Meglos

Dear Gary—

I know I’m going to like Meglos from the start with this exchange:

Doctor: “First things first?”

Romana: “Exactly.”

Doctor: “But not necessarily in that order.”

 What’s not to love about Meglos? A giant cactus monster, bumbling space pirates, a doppelganger Doctor, the Dodecahedron—no one seems to know what exactly the Dodecahedron is and nor do I; I just love saying it, Dodecahedron—and Barbara. Barbara! I keep expecting the Doctor to do a double take. Talk about your doppelgangers.

There are a few problems with Meglos, quite a few actually, but I think a giant talking cactus overrides them. I mean, any show that has the audacity to use a giant talking cactus as its monster is allowed a little latitude.

Let me start with the Tigellan society. It is a simple enough dichotomy between the scientific Savants on one side and the religious Deons on the other with Zastor in the middle acting as leader and mediator. However Zastor does very little leading and the Deons are clearly in control. Zastor never makes a decision, all he seems to do is preside over bicker sessions between the Savants and Deons and in the end everyone does what the Deons dictate and I’m not really sure why. Lexa (Barbara!), leader of the Deons, is the de facto leader of Tigella; Zastor is a joke; the Savants, led by Deedrix, are all discontented talk and no action.

The Dodecahedron (what a great word) is the source of power for the Tigellan underground city and worshipped by the Deons. Nobody other than the Deons are allowed to even view the Dodecahedron, although the Savants have figured out a way to harness its energy even in the face of this handicap. The Savants are constantly arguing the need to study the Dodecahedron, especially since its output has become somewhat unreliable. Seeing as the life of their city depends on it, I would think the Savants would press their point more forcefully. After all, they have guns and it doesn’t appear that the Deons do. Perhaps the guards on duty are also Deons. When Lexa (Barbara!) stages a coup and has Zastor and the Savants tossed out the guards do her bidding. But why would the Savants and Zastor hand this authority over to the Deons in the first place?

Then there is the whole underground dwelling thing. Granted, the planet surface is infested with “lush, aggressive vegetation” but surely the Savants at least could devise a way to deal with it. After all, the Doctor, Romana, the bumbling space pirates, and Meglos all wander about Tigella with little trouble. Occasionally one of them gets attacked by a bell plant, but it seems relatively easy for them to get free. And in the end, with the loss of the Dodecahedron, the Tigellans are forced up top and don’t have a problem with the transition. So much for the decades of preparation Deedrix predicted would be needed to re-inhabit the surface.

But what does any of this matter when we have a doppelganger Doctor walking around? A doppelganger Doctor who occasionally sprouts green spikes?

Meglos, our giant cactus, is the sole survivor of Zolfa-Thura, “a great civilization blown away to sand and ashes.” Meglos has been hiding out underground for what must have been a very long time. At one point he mentions returning below for another thousand years but later he mutters something about ten thousand years. At any rate, why did it take him so long to act? But then, cacti are a long-lived, slow growing plant so perhaps it was only a blink of an eye to a Zolfa-Thuran.

Once he does ascend, Meglos employs a band of space pirates, or as they are called, Gaztaks, to obtain a body, one that is a “male Caucasian around two meters tall” for him to inhabit. I guess it is easier for a humanoid body to move around than it is for a cactus. I’m not sure why the specifics, but so what? The human snatched by the Gaztaks is perfectly played as the ordinary man on his way home from work who is suddenly snatched by space pirates and whisked off to another planet only to be inhabited by an alien cactus.

Once transferred to this rather bewildered human, Meglos has the ability to shape shift, and since he has intercepted a message from Zastor to the Doctor (apparently the Doctor had been to Tigella 50 years previous and therefore knows Zastor) Meglos decides to impersonate the Doctor. But not before trapping the Doctor and Romana in a chronic hysteresis (time loop) to avoid complications. (I love saying chronic hysteresis almost as much as Dodecahedron.)

I have to say, Gary, that the way in which the Doctor breaks the chronic hysteresis is ingenious, especially since he only has the few moments at the end of the loop before it cycles over to work things out. I’m sure Romana is everlastingly grateful to the Doctor for freeing them or she would have to go through eternity in her ridiculous beach costume that she still hadn’t changed since Brighton. However once they are released she promptly changes into one of the most hideous outfits yet, so perhaps she plain just has bad taste in clothes and wouldn’t have known any better.

Romana does have rather a good time of it once they reach Tigella running the space pirates around in circles, taking advantage of the anticlockwise rotation of the planet.

Brotadac: “What’s she talking about?”

Grugger: “Rotation, direction, revolving.”

I do have to say, though, that when Romana is stressed or distressed in the slightest she comes out with a most pathetic succession of cries, whines, whimpers, grunts, pants, and screams.

The Doctor, meanwhile, runs into his own trouble when he enters the city after his doppelganger Meglos has waltzed off with the Dodecahedron from under the Tigellans’ noses. The Dodecahedron, it seems, did not descend from the heavens as a gift from the god Ti as Lexa (Barbara!) believes, but is actually a great power source developed on Zolfa-Thura and Meglos intends to return it to his home planet where he will utilize the amplification of the great Screens of Zolfa-Thura to use the Dodecahedron to conquer and destroy through the universe. Yes, the story does devolve into your typical egomaniacal villain wanting to take over the universe. What a single sentient cactus wants with the universe I don’t know and don’t care. Who am I to question a talking cactus?

Meglos’ undoing is his reliance upon the Gaztaks. Being a cactus does have its limitations and Meglos therefore needs the Gaztaks to do most of his dirty work even though they are constantly scheming to double cross him. In the end all it takes is a punch in the stomach and they lock him up along with the Doctor for good measure. Meglos has already shown them how to use the equipment controlling the screens and the Dodecahedron, although what they do not know is that the Doctor has tampered with the controls and they are preparing to blow themselves up rather than their intended target of Tigella.

It is a very simple story, really, and not very inspired. However the “lush, aggressive vegetation” of Tigella is impressive and Brotadac--he who covets the Doctor’s coat--is hilarious. Also the moments when the possessed human tries to escape from Meglos are effective as the Doctor/Meglos pulls the struggling man back into himself.

Earthling: “Let go of me! You’ve no right.”

Meglos: “Quite right, but academic.”

And when the Earthling is finally released at the end we have some wonderfully underplayed comedy as he worries about what the wife will think.

Tom Baker does a great job with the dual roles; with the subtlest change in demeanor we know which is which, even when he’s not green. And I like the science vs. faith aspect, one that is used a lot in Doctor Who. In Meglos Lexa (Barbara!) gets the best of it: “Believe? A word too large for their small minds.” And “Faith dwells in the deeds, Zastor, not in the words.” But it is Zastor who puts his finger on it when he describes the Doctor: “The Doctor has the maturity to respect many points of view.” And so too Doctor Who. The show might pit science against religion often, but Doctor Who is itself the perfect blend of knowledge and faith, and Meglos is a flawed but fun entry in the canon.

Zastor has another description of the Doctor, and it is this I want to close with: “He sees the threads that join the universe together and mends them when they break.”

I send this out, Gary, into the threads of the universe . . .

The Leisure Hive

Dear Gary—

I want to like The Leisure Hive, I really do, and I have to say that each time I watch it I’m not completely bored, just not very interested. It is a story full of red herrings and dead ends that run around in circles to little effect.

Because I don’t have much investment in the story my mind wanders over nagging questions and random observations. Such as, I don’t much care for the Doctor’s new ensemble, and why oh why does Romana insist on running around in that ridiculous beach costume when they have left Brighton behind? I normally don’t pay close attention to the incidental music, but because my mind is wandering I can’t help but find it odd at best.  Then I think, for a place billed as a leisure hive there doesn’t seem to be a lot of leisure going on. There are no chairs, lounges, sofas, not even any artwork to look at. All the visitors seem to do is stand around for an hour and a half watching a science demonstration and listening to a lecture. A couple of lucky guests do get to play a game or two of non-gravity squash, but who in their right mind is going to pay good money and waste precious vacation time on such a place? No wonder Argolis is going bankrupt.

Then there are the logistics of the place itself. Romana begins to recite the tragic history of Argolis with unwarranted delight while she and the Doctor are still at Brighton, and we get the rest of the story from a more properly somber Mena later in the hive. As a result of a war that lasted all of 20 minutes, Argolis is laid waste and left with a deadly atmosphere. All of this happened 40 years ago and the surviving Argolins have dedicated their remaining lives and their protective hive to peace and understanding. And oh yes, they have developed a new science called tachyonics. Now my questions are these: If the war lasted only 20 minutes resulting in a deadly atmosphere, how could they build the hive? Did they have lots of suicidal workers who did as much as they could before succumbing to the killer air? Where did the rest of the Argolins hang out in the mean time? And when exactly did they develop this new science? I would assume such a thing would take time, yet it seems to have sprung up over night, much like the hive, immediately after the war.

Once my mind stops wandering over these questions I do take note of the exquisite costumes and makeup on the Argolins before roaming off again.

Why, I wonder, does Stimson object to the Doctor’s presence for Hardin’s experiment but not Romana’s? And what exactly is he doing in the background, slowly making his way to the exit by degrees and turns? He looks like a windup toy that is winding down. And why the heck does he throw his glasses down on the ground while briskly walking through the hall? What exactly is Stimson’s game anyway? Is he running a scam? He knows Hardin’s experiment is a fake but doesn’t seem to care if Hardin perfects it or not. Why is he financing it? There is no indication that the Argolins (who are facing bankruptcy) are going to pay for the experiment. What is Stimson up to? He appears to be in league with Brock, put to what purpose?

An awful lot of questions for a character who comes and goes in a flash with no seeming purpose other than to get himself murdered and the Doctor in trouble for that murder (“His scarf killed Stimson” “Arrest the scarf then.”).

I come out of my reverie again long enough to be touched by Hardin’s concern for the rapidly aging Mena only to veer off once more.

Romana proves immensely helpful to Hardin, but then how is it that she gets so careless? How can she in good conscience submit the Doctor to the time experiment without having watched their test through to its conclusion? And then I have to question, how is it that this time experiment that is designed to roll back time ends up actually aging the Doctor? Yes, I know the experiment goes awry, but the test with the hourglass did successfully reverse time rather than accelerate it. I’m not sure what exactly happened to the hourglass when things went wrong, but it didn’t appear to be a result of the reversal of the process. Shouldn’t theoretically the Doctor emerge as a baby rather than an old man?

I start paying attention again because the Doctor’s old man makeup is quite good and he really does a splendid job of it. “I’m sick of being old,” a subdued Doctor sighs after only a few moments. His body might be weak but his mind remains active. “And then the name of the thing. Has that struck you?” he asks the younger and livelier Hardin and Romana. “Recreation Generator. Re-creation.”

Then I get lost in this whole world of tachyonics and the musings take over. Like I wonder what those red plastic dummies are that are scattered about the place. And does anybody remember or care that Visitor Loman’s body was horrendously torn apart by the tachyon cabinet? And why is it that Brock, who is really a Foamasi traitor in disguise, is the only one who shows any concern when Morix dies? Even Morix’ own wife Mena sweeps his death aside with no more thought than “He did his duty. I automatically become Chairman in his place.” In fact, other than an obviously smitten Hardin, the fake Brock is the only one who expresses any feeling when Mena deteriorates before their eyes. For a murderous saboteur Brock is surprisingly compassionate. But then as the Doctor says, “One must always accept the unexpected.”

My thought processes continue along the lines of Brock. We discover he is a Foamasi in disguise working with fellow undercover criminal Klout. Yet both of these are accounted for in their human masks when we are shown a Foamasi sabotaging the hive. OK, so this is a colleague, but why does no one spot a big green scaly Foamasi roaming about the halls? And why does no one think to round up any of these stray Foamasi betrayers that still might be lurking about the place? And if Brock is working to undermine the hive, why his interest in helping Hardin perfect his time experiment? By the way, what’s with the rather lame close up reaction shots of individual faces while Brock and Klout are unmasked? As for the Foamasi government, I assume he misspoke and meant to say he is with the Foamasi government and not the Foamasi government. But why, knowing he was going to Argolis and would eventually need to communicate with its people, why would he not bring his own voice synthesizer along?

 But Brock, the Foamasi, Stimson, and Hardin are all ultimately sidelined as villains or potential villains when the big reveal is unleashed. Again I have to compliment the makeup and costumes at this point. Pangol is rather impressive in his Helmet of Theron as he marches to his victorious future. And he has such a beautiful cherub face and deep dark eyes. But really, why all the fuss? Why is everyone so desperately afraid of Pangol and his army of petulant boys on a dead planet with no weapons or ships? And what business is it really of the Doctor and Romana, the petty politics of this piffling planet to paraphrase an earlier story?

Of course the Doctor does have to get young again, which he does miraculously when he emerges in multitudes out of the Recreation Generator. I don’t know if it is because my mind wandered so much or if it is just inexplicable, but I really have no clue what happens at the end, what with the unstable tachyon Doctor/Pangol images and the de-aging of Mena and Pangol. I don’t know if it is the work of Hardin, Pangol, Romana, or the Doctor, or a combination thereof. I also don’t know if any of the results were intended or just happy accident.

All I know is that I come out of my reverie in time to hear the Doctor and Romana discuss leaving the Randomizer behind: “There’s been enough randomizing on this job.” As for the threat of the Black Guardian: “Some galactic hobo with ideas above his station.” Romana reminds the Doctor that they were supposed to be on holiday and my mind flashes back to that agonizingly long opening pan over the chairs of Brighton beach and I scream, ‘No! Don’t go back there!’ I needn't worry: “Well then, I’m going to be very glad to get back to work.”

Thank you, Doctor. I’ll be glad when you get back to work myself. So I’ll send these rambling thoughts out, Gary, and hope for something more coherent next time.

Shada

Dear Gary—

Shada, the unaired and unfinished Doctor Who. Some say it is the lost glory of Doctor Who, others say it is a dull mess that is better left undone. The truth probably lies somewhere in between.

I have to admit that I lose the plot thread somewhere around the halfway point in my copy that bridges the gap between the scattered completed scenes with narration by Tom Baker.  I can follow it as long as the Doctor and Romana are in Cambridge visiting a retired Time Lord posing as a professor. He has a book that he took from Gallifrey that needs to be returned (it is one of the artifacts of Rassilon and could be dangerous in the wrong hands) but he has absentmindedly lent it to a student. Meanwhile there is a chap striding around campus in a white cloak with a sphere that attaches itself to people’s heads and steals their minds. This fellow is after the book too.

We come to learn that the retired Time Lord Professor Chronotis is in fact a noted Gallifreyan criminal Salyavin, a boyhood hero of the Doctor. While the sphere can steal minds, Salyavin can project his mind into others and the white cloaked chap, Skagra, wants this power for himself. The missing book holds the secret to the Time Lord prison planet Shada where Salyavin is believed imprisoned (even though this memory has been erased by Salyavin out of history and no one really knows where Salyavin is anymore). In his search for the book, Skagra steals Chronotis’ mind and leaves him for dead. Skagra retrieves the book and heads back to his invisible ship where he traps the Doctor, Romana, K9, and Chris (the student who had the book).

This is where I get a little lost. There is the invisible ship and then I think there is another, visible, ship. There is a think tank and then there is Shada. There is the Doctor’s TARDIS and Chronotis’ TARDIS that is disguised as his rooms in Cambridge. One of the ships has a voice and mind of its own and seems to transport people via a floating cube willy nilly about the place. The think tank is full of a bunch of aged men who are mindless. Shada is full of forgotten prisoners. Somewhere along the way there are Krargs that threaten people. Our cast crisscrosses their way from ships to TARDISes to think tank to Shada; it’s hard to keep track of who is where when.

The whole scheme seems to revolve around Skagra’s intent on conquering the universe via his mind absorbing spheres coupled with Salyavin’s mind altering power. So where do the Krargs come in? I don’t see their point other than to keep K9 busy. And if Skagra already has Chronotis’ mind in the sphere he therefore already has Salyavin’s. Why doesn’t he know this? What use are the captured minds if he doesn’t access that knowledge? And I’m a little confused as to the effects of the sphere on its victims. Sometimes it kills, sometimes ages and leaves mindless, sometimes turns into zombie armies. Also, if the sphere has a copy of the Doctor’s mind allowing the Doctor to control it, wouldn’t the same hold true of Chronotis who has come back to life with his mind intact? But then, I lose track of where Chronotis is during this part. Probably off somewhere making tea.

If we had the missing scenes to fill in the gaps I’m sure much of this would be explained. But let’s face it, many a Doctor Who story remains scant on details even when completed. So I guess I’ll stick to the scenes I have before me. Although I would dearly love to see the Doctor’s “fascinating display of illogic logic” that Tom Baker’s narrative claims. Douglas Adams’ words combined with Tom Baker’s acting of this unfilmed footage holds the promise of that lost glory many fans mourn.

Shada starts out at a leisurely pace, and I have to remark, Gary, that Doctor Four and Romana Two seem to be the most relaxed of all the Doctor/companion combinations. Perhaps after the Key to Time task the Doctor feels he has the right to some rest and recreation. Punting on the River Cam during May week in October (the TARDIS was a bit confused), the Doctor and Romana are the very picture of tranquility.

Their visit to Professor Chronotis in his cozy Cambridge rooms is also friendly and casual as the absent minded professor prepares tea. Even their frantic search for the dangerous book is more laid-back than frenetic as they take the time to browse titles and read aloud sample passages. It is a nice change of pace, too, for the Doctor to run into a fellow Time Lord who is not intent upon taking over the world or wreaking havoc. True, Chronotis does turn out to be a fugitive, but his crimes are rather vague and don’t seem too far off from the Doctor’s own rogue adventures.

It is at this point, Gary, that I want to mention the similarities between Shada and Douglas Adams’ book Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. I don’t remember if I read the book first or saw Shada first, I just recall noting the cannibalizing of material. Someday I’ll have to reread that book.   

But back to Shada, or what exists of Shada.

One of my favorite characters who made it to film is that of Wilkin. “Wilkin! You remember me,” the Doctor says in amazement. This unflappable porter of Cambridge recalls not only the Doctor’s honorary degree in 1960, but his previous visits of 1964 and 1955 as well (although he missed him in 1958 when the Doctor visited in a different body). And what would any conscientious porter of Cambridge do when an entire room apparently disappears to be replaced by a blue haze other than fetch a policeman?

I rather like Clare as well. She too remains unflappable, even in the face of TARDISes and space ships and “a conceptual geometer relay with an agronomic trigger” and “a totally defunct field separator.” She does lose a few points when she doltishly lets go of the handle to grab the pencil, though.

Chris is unflappable in his own way, but somewhat bland. Although I do like his guess of “Advanced State of Decay” for the acronym ASD. Professor Chronotis is likeable, but our main villain Skagra is rather unimpressive for the few scenes we have of him, and the Krarg are missing altogether.

There are a few good lines, like the Doctor telling Chris “You’ve got a lot to unlearn” when he says he understands Einstein, quantum theory, Planck, Newton, and Schoenberg. And there are a few Doctorisms (“Did you just see what I didn’t see?” “No.” “Neither did I.” and “I can do your part if you can do mine.”). There are some clunkers as well. “Time Tot” Romana? Really?

All in all Shada is a mixed bag, but if it had been completed as intended it would have made a decent enough story, probably better than many that were made during the surrounding couple of seasons. As it is in its abridged form it is still an entertaining serial well worth the watch.

Hope this finds you somewhere out there, Gary . . .

The Horns of Nimon

Dear Gary—

“The Nimon waits for no man.” OK, Gary. Things are definitely on a downhill slope.

However, a Tom Baker Doctor Who, even if not the best, is still entertaining, and The Horns of Nimon is innocuous enough fun.

It starts out rather good in fact in what I consider to be an impressive set of a deteriorating space battle cruiser. “When are we going to get modern equipment?” the copilot complains. This is what I would expect an aging spaceship bridge to look like, dark and cramped with cables and equipment littering the place.

The tense exchange between the weary pilot and bitter copilot also sets the stage nicely. The once great Skonnan battle fleet is now patched together with spit and wire and converted into cargo ships hauling human sacrifices from enemy planet Aneth back to Skonnos to please the Nimon who is Skonnos’ last remaining hope of returning to glory.

“Patience is the virtue of the weak,” the copilot grumbles, the very picture of impatience while the jaded pilot patiently chides him to his duty and goes on to inform him that this is to be their last shipment. “Our part of the contract will be fulfilled,” he tells the disgruntled copilot who immediately starts making rash decisions that overload their computer, knocks them off course, and kills the pilot.

With the steadying voice of the pilot silenced so early, the remaining story takes its cue from the copilot’s buffoonery and later Soldeed’s insanity. Add in the scant, cheap sets once we leave the ship’s bridge and the uninspired guest characters and we have another Doctor Who with its budget and ennui showing.

But that doesn’t necessarily make it bad, because it doesn’t get boring. And I suspect, Gary, that with the steadying influence of the pilot guiding the show, perhaps it could have been boring. Not to say that it would have, it might possibly have risen to heights unknown, but we will never know. Because The Horns of Nimon took another path and it is that path we will follow.

This path is predicated on four things: the copilot, Soldeed, the Nimon, and of course the Doctor.

I’ll start with the copilot because I already have.  This character is so wildly caricaturized and so deliciously despicable. Waving his gun about (“Have you noticed how people’s intellectual curiosity declines sharply the moment they start waving guns about?”) and hiding his cowardice behind a false bravado, cunning but stupid. The copilot is an opportunist who doesn’t think. Quick witted but slow and dimwitted. His mind works to his best advantage but it lets him down every time. In short, he is just plain fun to watch as he self destructs.

Next we have Soldeed. Soldeed has sold his soul, his people, his planet to the Nimon, but he has deluded himself into believing he has the upper hand. Whereas the copilot recognizes the reality before him and changes his tack accordingly, Soldeed recognizes only his own reality and changes fact to fit his delusions.

Soldeed’s counterpart Sezom on the Nimon conquered planet Crinoth remains sane but broken and disillusioned. If this had been the story of Crinoth rather than Skonnos with Sezom taking the lead and not Soldeed, this would have again been a different story much as if the pilot had lived. Sober and serious, perhaps boring, perhaps elevated. We’ll never know. But this is the story of Skonnos, of the copilot and Soldeed, of buffoons and insanity. This is a much different story.

The presence of the pilot and Sezom are grounding, though. They resonate with what once was, what might have been. They provide structure and meaning to the buffoonery and insanity.  

But let’s return to that insanity. Upon first meeting Soldeed we do not know that he is insane; he lets this out a little at a time, building to a mad crescendo.

“Begin at the beginning and end at the end, Sorak,” Soldeed calmly tells the military captain who doesn’t quite know how to relate the bad news he bears. Soldeed can be very calm and ordered in his irrational thinking. Soldeed’s staff and his mantra of “In the name of the Second Skonnan Empire” are the two mainstays of his convictions. Armed with only these he goes to confront the Nimon.

“He speaks of many things,” Soldeed informs Sorak upon emerging from his conference. “He speaks of the great journey of life.”

“Again? What does he mean by the great journey of life?” the sane, practical, and incredulous Sorak wonders.

“Mean? It is . . . it is a metaphor,” the delusional Soldeed replies, trying to bend the truth to his own mad desires.

A still canny Soldeed sees through the deceit of the copilot. “You are a liar,” he tells him. “Your story alters by the second.” He knows the copilot has not the intelligence for his lofty claims. But Soldeed cannot see past his own lofty ambitions. “Our fire shall infest their heavens. It shall be the greatest empire the galaxy has ever seen. An empire of fire, steel, and blood. Skonnos shall rule!”

“I play the Nimon on a long string,” he later tells Sorak, justifying his fawning before the great and bestial Lord Nimon.

As Soldeed’s insanity becomes clearer his acting becomes more unhinged and we see and hear it in every gesture and intonation.  “Three. I have seen three,” Soldeed finally breaks as Romana forces him to face the reality of the Nimon and his “great journey of life.” But he still refuses to admit hard truths. “You have brought this calamity upon me,” he accuses Romana before he pulls the fatal lever that will blow the complex sky high. “You are all doomed. Doomed.”

The exaggerations of the copilot and Soldeed make the blandness around them bearable. The blank and barren sets, the profusion of metal grating, the mute sacrifices, and the insipid Seth and Teka. Seth is harmless enough, but Teka’s incessant questions and unfounded faith in Seth is annoying.

Teka: “What’s going on?”

Seth: “I don’t know.”

Teka: “Why don’t you know?”

Seth’s irritated “I don’t know” reiteration is welcome, but it would be more welcome if Teka was as silent as the other five sacrifices that shuffle around in the background.

I have to put in a word here, Gary, about Romana. Romana plays it serious throughout which works quite well in this mix of hyperbole and mediocrity. She is firm, angry, and decisive as needed, very much taking everyone in hand and leading the way. I love her tallyho outfit, and she has even crafted her own sonic screwdriver (coveted by the Doctor). Romana is beginning to hit her stride.

Next on our list, the Nimon. The Nimon is a lovely Doctor Who monster. Jet black head to toe with bright yellow plastic horns sprouting from his huge head, ungainly platform shoes, top heavy, and almost balletic in his gracelessness. First there is only one, then three with the threat of multitudes to come, swarming across the universe like locusts.

Again, let’s compare what could have been with what is. Romana finds herself on the defeated and depleted Crinoth with the sober Sezom and the horde of Nimons preparing for their invasion. A little of this is taut and terrifying, but I can see where an extended four episodes of this could have been dark and dreary. I think I prefer the Skonnos/copilot/Soldeed version of events. Too much of Crinoth could have shown up the Nimons as laughable; Skonnos allows our suspension of disbelief wider scope.

Finally we turn to the Doctor. The Doctor is just the right blend of jocularity and gravity. The Doctor handing out jelly babies as he soothes the sacrifices and elicits vital information; the Doctor as he tries to swap sonic screwdrivers on Romana while restoring power to the Skonnan ship; “Tell me, Nimon, tell me, are you really terribly fierce?” as the Doctor rescues Romana, Seth and Teka; “Well I hope you get it in the right order,” as the Doctor is told he will be questioned, tortured, and killed; the Doctor, always ready with a quip or an antic to lighten the perilous moments.

There are a few instances of going too far, however. The Doctor giving mouth to mouth resuscitation to K9 and the cartoon boing noises emanating from a malfunctioning TARDIS console for example. And then there is the Doctor on the run stopping in the middle of the Council room and saying, “Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I’d like to say one thing and let me make it perfectly clear, I stand before you desperate to find the exit.” Meanwhile the oblivious council members ignore him and the guards run past him. Too much; too far.

Overall, however, the Doctor hits the right note and The Horns of Nimon works, and again I have to give credit to Romana. Playing it serious, Romana keeps the Doctor from roaming too far into the madcap. Thus the opening TARDIS scene as the Doctor tinkers with the console is funny, but we also feel the danger as they face the inevitability of a crash with no operable defense shields. The two are beginning to work well together.

“Ah, well people often don’t know what you’re talking about,” Romana tells the Doctor; she is definitely settling in to this companion role, and I love the closing exchange between the two:

Doctor: “Well, come on old girl. There’s quite a few millennia left in you yet.”

Romana: “Thank you, Doctor.”

Doctor: “Not you, the TARDIS.”

There are quite a few millennia left, Gary, and quite a few Doctors to go.

As ever . . .

Nightmare of Eden

Dear Gary—

Nightmare of Eden is not as bad as its rap, but it’s not as good as it should be either. It is a case of too many people letting the production down and not doing justice to a fairly solid script. It is almost as if everyone decided that as long as the stars showed up the show could rest on its reputation and not have to try very hard.

The result is four episodes of sufficient enough entertainment to pass the time.

It starts with the set. No attempt was made to make this in any way believable as an interstellar passenger cruiser. These are rooms set up on a stage with wide corridors, huge elevators (how many floors does this thing have?) and spacious lounges that don’t have much in the way of lounge furniture. There is none of the economy of space you would expect on such a ship, a government subsidized ship no less, that apparently only boasts two first class passengers (both on the government’s ride)for its cavernous first class lounge. Occasionally we do get a glimpse of coach, but these are just some rows of airplane seats set up on the stage with bizarrely outfitted passengers.

Let’s talk about those bizarre outfits. Why on earth would anyone voluntarily put on these ridiculous silver coveralls and sunglasses? I can’t imagine anyone falls for that “protective” nonsense they are told. Why don’t the crew and first class passengers need to wear them? Is there something in the coach compartments themselves that the passengers need protecting from? Or is this simply a means of identifying the riff raff? Or rather, a means of differentiating the extras from the speaking roles.

Sticking with costumes, I can see why the ship’s crew and Dymond, captain of the trade ship that crashes with the passenger ship, have to wear uniforms. But Tryst, Della and Stott? A zoologist and his colleagues? Why do they need uniforms? Or do they all just happen to dress alike?

I’m not even going to get into the monsters of Eden. They’re harmless enough. They’re useful for people to shriek “Mandrel!” and run to keep up some pretense of danger in our story. The monsters are more or less an afterthought for me; oh yeah, there are some lumbering creatures roaming about the set.

Everything about Nightmare of Eden strikes me as some lazy shorthand on the part of the production team.

And what’s with Tryst’s phony accent? I keep expecting him to break into a Danny Kaye Tschaikowsky routine.

“Interfere? Of course we should interfere. Always do what you’re best at, that’s what I say.” Even the Doctor has thrown up his hands on this one and given in to the ‘what difference does it make’ attitude. Let’s just dive in, he seems to be saying, and make the best of it. Throw all that pretence of Time Lord philosophy and detached concern out the window. At least the Doctor is having fun with it, which is exactly what makes Nightmare of Eden work to the extent that it does.

“Work for? I don’t work for anybody. I’m just having fun.”

That’s about all I take away from Nightmare of Eden. A bunch of men in space suits running around some cheap sets shooting off their blasters occasionally, a man with a funny accent with his machine that displays other worlds in a projection against the wall, Romana and the Doctor jumping in and out of the projection, some lumbering monsters wandering into the scene only to be chased off through an airline set that looks like it belongs to a different production, and oh yes, I think there is something about drug smuggling. Mildly amusing, a pleasant enough way to spend an hour and a half.

Once in a while someone does try to get things on track.

“I wish everyone would stop showing off and get something done about my ship.”

Two space ships have collided, the Empress passenger liner and the Hecate trade ship. The collision has rendered Tryst’s CET machine unstable and creatures are therefore able to walk in and out of it (curiously, only from the one projection of Eden and none from the other planets stored on the machine). An undercover agent has also been released from his captivity inside the Eden projection and reveals that drugs are being smuggled by someone in Tryst’s expedition. The captain of the Empress and one of his crew members are under the influence of the dangerously addictive drug. Customs officers arrive to investigate the crash. The Doctor and Romana have to separate the ships, discover who is smuggling the drugs and how, fight off the Mandrels and return them to their projection, fix the CET machine, and elude the Customs officials.

It could have been an interesting story, but unfortunately there is no feeling of tension, no impression of impending doom, no sense of any real danger. It is all rather loose and freewheeling.

“We’ll go that way and we’ll call it east.”

The few pretenses at Mandrel mania are rather pathetic. The monsters themselves just kind of blindly swat at people, and then there is Romana flinching at the thought of having to jump over a dead one. Come on, Romana, they aren’t very menacing when they are alive. You’re a Time Lord, for goodness sake. But then, maybe that’s her problem. After all, who are our only female Time Lord examples to date? Susan and Rodan. Perhaps when Romana regenerated she reverted to true Time Lady type.

“Here am I, trying a little lateral thinking, and what do you do? You trample all over it with logic.”

The Doctor’s lateral thinking is always welcome, but I think perhaps there isn’t enough rational thought to counterbalance in this story. Everyone kind of jumps in and out of their scenes reciting lines that were written for them. Captain Rigg does a creditable job, but his devil-may-care outlook while under the influence of Vraxoin, which is entirely appropriate to the script, gets lost amongst all of the unrestrained action going on around him.

“First a collision, then a dead navigator, and now a monster roaming about my ship!” Rigg exclaims at one point before the Vraxoin gains hold of him. “It’s totally inexplicable.”

“Nothing’s inexplicable,” the Doctor replies.

“Then explain it,” Rigg demands.

The Doctor answers in the only way he can, “It’s inexplicable.”

That’s Nightmare of Eden. It’s inexplicable. First a collision, then a dead navigator, and now a monster roaming about the ship. Not inexplicable as a plot. That rather nicely sums up the plot and it all should have worked. But somewhere along the way Nightmare of Eden abandoned the plot to its messy fate of shoddy workmanship and what is left works, but it works purely on the level of superficial entertainment.

“What is the man doing? He comes up with a marvelous idea then he fiddles about.”

Well, Gary, I’m done with all the fiddling about in Eden; too bad the marvelous nugget of an idea was never adequately developed, but at least it was pleasant enough to watch.

The Creature From the Pit

Dear Gary—

The Creature From the Pit is one of those Doctor Who blends of good and bad, so much so that I can’t quite determine if I like it or not. I think overall I probably do like it, even though the bad tends to outweigh the good.

The first thing that I think most everyone can agree on—the creature is one of the worst (if not the worst) monsters in all of Doctor Who. It is not just that it is horribly realized, it is that the conception is almost impossible to realize.  The effects people probably didn’t come up with the best they could, but I challenge anyone, given the budget and concept, to outdo them. An elect few maybe could, and perhaps with more advanced techniques not yet available or perfected in the ‘70’s, but not by much.

For starters the creature is conceptualized as huge. Now we have seen similar dubious results with enormous monsters in serials like The Power of Kroll and Invasion of the Dinosaurs. But at least Kroll and the invading dinosaurs could be laughed at from a distance and be vaguely convincing. The creature of our title is up close and personal. The creature of our title is in a claustrophobic pit. The creature of our title is ultimately supposed to be sympathetic, reasoned, and personable. A giant, amorphous blob (with or without phallic parts) just doesn’t work towards this end.

Next, and for me more importantly, Lalla Ward is simply dreadful. The last two stories, Destiny of the Daleks and City of Death, Lalla had settled into a comfortable persona as Romana Mark II. In The Creature From the Pit, however, she is horrifyingly bad. Worse than the creature. Because she is supposed to be good. She is the Doctor’s companion. She doesn’t have to be exceptional; she just needs to be fundamentally sound; even adequate will do. As much as I hate the later companion Peri, at least I wouldn’t say of her that she is a bad actress. Whiny and annoying, yes, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that there is a deep-rooted core of ugly unpleasantness about her.

I hate to dump too much on poor Lalla for just this one serial, Gary. As I said, in the previous two she made her slightly supercilious tone work for the character. In The Creature From the Pit, however, it falls completely apart. Just look at her scene with the Fagin-like scavenger and his gang of thieves. Captured and bound, she puts on an air of such supreme self-importance with absolutely no moral center to back her up. She has an obvious disdain for this “collection of hairy, grubby little men” (“Well, she’s no call to get personal”), and she is able to cow them simply because they are weak minded. She is like a shark going in for the kill; no, not a shark, more like a hyena. Because when confronted with a more forceful presence, for example the Lady Adrasta, she herself is cowed. She displays none of the righteous indignation or moral integrity that Leela, Sarah Jane, or Romana I would have shown under similar circumstances. She has not the courage of her convictions; I’m not even sure she has convictions.

Next in the bad column is K9. K9 has been sidelined for a couple serials and he now emerges with an altered voice and somewhat altered personality. K9 always had the subtlest of inflections to depict the emotion that he adamantly denied, but this new incarnation is overt in his moods. K9 rhapsodically reading Peter Rabbit is just plain silly. Amusing but silly.

Then there is the script. This serial is only four episodes in length, but it barely has enough material in it for three. Much of the blame can be placed on the creature “oozing about and sitting on people; not much of a life, is it?” No, and not much of a plot, either. A giant blob “skulking about in a pit eating people” that is unable to communicate its intentions doesn’t provide much potential for action. If it were rampaging about the countryside terrorizing people that would be one thing, but no, it is confined to a pit. The action has to come looking for it. Or the plot has to go looking for the action outside of the main arena. Thus the raggle taggle group of “hirsute” men.

I have nothing in particular against this mob, except that for the better part of our story they are totally disconnected from it. They are convenient for introducing the concept of metal hording, but we are left in the dark for a long time as to the importance of this. Especially since these dim-wits can think of nothing better to do with their stockpile other than to paw it lecherously. For all we know the only purpose of metal on this planet is to look pretty. No, this rabble serves merely as a distraction.

The final element tipping the scales to the bad side: the Doctor. In particular, “Everest in Easy Stages.” The Doctor, hanging precariously on the side of the pit, equipped with a hammer and some spikes, decides he needs to peruse a book on how to climb? And then: “It’s in Tibetan!” Now I’m pretty sure the Doctor already knows Tibetan, at least enough to get by. Just as I’m sure he knows enough to hammer some spikes into a wall to use as stepping stones. So why the books? There is no one else about to be disarmed by this, so for whom is he performing? It can only be for the camera. Shame on you, Doctor. It is an amusing gag, yes. Highly amusing. Extremely funny in fact. But shame on you, Doctor.

Now for the scale tipping on the side of good: the Doctor. In a story of non-action, in a story of elongated scenes of distraction, in a story with a non-menacing creature, the Doctor takes the only tack appropriate to the occasion: curiosity. He does not gleefully sic K9 on people only to wring his hands in despair when he fails ala Romana; he grabs a rope and jumps down into the pit (what a great cliffhanger, by the way).

Despite not being able to communicate with the creature, the Doctor manages to calm it and gain its trust. With nothing but his observations and common sense he is able to deduce the history of the creature. And with no more than a few brief monologues and a stray “Chlorophyll? I wonder?” or two we start to piece the puzzle together with the Doctor. No drawn out distractions of metal worship are needed; the Doctor simply needs to pick up and muse on a few nuggets of iron. The Doctor jumps into the pit and gets to the bottom of things.

While in the pit the Doctor meets up with another in our plus column, Organon. Organon, the astrologer in disfavor who has been thrown into the pit and survived and who befriends the Doctor. Organon is an important element of the story because, monologues aside, the Doctor needs someone he can interact with other than taciturn blobs. And Organon, with his star-reading mumbo jumbo act, is just the right touch our story needs.

Joining Organon in our scale tipping is Karela, although she doesn’t provide quite as much weight. It’s not her fault but the script’s. Karela, right hand woman to Adrasta. We don’t see enough of her and we don’t get enough “If I say you’re made of tin, you horrible little animal, you’re made of tin” out of her. But she makes the most of what she is given.

And now the final and overwhelming counterbalance: the Lady Adrasta. The Creature From the Pit works solely on the basis of the Lady Adrasta. The Lady Adrasta—Lady MacBeth, Cruella de Vil, the Evil Queen of Snow White—by any name she is larger than life and twice as fascinating.

“Point the dog against the rock!”

The Lady Adrasta is melodrama at its pinnacle, and she elevates our pit to those soaring heights.

Unfortunately for us she is killed off at the beginning of the fourth act and we have to sit through the hastily tacked on conclusion that takes us out of the pit but fails to elevate us.

Overall, however, I have to say that The Creature From the Pit works. Because we are in the realm of melodrama the miserable monster is tolerable and the distractions forgivable. And with the exception of Everest, some of the more glib remarks by the Doctor can be taken for the jokes they are meant. (“Time Lords have 90 lives.” “How many have you got through, then?” “About 130.”; “What sign were you born under?” “Crossed computers.” “Crossed what?” “Computers. It’s the symbol of the maternity service on Gallifrey.”)

And there you have it, Gary.

“We call it . . . the Pit.”

“Ah, you have such a way with words.”

City of Death

Dear Gary—

“What’s Scarlioni’s angle?”

To steal the Mona Lisa. To ransack and sell priceless treasures through the ages. To finance dangerous time experiments. To reunite his twelve fractured selves scattered throughout history. To roll back the Earth’s clock four hundred million years. To undo all of human progress.

“Scarlioni’s angle? Never heard of it. Have you ever heard of Scarlioni’s angle?”

“No, I was never any good at geometry.”

The City of Death, like The Romans so many years before it, is Doctor Who as unabashed comedy.

Also like the Romans, City of Death is Doctor Who on vacation: “It’s the only place in the universe where one can relax entirely.” The Doctor and Romana are in Paris and there is a wonderfully leisurely feel to the story as they take in the sights, from the Eiffel Tower to the Louvre to sidewalk cafes; riding the metro and running across busy streets; the two are totally at ease with one another; and the accompanying musical score to this holiday is inspired.

But when the world takes “a funny turn” and the Doctor and Romana run afoul of Scarlioni things really take off. City of Death is Doctor Who in top form: an excellent script full of excellent supporting characters played by excellent actors.

I’ll start with the least minor character. In the midst of all the big name talents of Julian Glover (“the centuries that divide me shall be undone”), Catherine Schell (“you’re a beautiful woman, probably”), and John Cleese (“to me, one of the most curious things about this piece is its wonderful afunctionalism”), the likes of Peter Halliday makes his usual Doctor Who memorable impression. Tom Baker as the Doctor and Julian Glover as Captain Tancredi are clearly the major players in their scene together, but Peter Halliday in his quiet way as an unnamed soldier steals it.

“I say, what a wonderful butler. He’s so violent.” And then there is Hermann. There isn’t anything exceptional about the character of Hermann, except he is the perfect foil; always deadpan, always on hand to set up a laugh: “Sell a Gutenberg Bible discreetly?” “Well, as discreetly as possible. Just do it, will you?”; “Count, I would really like to get some sleep.” “Hermann, cancel the wine; bring the vitamin pill.”

The scientist Kerensky is yet another notable in our cast. Duped into believing he is working for the betterment of mankind (“It’s the Jagaroth who need all the chickens?”), he is befuddlement and genius combined (“You never cease to amaze me, that such a giant intellect could live in such a tiny mind.”).

Even the tour guide at the Louvre gets in the act.

But it is our main players, the Doctor, Romana, Duggan, the Count, and the Countess, who make City of Death the classic that it is.

Let me start with the Count (Julian Glover) and Countess (Catherine Schell), our two stars among the guest stars. Without their restraining presence the Doctor’s antics would not work as well as they do.

For instance, the Doctor introducing himself and his companions to the Countess while on his knees (after having been tripped up by the violent butler Hermann) and then directing everyone to their places and helping himself to a drink all would have been completely over the top if the Countess didn’t remain perfectly calm, firm, and aristocratic throughout. Even a touch of Margaret Dumont would have sent this scene into the realm of the zany. This is not Marx Brothers but Doctor Who after all.

The Count is equally calm, although not quite as humorless as the Countess. But his is the dry, above-it-all humor one would expect from an alien being who has been splintered into twelve separate parts living twelve separate but connected lives amongst a peoples so far primitive to his own for a seeming eternity. The Count, Scaroth, Last of the Jagaroth; “An infinitely old race and an infinitely superior one.” That he can find humor at all in his plight is remarkable.

I especially love the scene in the cellar as the Doctor peppers the Count with questions that beg for exposition only to have the Count answer in staid, monosyllabic “No” and “Yes” replies (“I like concise answers”), and then the Doctor echoes this back to him when the Count begins his own interrogation. Punctuating it all, of course, is Duggan’s punch (“Duggan! Duggan, why is it that every time I start to talk to someone, you knock him unconscious?”).

But I don’t want to get into Duggan just yet, Gary, because I have more to say about the Count and Countess.

What a fascinating pair, these two. “A few fur coats, a few trinkets, a little nefarious excitement.” This apparently is all it takes to keep the Countess happy. One has to wonder about that nefarious excitement, given the fact that her husband is an undercover alien with one eye and green tentacled face and hands and who knows what else. “What have I been living with all these years?” she finally thinks to ask, and we have to ask why she never thought to ask before.

The Countess is a woman full of her own self-importance, reveling in the power and wealth her husband provides, and thrilling in the criminal escapades he masterminds. (Countess: “Think of the wealth that will be ours.” Count: “The wealth is not everything.” Countess: “Of course. The achievement. Yes, the achievement.”) The Count plays up to her vanities and secretly scorns them.

Puffed up as she is, she knows her place:

Countess: “Of course. Just tell Hermann.”

 Count: “No, my dear. You tell Hermann.”

She has sold herself for fur coats, trinkets, and nefarious excitement, and she never thinks to ask, “What have I been living with all these years?”

Now let’s get to Duggan, ”I’m about ready to thump somebody” Duggan. This Bull Dog Drummond meet Inspector Clouseau character contributes more than his punctuating punch (“I think that was possibly the most important punch in history”).  And he does more than merely introduce us to the art theft sub plot that sucks us and the Doctor into this story.

Duggan lets us get to know Romana Mark II. Now the previous story, Destiny of the Daleks, and the opening scenes of this have shown us a relaxed and easy side to our new Romana. But her interactions with Duggan let us glimpse a side to her beyond her role as companion. Romana is a Time Lord (or Time Lady if you will) and it is nice to see City of Death give her an opportunity to shine as such. (Interesting that now she is a Time Lady and not Time Lord Romana has become vain about her age and is shaving years off, telling Duggan she is 125 when we know from The Ribos Operation that she is 139.)

“If you wanted an omelet,” she tells Duggan displaying a biting wit worthy of the Doctor, “I’d expect to find a pile of broken crockery, a cooker in flames, and an unconscious chef.”  And then she gets to do some Doctor Who technobable explanations to an incredulous Duggan regarding time continuums before giving up and concluding, “Come on, let’s get back to the chateau where at least you can thump somebody.”

“Can anyone join in this conversation, or do you need a certificate?” Duggan’s confused dim-wittedness in many ways voices the same need of the audience for explanations. While Romana assumes a more authoritative, informative role usually consigned to the Doctor alone, Duggan takes on the more traditional companion role needing the intricacies of the plot spelled out for him.

 “Stealing the Mona Lisa to pay for chickens?” That would be Duggan summing up the plot. And that’s not a bad summation, except the Doctor would substitute tinkering with time for chickens, and “that’s always a bad idea unless you know what you’re doing.”

“Oh, some can,” the Doctor says, clearly placing himself in that category, “and if you can’t you shouldn’t tinker with time,” he concludes, clearly placing Kerensky in the latter.

The Count agrees, and he demonstrates exactly how he deals with fools by placing Kerensky in the field generator (“No! Not that switch!”) and ages him to dust. Not to worry, Romana has built him a field interface stabilizer so he can utilize the equipment Kerensky has built as an effective time machine and succeed in his goal of returning to his past self in order to stop himself from causing the explosion that resulted in his fractured existence (and incidentally producing the massive dose of radiation needed to create life on Earth).

And now, Gary, I want to turn my attention to the Doctor. He might have displayed a relaxed and easy charm on holiday followed by some comic turns complete with pratfalls, but when it comes down to it there is a dead serious core masked by the buffoonery that has always been a part of the Doctor’s, and most especially Tom Baker’s Doctor’s, persona.

Doctor: “Ah Count, hello. I wonder if you could spare me a moment of your time. Romana, hello, how are you? I see the Count’s roped you in as a lab assistant. What are you making for him? A model railway? A Gallifreyan egg timer? I hope you’re not making him a time machine. I shall be very angry.”

All that quick, rapid-fire wit we come to expect from the Doctor. Light and humorous but masking concern and gauging the situation.

Scarlioni: “Doctor, how very nice to see you again. It seems like only 474 years since we last met.”

(The Doctor has just returned from his sojourn back to Leonardo da Vinci’s time and his meeting with one of Scarlioni’s alter egos Captain Tancredi.)

Doctor: “Indeed. Indeed yes. I so much prefer the weather in the early part of the sixteenth century, don’t you?”

And then, added to the end of this droll string rolling swiftly off his tongue: “Where’s Duggan?” With all of human history hanging in the balance, with off-the-cuff banter flying about, the Doctor takes the time to enquire after a man he barely knows, a man who is “in it for the thumping,” a man who has blundered his way into the Doctor’s life.

It is that dead calm eye of the storm existing within the chaos that is the fourth Doctor that first impressed me back in Robot and that is impressing me still as we near the end of his long run.

Duggan: “Doctor, get me out of here.”

Doctor: “Ah, there you are Duggan. Are you behaving yourself? Good, good. Now, Count, this is what I’ve come to say . . .”

Assured of Duggan’s safety, the Doctor can get down to the serious business of saving the world.

A quick hop in the TARDIS back four hundred million years (apparently the Doctor can take the TARDIS off the randomizer when necessary) and Duggan can make his world saving punch. In the end I feel sorry for Scaroth, the Last of the Jagaroth. But the Doctor is right: “You’ve thrown the dice once. You don’t get a second throw.”

 I do wonder, though, why Scaroth (as Scarlioni) didn’t hook up with the gang from Invasion of the Dinosaurs working towards the same goal of moving the Earth back through time, but then we’d have a different story. I also don’t know why he didn’t cooperate with the Fendahl and the Daemon Azal to advance Mankind through the ages, but again, different story. It is rather maddening, all these aliens claiming credit for our advancement (including the Doctor’s off-hand claims regarding Shakespeare). And since I’m on the subject of re-writing history (rather ironic since the Doctor is admonishing Scaroth from doing just that when the show is rather liberal with its own revisions), really Gary, are we to believe that da Vinci could make seven identical pictures, so much so that no one can tell the difference from the original even if painted by the same hand?

I have long cited City of Death as my favorite Doctor Who. I don’t know, Gary, that I would state this unequivocally if asked today; I don’t know that I could single out any one story for such an honor, although it remains in my top ten if not top five. Rivaling City of Death for top spot would be that long ago Hartnell story The Romans as well as fellow Tom Baker serials The Brain of Morbius, Pyramids of Mars, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The RibosOperation, and The Pirate Planet (but don’t count out Sylvester McCoy’s Paradise Towers).

I wonder, Gary, where you would rank City of Death, but I can only wonder and send this off with these words of wisdom from the Doctor:

“Well, I suppose the best way to find out where you’ve come from is to find out where you’re going and then work backwards.”

If and when I ever find out where I’m going, Gary . . .