurse), Roy Herrick (Parsons), Pat Gorman (Medic)

Broadcast from October 1 through 22, 1977

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 15 Doctor Who

Image Of The Fendahl

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS is sidetracked by a time anomaly, depositing the Doctor and Leela near a secluded priory which has been serving as the laboratory of Dr. Fendelman and his colleagues. The object of the scientists’ study is what appears to be a human skull…which, according to dating, originated over eight million years before homo sapiens existed on Earth. But Fendelman isn’t sharing the whole story with his fellow scientists – in fact, one of them has unknowningly become a channel through which something sinister is emerging. The Doctor tries to intervene as the body count mounts in the countryside, but Fendelman has his well-armed security guards lock the Doctor away. The Doctor recognizes the threat as one from Gallifreyan folklore: the Fendahl, a gestalt entity, was exiled by the Time Lords, its world time-looped for twelve million years. Fendelman knows that the skull is alien, and hopes that studying it will reveal new insights into the origins of man. But Fendelman’s trusted assistant has other designs on the alien artifact, plans which involve black magic. And somewhere between science and black magic, the Fendahl will gain the power it needs to strike.

Download this episodewritten by Chris Boucher
directed by George Spenton-Foster
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Wanda Ventham (Thea Ransome), Denis Lill (Dr. Fendelman), Edward Arthur (Colby), Scott Fredericks (Max Stael), Edward Evans (Moss), Derek Martin (Mitchell), Daphne Heard (Martha Tyler), Graham Simpson (Hiker), Geoffrey Hinsliff (Jack Tyler), David Elliott, Roy Pearce (Security Guards)

Broadcast from October 29 through November 19, 1977

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 15 Doctor Who

The Sun Makers

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS comes to an unexpected stop on a world that the Doctor hasn’t explored before, but moments after he and Leela step out of the TARDIS and onto the top of an immense building, Leela spots a man moments away from committing suicide. The time travelers stop him from jumping off the building and try to learn what has brought him to the brink. They learn that they’re actually on Pluto, which is now surrounded by artificial suns and colonized by the Company – which also employs virtually everyone who lives on Pluto, and and which also taxes them into poverty. Cordo, stuck with a debt he’ll never be able to afford to repay after failing to pay in full the tax on his father’s death, sees only despair, until he remembers stories of the Others, a group of underground rebels who fight against the Company’s taxes and bureaucracy. With the help of the Doctor, Leela and K-9, Cordo finds the Others and pledges to join them, only to discover that sticking it to the man could make him a dead man.

Download this episodewritten by Robert Holmes
directed by Pennant Roberts
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Roy Macready (Cordo), Richard Leech (Gatherer Hade), Jonina Scott (Marn), Michael Keating (Goudry), William Simons (Mandrel), Adrienne Burgess (Veet), Henry Woolf (Collector), David Rowlands (Bisham), Colin McCormack (Commander), Derek Crewe (Synge), Carole Hopkin (Nurse), Tom Kelly (Guard)

Broadcast from November 26 through December 17, 1977

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 15 Doctor Who

Underworld

Doctor WhoThe Doctor and Leela find themselves at the edge of a galaxy, near an enormous nebula that could wreak untold damage on the TARDIS. To avoid this, the Doctor forces his ship to materialize on a nearby spacecraft. When he announces himself to the ship’s crew, they regard Leela as a threat (and harmlessly quell her bloodlust with their pacification beam), but they regard the Doctor as a god. He has come aboard a starship crewed by the last of the Minyans, a race who the Time Lords aided and augmented – and who then destroyed themselves with the aid of their new technology, the incident that caused the Time Lords to withdraw into their non-intervention policy. Unlike Time Lords, the Minyans can regenerate thousands of times, with enough control over the process that they seem to simply become younger again when their bodies wear out, and they’ve been on this flight for thousands of years. Their quest is to find the P7E, a lost Minyan sister ship whose cargo of genetic material could revitalize the species. Their obstacle is that they can’t seem to find the P7E, until the Doctor discovers that the missing ship is now the core of a forming planetoid – and that the descendants of its crew have taken on a new form entirely, a society that the Minyan searchers can’t even recognize – a society that could kill them all before they reach their goal.

Download this episodewritten by Bob Baker & Dave Martin
directed by Norman Stewart
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: James Maxwell (Jackson), Alan Lake (Herrick), Imogen Bickford-Smith (Tala), Jonathan Newth (Orfe), Jimmy Gardner (Idmon), Norman Tipton (Idas), Godfrey James (Tarn), James Marcus (Rask), Jay Neill (Klimt), Frank Jarvis (Ankh), Richard Shaw (Lakh), Stacey Tendeter (Naia), Christine Pollon (voice of the Oracle)

Broadcast from January 7 through 28, 1978

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 15 Doctor Who

The Invasion Of Time

Doctor WhoThe Doctor returns, unbidden, to Gallifrey, claiming the Presidency of the High Council. Leela knows something is wrong, as she has witnessed his meetings with a shadowy group of aliens prior to returning to his homeworld. The Time Lords are aghast at the Doctor’s breach of their power structure, to say nothing of him bringing an alien among them. But when the aliens Leela saw earlier materialize in Gallifrey’s Capitol, all hell breaks loose – the Doctor orders many Time Lords, including his old mentor Borusa, expelled to the harsh surface of Gallifrey beyond the city domes. Leela is also thrown out, though she finds herself quite at home with the primitive nomadic tribes of homeless non-Time Lords known as the Shobogans. Leela rallies both Shobogans and exiled Time Lords to mount a resistance against the Doctor and his shady Vardan allies, but when the invasion is put down, everyone discovers that it was a ruse to allow a far more powerful enemy to slip into the heart of Gallifrey.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Anthony Read and Graham Williams
directed by Gerald Blake
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Milton Johns (Kelner), John Arnatt (Borusa), Stan McGowan (Vardan Leader), Chris Tranchell (Andred), Dennis Edwards (Gomer), Tom Kelly (Vardan), Reginald Jessup (Savar), Charles Morgan (Gold Usher), Hilary Ryan (Rodan), Max Faulkner (Nesbin), Christopher Christou (Chancellery Guard), Michael Harley (Bodyguard), Ray Callaghan (Ablif), Gai Smith (Presta), Michael Mundell (Jasko), Eric Danot (Guard), Derek Deadman (Stor), Stuart Fell (Sontaran)

Broadcast from February 4 through March 11, 1978

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 16 Doctor Who

The Ribos Operation

.Doctor WhoThe Doctor’s TARDIS is diverted to an unknown place. Upon landing, the Doctor meets the White Guardian, a being more powerful than even the Time Lords, who has chosen the Doctor to retrieve the six missing segments of the Key To Time, which will supposedly restore time and space to a more balanced state. With a new version of K9 up and running, the Doctor is keen to undertake this adventure alone, but again, the Guardian chooses a new companion for the Doctor, a Time Lady named Romanadvortrelundar.

The search for the first of the Key To Time’s six segments leads the Doctor, K9 and Romana to an unlikely place for such an item: the backwards planet Ribos. The natives are wrapped up in superstition and tradition, and they’re largely unaware that their planet is being targeted for takeover by the mad exiled warlord Graff Vynda-K. But even the Graff is being targeted on Ribos by a pair of con men who hope he’ll pay handsomely for directions which will supposedly lead him to a lost mine containing enough of the mineral jethrik to fund his operation. And when everyone’s plans are exposed, they believe the Doctor and Romana are the responsible party.

Season 16 Regular Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Mary Tamm (Romana), John Leeson (voice of K-9)

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Robert Holmes
directed by George Spenton-Foster
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Iain Cuthbertson (Garron), Nigel Plaskitt (Unstoffe), Paul Seed (Graff Vynda-K), Robert Keegan (Sholakh), Prentis Hancock (Captain), Timothy Bateson (Binro), Ann Tirard (Seeker), Cyril Luckham (White Guardian)

Broadcast from September 2 through 23, 1978

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 16 Doctor Who

The Pirate Planet

Doctor WhoThe Doctor and Romana learn that the second segment of the Key to Time is on Calufrax, a planet described by the Doctor as an uninviting place. After the TARDIS inexplicably fails to land, it brings them to a world which is nothing like Calufrax – instead, it’s inhabited, prosperous (at least on first glance), and unbelievably rich. But the prosperity is a thin charade; the Captain lords over the planet with an iron fist, while repeatedly bringing his subjects new epochs of prosperity with alarming regularity. And a group of rogue telepaths called Mentiads wander the wilds of the planet, drawing the wrath of the Captain and suspicion from everyone else. The Doctor discovers that this world is hollow. And whether it is by his own hand in the name of restoring the Key to Time, or by the hand of the Captain – who isn’t as in charge of the situation as it appears – the planet Calufrax is doomed.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Douglas Adams
directed by Pennant Roberts
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Bruce Purchase (Captain), Andrew Robertson (Mr. Fibuli), Rosalind Lloyd (Nurse), David Sibley (Pralix), Bernard Finch (Mentiad), Ralph Michael (Balaton), Primi Townsend (Mula), David Warwick (Kimus), Clive Bennett (Citizen), Adam Kurkin (Guard), Vi Delmar (Queen Xanxia)

Broadcast from September 30 through October 21, 1978

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 16 Doctor Who

The Stones Of Blood

Doctor WhoThe search for the Key to Time brings the Doctor and Romana to modern-day England, very close to a stone circle being studied by Professor Amelia Rumford and her friend Vivien Fey. Romana is alarmed to see real evidence that a live animal may have been sacrificed at the stones very recently, but is told by Professor Rumford that it’s probably just the work of an overenthusiastic local group of Druid recreationists. But it’s not just would-be Druids who are moving around the circle – Professor Rumford is convinced that the stones themselves are moving. The Doctor and K-9 witness this for themselves, as an unknown force uses an apparition of the Doctor to lure Romana over the edge of a cliff. The stakes are higher now than anything that the Druid afficionados could imagine – one of the galaxy’s most feared criminals is hiding out on Earth, using the rock-like Ogri to enforce her will…and hide her identity.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by David Fisher
directed by Darrol Blake
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Susan Engel (Vivien Fay), Beatrix Lehmann (Professor Rumford), Nicholas McArdle (De Vries), Elaine Ives-Cameron (Martha), Gerald Cross (Megara voice), David McAlister (Megara voice), James Murray (Camper), Shirin Taylor (Camper), Gerald Cross (voice of the Guardian), James Muir (Druid), Ian Munroe (Druid), Margaret Pilleau (Druid), Judy Crowne (Druid), Decima Delaney (Druid), Mike Mungarvan (Druid)

Broadcast from October 28 through November 18, 1978

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 16 Doctor Who

The Androids Of Tara

Doctor WhoThe Doctor and Romana arrive on the planet Tara, searching for the fourth segment of the Key to Time, but this time around the Doctor feels he’s entitled to some vacation time. Romana goes on to find the fourth segment herself while the Doctor does some fishing, but this places them both in danger. Romana encounters the conniving Count Grendel of Gracht, a duplicitous duke who aspires to Tara’s throne, and he promptly takes her prisoner, apparently believing her to be an android. The Doctor, in the meantime, is found by a small band of men loyal to Prince Reynart, the rightful heir to the throne, who is in hiding due to Grendel’s machinations. Reynart has one defense – a perfect android replica of himself – which isn’t working. The Doctor accompanies Reynart’s men and his newly repaired android to the prince’s coronation while the prince himself waits in seclusion. But it gets much more complicated than that when each side tries to outfox the other with android replicas – and Count Grendel may hold the winning piece, for he intends to replace Princess Strella, unwilling to be forced into a marriage to Prince Reynart, with her identical twin: Romana.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by David Fisher
directed by Michael Hayes
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Peter Jeffrey (Count Grendel), Neville Jason (Prince Reynart), Simon Lack (Zadek), Paul Lavers (Farrah), Lois Baxter (Madame Lamia), Declan Mulholland (Till), Martin Matthews (Kurster), Cyril Shaps (Archimandrite), Mary Tamm (Strella)

Broadcast from November 25 through December 16, 1978

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green