Doctor Who Season 14: Goodbye, Sarah Jane, hello Leela

In his last season as producer, Philip Hinchcliffe continued to merge different influences into the narrative of Doctor Who. The ramped-up horror finally came home to bite him, however, as Hinchcliffe was moved off the show at season’s end. That wasn’t the only major change to be seen in this collection of episodes, which prove to be the apex of the classic series.

The Masque of Mandragora

It’s off to 15^th century Italy for a romp with new scientific thinking coming face to face with superstition and an ancient Roman death cult. The Mandragora of the title is an energy being thing that hitches a ride on the Tardis and wrecks havoc when it arrives deep in Earth’s history. The Doctor teams up with a bright young lord to fight off a conniving uncle and the aforementioned death cult (Ok, I just like writing “death cult,” it’s fun).

The Hand of Fear

We say goodbye to one of the most beloved companions here, as Sarah Jane Smith ends her adventures with the classic series (apart from appearing in the 20^th anniversary special, and the one-off  K-9 and Company, which we’ll cover in the future). She gets a cracking good adventure as a send off as well. The hand of the title is a remaining piece of Eldrad, an evil despot whose execution didn’t quite go to plan. As a stone-based creature, the hand survived for millennia before being found in a quarry by Sarah (for once, the BBC quarry actually was a quarry). The story falls apart near the end, but the early episodes really sparkle, and it gave Elisabeth Sladen a late-innings catch phrase: “Eldrad Must Live!’

Her farewell is also nicely done. Unlike poor Jo Grant, she doesn’t get married off. Instead, she is forced out of the Tardis. One likes to think the character would have spent a lifetime aboard the ship, having adventure after adventure. We’ll come back to that as well later on, with a look at her spin-off show, The Sarah Jane Adventures.

The Deadly Assassin

First off, we go to Gallifrey for a solo adventure for the Doctor. The story isn’t bad – there is plenty of political intrigue, a trip into the “Matrix,” which ends up being a lot like the one in the big-budget movies, only without the budget. We also have the return of the Master, who appears as a decayed creature on the edge of death. The plot turns on his desire to increase his life span beyond the allotted 12 Time Lord regenerations.

That little detail ended up causing quite a bit of hand-wringing when it came to the new show. The Doctor, you see, was running out of regenerations. What would the show do when it reached Doctor number 13? In the end, they came up with a clever solution that will keep the issue off the books for at least another 50 years.

The Face of Evil

The Doctor on his own doesn’t work very well, so thankfully we get a new companion. It was one that proved not only to be popular with the target youth audience, but the dads out there as well. Leela, the savage who often wore a small and tight leather outfit, is now on the scene.

The plot isn’t bad either, as we get a look at a time when the Doctor made a mistake and had to pay the price. You see, a space ship crashed on the planet. The Doctor, trying to help, thought he fixed the main computer. Instead, he gave it a bad case of split personality. The descendants split into two groups: the savage Sevateem and their enemies, the Tesh. The Doctor has to set things right, defeating some dodgy monsters and figments of himself along the way.

The Robots of Death

Chris Boucher – who also wrote The Face of Evil – returns with an Agatha-Christie-style murder mystery where an isolated gathering of folks get offed one by one. The script is good and the acting is pretty solid throughout. The real star, however, is the work done by the design team, who give the whole proceedings a striking, art deco inspired vibe.

The Talons of Weng-Chiang

Philip Hinchcliffe goes out with a bang, producing one of the best – though also controversial – serials in the series’ long history. Robert Holmes crafts a delicious mix of 19^th century storytelling tropes, from Sherlock Holmes to Pygmalion to The Phantom of the Opera for the story. It involves a mad scientist as usual, though this one comes from the future and has disguised himself as a Chinese God, Weng-Chiang. His acolyte is Li H’Sen Chang, who works as a stage magician/ventriloquist while finding young victims for his master to “eat” to stay alive. The Doctor gets ensnared with all of this, along with a couple of Victorian gents, theater owner Jago (Christopher Benjamin) and coroner Professor Litefoot (Trevor Baxter). The characters are delightful – so much so that the characters eventually were spun off into a Big Finish series of audio adventures. We also get Leela out of her skins and into a Victorian dress, though her table manners are not the best.

The story is an absolutely fun ride. There are two points of controversy about it. The first is the yellow-face casting for Li H’Sen Chang. John Bennett is fine in the role, especially when you realize that a lot of the stereotypical behavior of the character is an act. That’s been the second bone of contention about the show, Li H’Sen Chang is playing to the prejudices of the English folks that he meets. Still, the casting is a relic of a past age. Mind you, the BBC also broadcast a show called the Black and White Minstrel Show during this era, which is exactly what it sounds like: white actors performing in blackface for the audience’s entertainment.

Doctor Who Season 13: Nothing unlucky here

Doctor Who’s “gothic” era gets into full swing here, as Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes begin to produce stories that they’ve commissioned and ushered through the process. It results in series that are often dark and morbid, but also carry a light touch – mainly through Tom Baker’s increasingly strong performances and his easy chemistry with Elisabeth Sladen. It's also probably the single best season of the classic series.

The Terror of the Zygons

First off, we give U.N.I.T. a send off with an adventure set in Scotland – near Loch Ness even – and involving the much-loved-but-rarely-seen shape-shifting Zygons. They want to take over the world – don’t they always? – and are putting their final plans into motion when U.N.I.T. and the Doctor get involved. There are plenty of Scottish touches throughout; just about the first word we here is “haggis.” There is also a piper playing loudly in one scene, a dour Duke and a strong Gaelic-games champion. The BBC quarry puts in an appearance, though at least it is actually supposed to be a quarry this time, not an alien planet. It’s also time for goodbyes: Ian Marter leaves the Tardis crew, only coming back for a single series later in the season. That series, The Android Invasion, will also be it for John Levene as Benton. Nicholas Courtney’s Brigadier will eventually come back twice in the 1980s, but he essentially hangs up his swagger stick. The Earth-bound adventures that so defined the first half of the 1970s for the program are over.

The Planet of Evil

In contrast, the next story heads out to the farthest reaches of the known universe nearly 30,000 years into the future. While the previous story had an Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibe, this time around it’s a mash-up of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Forbidden Planet. The titular planet is at the border between matter and antimatter. A scientist thinks that the antimatter will solve their society’s energy problems, but the Doctor knows better.

Our heroes need to fight the scientist (transforming into a sort of anti-man), a negative energy creature and the planet itself to sort things out and prevent a second big bang. The story hums along at a decent pace – enough to hide plot holes and the sometimes dodgy spaceship set. The planet set, however, is well realized. That’s aided by a clever use of “location” filming. Instead of putting the planet on the BBC quarry, the crew went to Ealing Studios, built the jungle set there and filmed it. Ealing allowed for plenty of more atmosphere than the BBC, as did putting the material down on film instead of videotape. It makes for one of the most distinctive looking shows of the era.

Pyramids of Mars

An episode of this serial was likely the first episode of the show I ever saw – I certainly have a memory of watching a few episodes around 1977 when it was broadcast on one of the local channels (KSTP 5 I believe) and the voice over introduction sticks in my mind. If it was, then the last 36 years or so have been largely downhill, because I’d consider this to be the show at its height. Mysterious evil? Check. Ancient myths that have a scientific background? Check. Mummy robots? Check. Cast of Edwardian gentlemen who get offed by the aforementioned robots and science-based myths? Check.

The plot involves an attempt by Sutek – not an Egyptian god but a immensely powerful alien – to free himself from his Earthbound prison, using the body of an unwitting archeologist and on a (thankfully for the budget) nearly deserted English estate. Robert Holmes uses mummy movies as a foundation here, building from there into something is at turns horrifying (the end of one character, killed by the animated corpse of his beloved brother, is particularly frightening), grotesque and thoroughly entertaining. It’s aided by good performances throughout, including the golden throat of Gabriel Woolf, who brings Sutek to life just through his voice. It’s one of two performances by Woolf in the TV version of Doctor Who – in the new series, he plays The Beast, an ancient all-powerful evil imprisoned… hey!

The Android Invasion

Following Pyramids of Mars wouldn’t be easy for any serial, and while there are good elements here – the first episode is particularly creepy – this UNIT postscript doesn’t hold up that well. The Doctor and Sarah land on Earth. At least, they think it is Earth, but the natives are acting oddly, all of the money is brand new and the calendar just has the same day over and over again. The title lets us know what is really going on, and there are plenty of duplicates running around from here on out. Barry Letts returns to direct and does his typical solid job, but he is done in by a script that lays everything out far too clearly early on and alien costumes that, while being somewhat effect, force the performers to overact just to get the lines out. Hammy performances can work – but not when they are on screen, talking over the plot, for long stretches.

This also marks the last performances of John Levene and Ian Marter, who return as Benton and Harry Sullivan. Marter went on to novelize a number of Doctor Who adventures and even continued his character’s story in Harry Sullivan’s War before dying far too young in 1986. Levene continues on in Doctor Who fandom (I met him in the late 1980s at a convention that also included Sylverster McCoy, George Takei and Walter Koenig; no the Who and Trek fans didn’t have a rumble at the con).

The Brain of Morbius

Hello, Dr. Frankenstein! Sometimes the influences of this era of Doctor Who sit pretty close to the surface. Here, we have a mad scientist piecing together bits and pieces of crash-landed aliens to make a body for, as the title suggests, a disembodied brain of a vile Time Lord. Meanwhile, across the rocky interior set, the Sisterhood of Karn – who are responsible for causing all the ships to crash – are on their last legs, as the elixir they rely is drying up.

The Doctor gets sent along by the Time Lords, likely to take care of the second crisis, but in typical fashion gets ensnared in both. There are a number of horror-film tropes that help each cliff hanger immensely, along with some particularly morbid humor from Robert Holmes, including the brain plopping on the floor in one scene. (Yes, they got letters about that.)

The story’s genesis is an intriguing one, as Terrance Dicks had been commissioned and wrote a similar piece, but one where the body is being built by a robot without an aesthetic sense (which would explain the hodgepodge nature). Rewrites were needed and Dicks was on holiday, so Holmes completely revamped the script to the point that the original writer didn’t recognize it and asked that his name be taken off. He asked that it be given a “bland” pen name, so it appeared on the screen as being written by “Robin Bland” (Holmes’ humor striking again).

The show is plenty of fun, owing a lot to an absolutely unhinged performance from Philip Madoc as scientist Solon, whose head-based obsession reaches new heights when coming face to face with Tom Baker’s curly-haired character.

The Seeds of Doom

I do know that I saw an episode of this during the 1970s broadcasts on Channel 5 – because the grinder turning poor folks into compost really freaked me out. This a glorious end to the season, with a six parter that doesn’t sag, a monster that isn’t really the villain, and a villain that – even in the realm of this show – is particularly mad.

The seeds in question are alien pods found buried in the Antarctic. The first two episodes find the Doctor and Sarah at the lonely outpost, doing the whole Thing thing as they try to stop a scientist who has been transformed by the pod into a vegetable creature bent on destruction. They aren’t helped by thug Scorby and scientist Keller, who have been sent by their boss – the aforementioned unhinged Harrison Chase – to get the pod at any cost. The first Krynoid is destroyed, as is everyone at the base.

The first is gone, but there is a second. That helps to fuel the second part of the story, as we return to England with a second pod (hence, the “seeds” part of the title). Our heroes spend most of their time trapped in Chase’s mansion, trying to not get ground up in the masher or absorbed by the newly hatched Krynoid, who has possessed poor Keller.

Robert Banks Stewart builds on his Terror of the Zygons success with another strong script. Tony Beckley dives into Chase with gusto, walking the ham tightrope expertly throughout. There are fine character pieces throughout and Baker and Sladen are fine as always.

So the lucky season 13 is in the books. Season 14, as typical with the program, is one of change, especially as the dark nature of the past two seasons comes home to roost.