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.