Let’s get the bad news out of the way first: Season 18 is not a favourite of mine. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy most of the stories within it – I am a Pro-Meglos Twitter Troll after all – and can’t appreciate what it’s trying to do, I just don’t adore it as much as other people do, or enjoy it as much as the other eras of Tom Baker’s time in the TARDIS. It lacks the dry wit of the Hinchcliffe era and the overriding fun of the Williams era, instead giving us something that is deliberately po-faced but trying to dazzle us with the beauty & poetry of maths. There’s a drive to put the Sci back in the Sci-Fi1 which ultimately fails because it becomes the centre of the story and is frequently impenetrable.2 Script editor Christopher H. Bidmead has the heart of a poet but the typewriter of a mathemetician, and while there really is beauty & poetry in science and maths if you know where to look, sadly his ideas rarely make it to the screen3.
But I’m not here to bury Doctor Who, I’m here to celebrate it. The Leisure Hive is a bold new relaunch of the show, fantastically directed; Meglos is a beautifully daft throwback to the previous season4; Full Circle is a story in the finest tradition of Doctor Who; State of Decay is a wonderfully gothic story that proves the above paragraph wrong; The Keeper of Traken gives us the gift of Anthony Ainley for the next decade; and Logopolis is an episode of TV’s Doctor Who.
In the middle of the season, sitting across the striations of the timelines, is a story like no other: Warrior’s Gate. It’s one of the most beautifully realised stories in all 60 years, with a plot that is hard to pin down but rewards the effort, and a truly exceptional score by Peter Howell. The story of how Warrior’s Gate came to be is almost as entertaining as the story itself: Writer Stephen Gallagher produced a script that was deemed unworkable by director Paul Joyce, who performed a significant re-write with script editor Christopher H. Bidmead. Joyce – a director ahead of his time for a television programme – then clashed with The Producer John Nathan Turner and the lighting director over how that story should be shot, and was eventually fired. When it was realised that no one could understand his camera script and so finish the shoot, Joyce was promptly rehired. Bidmead was so fed up with the whole fiasco he chose not to stay on as script editor.
Fiasco it may be, but the end product is simply divine. Joyce’s visuals are stunning, from the simplicity of the void to the decay of the banqueting hall, and then through the mirror (where his use of black & white photos of Powis Castle as the backdrop is inspired) & back to the Privateer: everything is gorgeous. All the while Howell’s score is playing in the background – a medieval tune played on modern instruments highlighting the clash of past & future, echoed in the script. We may never know how much of the script was Joyce and how much was Bidmead but we can see what Gallagher’s original story looked like thanks to his recent novelisation of his original treatment (he originally novelised the story under the pseudonym John Lydecker but was made to novelise the screen version and not his original by JNT), and it’s worth checking out. What’s without doubt is that the televised script is a banger: it’s one of those stories that is endlessly quotable for all the right reasons, full of well fleshed out characters. At its heart it has a lot to say about the sins of the past & if they should still be paid for in the present, while blending science, mysticism & philosophy in a way that Bidmead always seems to aim for but rarely manages.
In terms of performances, while Tom Baker struggles to move up a gear5 and Matthew Waterhouse has next to nothing to do as Adric, the rest of the cast sparkle. The blue collar crew of the Privateer show you what Starfleet would be like if they worked for money; Rorvik is the ultimate middle manager, Clifford Rose playing the part to perfection6. David Weston is suitably enigmatic as Biroc, but the star of the show is Lalla Ward in her last run out as the noblest Romana of them all. Again, real life spills into art as her obvious dislike for Waterhouse is there for all to see (or not see, as she can barely stand to look at him), but the scene where she greets Rorvik and his crew outside the TARDIS is one of her best and her scream into the cliff-hanger of Episode 2 just amazing. It’s a strong – if slightly rushed – ending for the character.
Sadly, Paul Joyce didn’t come back to Doctor Who. This, and the issues with S18’s other maverick director Lovett Bickford, seem to have burnt JNT’s fingers; the next 5 years belong to the safe but plain hands of Ron Jones, Peter Moffat & the like. What we wouldn’t give for Joyce’s Kinda, or Snakedance, or Warriors of the Deep… Thankfully Stephen Gallagher comes back with Simon Hart’s favourite story Terminus7, which is another high concept tale, but one that is realised nowhere near as successfully than this. Hmmm, perhaps S18 needs more credit than I give it…
There are three physical gateways, and the three are one – and this one’s great. It stands as an oasis of creativity in an otherwise dry era; this one doesn’t even need the extra marks I give to stories that try something different to make it into the Top 60 Doctor Who Stories of all time, but what it tries – and achieves – makes it truly special.
COMING TOMORROW: “Switch on, Liz…!!!”
- I reject the idea that Douglas Adams’ preceding season was more Fi than Sci. S17 has some amazing, high concept sci-fi ideas. ↩︎
- And wrong! As a physics graduate there is more bad science in S18 to take me out the story than anywhere else. ↩︎
- Thankfully I know of a very good podcast that celebrates the works of Bidmead – especially Logopolis – much better than I can, and makes a very persuasive case for checking out the novelisations, which I intend to do at some point: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3yERpaToURTgrX8mzOe4Hh?si=0449a2054ed34882 ↩︎
- For my full list of why you should love Meglos, check out Toby Hadoke’s Happy Times & Places podcast on this story. Sign up to his Patreon here to hear it: https://www.patreon.com/TobyHadoke ↩︎
- He certainly doesn’t phone it in in this Season but his off screen issues make it onscreen at this time ↩︎
- A great addition to a fine history of dickhead captains ↩︎
- As if I was going to pass up the chance to make that gag…! ↩︎
Skies Full of Diamonds 