Doctor Who Season 15: Enter the tin dog

A new season marked a new era, as producer Graham Williams took over. His initial plan – a season-long series of interconnected stories – would have to wait until his second season. In the meantime, we get a mix of good and bad – sometimes in the same series – as the tight budget continues to constrain the show. It didn’t help that Star Wars premiered a few months before the season started in September 1977, meaning that the visual rules for science fiction had just been broken wide open.

The Horror of Fang Rock

Philip Hinchcliffe may be gone, but season 15 opens with a series that is very much in tune with his era. This is straight-up horror, involving an alien presence and an isolated light house. Through the four episodes (in one of Terrance Dicks’ best scripts for the show) they actually kill off two different groups of people: the light keepers and the survivors of a shipwreck. Still, the alien invasion is prevented and an explosion at the end changes Leela’s eye color. (Louise Jamison had to wear colored contact lenses in her first season; one of the deals she made to come back was to ditch them.)

The Invisible Enemy

And here comes K-9. There is a lot going on in these four parts, but the story still feels padded out. Once the Invisible Enemy of the title becomes, well, visible, the story loses its way, leading to a meandering fourth episode. The earlier episodes, however, are plenty of fun. We get some bona-fide scares early on, as a relief crew is infected by some kind of super-intelligent space virus. Later on, contact gets made with the Doctor. To get the main virus out of his head, he and Leela are cloned and sent into the brain. Along with this Fantastic Voyage-style adventure with get K-9, the robot dog that quickly became a fan favorite – and who cause multiple headaches in the future in recording. Also, once the virus gets big for episode four, the series loses all momentum. Dodgy monsters would be a hallmark of the upcoming seasons.

Image of the Fendahl

Like here. If you hadn’t seen the opening credits, you might think you had arrived at the wrong program for the first 10 minutes here. We have an isolated group of scientists working on time experiments. They have also awakened an ancient evil, as like in The Daemons or Quatermass and the Pit. The Doctor gets in the way, but not before a death cult (yes!) threatens all of humanity. The interplay between the scientists is good, as are the performances from Tom Baker and Louise Jamison. The trouble comes near the end when the Fendhahl makes an appearance. It is absolute rubbish. It’s hard not to laugh every time it is on screen, and that robs the end of the story of any of its major payoff.

The Sun Makers

The satire at the heart of this Robert Holmes’ serial (his first after his term as script editor) isn’t particularly deft. It’s a spoof on taxation, where the repressed minions of humanity’s last outpost on Pluto are squeezed worse than poor George Harrison in “Taxman.” Actually, it is a bit more complex than that, as these are actually corporate taxes charged to the people by a ruling corporation.

Beyond that, there are some playful moments scattered throughout, especially for Leela (this is Louise Jameson’s favorite episode) and some epically bad sets and special effects. This includes a futuristic car that travels about as quick as the “Enforcers” from the MST3K classic, Space Mutiny.

Underworld

My recollection – and I probably hadn’t seen this in 25 years at least – of Underworld was a lot of running around on unconvincing CSO. The reality? Pretty much that, though now I can see the interesting parallels drawn between this story and Jason and the Argonauts. (Yay! Studying the classics can be helpful.) Here, the Doctor teams up with a group of explorers with names quite close to Jason and crew, who are looking for a legendary lost ship that contains their race’s biological code. With that, they hope to end a quest that has gone on for 100,000 years and start a new world.

They find the ship, but it has been buried beneath a layer of space matter. They also find an oppressed people to free and plenty of time to wander the BBC corridors, rendered both in a couple of white panels and the aforementioned green-screen sequences that didn’t fool me as a youngster and come off even worse today.

The Invasion of Time

And we end the season with a six-parter that is really a four-parter with a two-parter stuck on the end. We also go back to Gallifrey for no good reason. No, scratch that, there was a good reason but it had nothing to do with the story. Another script fell through, leaving the crew in the familiar lurch. A new story was improvised by script editor Anthony Read and producer Williams, and a low, low budget was paramount. The costumes from The Deadly Invasion were still in storage, as were the Gallifrey designs from before. Voila, instant story.

There are a few moments of interest – The Doctor acts nasty for a bit; the invaders turn out to be the Sontarans – and plenty of padding. The final two episodes feature long, long stretches of exploration through the Tardis (which appears to have a power station in it) that stretch usual corridor jaunts to the breaking point. It also provides a rather unsatisfying end for Leela, as the warrior woman goes out not in a blaze of glory but in the arms of a Citadel guard that she has shared no romantic times with at all. (The producers were unsure if Jameson would go ahead with her plans to leave; she did.)

Up next, we get a whole season dedicated to the search of the six parts of the Key to Time, complete with a new companion and a bad guy with a crow on his head.