No stories split opinion as much as the light-hearted ones do. Some universally love them, and some…well, you get the picture. I try to keep an open mind about them; I think The Chase is brilliant, for example, whereas others make me cringe as anyone who has read my recent review of Delta And The Bannermen will attest (and lets not forget Aliens Of London). While I wouldn’t call it comedic, The Androids Of Tara is certainly lightweight – and furthermore, it’s an example of a lightweight story pitched just right.

Having said that, it does get off to a shaky start. I’ve never held David Fisher in particularly high regard as a writer, and the beginning of this episode showcases why: his dialogue isn’t terrible, but it is completely lacking in any breadth beyond what applies directly to the plot. Every line spoken is the minimum necessary to push the narrative forward; characterisation, subtext and original panache are hardly present at all. The best I can say about it is that it has a certain simplistic elegance, but I feel that it is simply Fisher’s rudimentary skill that causes this. It is his well-known source material rather than him that makes this story the most enjoyable of his four scripts for the series. This isn’t a problem once the plot actually gets going, but in the early introductory scenes the script creaks through its inability to carry a conversation that doesn’t directly correspond to its core idea of Count Grendel’s political machinations. Hence we have Romana’s horribly delivered recap of their quest for the season, exposition so unsubtle it feels like being on the receiving end of Monty Python’s fish-slapping routine. We also get the Doctor’s desire to take a break, which judders along side the intention of the story as a whole. Just to get my gripes over and done with, four stories in and Tom Baker and the Ice Queen still have no on-screen rapport whatsoever. Baker tries his best, but Frostina undermines his efforts with boringly delivered lines that for all their efficiency aren’t much more interesting than her just saying “I’m going over here”.

Ten minutes in the plot gets going, and all is well. The segment is found immediately, and plays little part in the story. This adventure epitomises how to carry a plot-arc successfully: not to be concerned about it all the time. This serial comes as light relief to prevent the ongoing hunt for the Key To Time, which had been going on unabated for twelve weeks, and prevents it becoming boring – it works wonderfully well. In even the most dynamic of narratives (not that that’s an adjective commonly appropriate to the Graham Williams era) there comes a time when it’s good to take the foot from the accelerator and just cruise for a bit.

The core idea of a technologically-sophisticated society that is aesthetically archaic is a brilliantly original one, even if it doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny; then again, this episode was never designed to stand up to scrutiny, or else it wouldn’t be “lightweight”. It creates a fascinating juxtaposition between culture and technology, and also presents the unique scenario of a science-fiction adventure with what is for practical purposes a period setting – and when it comes to period settings, Doctor Who’s hit-rate is well documented. It is helped by some pleasing design work (my jaw hit the ground when I saw that designer Valerie Warrender was also responsible for The Twin Dilemma), and some excellently directed location footage from Michael Hayes. I shouldn’t need to make that point given that Hayes also helmed the truly magnificent City Of Death, but he never seems to get much recognition. The only real failing in design terms is the wood beast, but then it’s really just the inanimate plastic face mask that lets it down; at least it can move at more than a snails pace, unlike several other monsters that space does not permit me to list. Also the incidental music sees Dudley Simpson on one of his better days, his harpsichord score appropriate to the story and unobtrusive.

In acting terms the story gets by with an average cast: Neville Jason is good as Prince Reynart but is cancelled out by the hamtastic Paul Lavers as Farrah. The real standout though is of course Peter Jeffery as Count Grendel, who makes a brilliant villain for such a story: pantomime-influenced, but retaining all his credibility. In short, I love to hate him in a way only really matched by Roger Delgado. Baker is flippant, as he was throughout most of Williams’s time as producer, but not lazy yet. Zadek’s and Reynart’s explanation of Tara’s political system is reasonable in the exposition field, staying the right side of stating the obvious, and signposts future action in which swashes will be significantly buckled.

The poisoned chalice is, unsurprisingly, a stock element but it makes for an enjoyable cliffhanger leading to a great final shot of the leering Grendel. Very little has happened of note in the first episode, which is odd given that the only purpose of each scene is to further the plot, but it has the perfect spirit.

I’m not criticising it as such, but the superficiality of this story does make it quite hard to find something to say about it beyond aesthetic details. For most stories this would be a final condemnation, but this is so intentionally daffy and confident in its execution it elevates it to the level of fun-for-all. It has to be said that even if the dialogue is not so simple intentionally it is very tight; a rare exception to its purely perfunctory nature comes with Farrah’s nervousness towards androids, to which the Doctor responds that androids feel the same way about humans. This is a good moment, even if it had been done better in The Robots Of Death. 

Cyril Shaps plays a whinger in all four of his appearances in the show, which is an unfortunate role to be typecast as, and this is his only story where he doesn’t get killed. He can get very annoying, especially when I’m so familiar with The Tomb Of The Cybermen is which is complaining reaches incredible levels. The cliffhanger is great if only because it’s so much fun to see the Doctor triumphant, even if it does undermine Grendel’s threat. Mary Tamm’s speech to the android king, however, sounds like it’s being delivered by a zombie. Tamm plays four roles in this story (a record), when she can only barely cope with one. However, two of the roles are only faceless ciphers - and the androids don’t take much skill either.

There is as tense seen as the characters blag their way through the android king’s malfunctions, and this leads on to a brief shot of the segment; it has no bearing on the story, and is only being shown through necessity as there is no real way of avoiding that this is a Key to Time story; of all of the six serials this is the one that could sit most happily in another season.

The Romana-android that fires a laser at womb height (a feminist commentary perhaps, or just laughable visual effects? You decide) gets by as this episode makes no claim to gritty realism. This makes it all the more jarring to hear of Lamia’s relationship with Grendel; a relief to see a moment of characterisation, even if it is slightly tokenist.

The destruction of the Romana-android is a stagy action scene: Hayes’s strength is with film. The action scenes that take place outdoors are much better, even if the guards cannot shoot straight; villains could very rarely shoot straight in Doctor Who, but here for some reason I found their ability to hit just about everything except what they were actually aiming at quite irritating. It is a shock to see Madam Lamia killed in such an inherently gentle story though; the mortality rate for this story (credited characters only* not including regulars) is only 11.1%.

Into the final episode, and Grendel’s outburst of “this is not wine but vinegar” is embarrassingly cheesy in a story that, while undeniably derivative, has an original twist. 

Tamm’s performance as Strella is even worse than her one as Romana, if that’s possible, and annoyingly K9 plays a significant role in the plot. Like the sonic screwdriver he’s OK for certain things but if he’s used directly in solving the plot then he’s just as galling as any other narrative device; there’s also the problem that I never feel so much like it’s a kids’ show as when K9’s on screen. That said he does get quite sarky in this episode, making him just about bearable. Even so, the “hamster with a blunt penknife” line is overrated.

There are lots of cuts between film and videotape here, which is helped by the darkness. The finale is wonderful: again it contains stock elements, but the oldies are the best: it has all the classics such as an unjust wedding interrupted in the nick of time and a very well choreographed swordfight that restores my faith in Hayes. However, Baker’s performance does verge on slapstick here which is inappropriate for a show that, while whimsical, was not a comedy programme. By contrast the lack of incidental music in the first part of the fight makes it seem very grim and serious, although it makes it less dramatic also.

A Gracht never surrenders: they take the honourable option of fleeing. It makes his last words of “next time I shall not be so lenient” seem very witty, and it is testament to how sweet natured this is that it feels totally right that the villain should escape free. I’d feel sorry for him if he bit the dust. This is followed by the quick, necessary scene of making sure they have the segment, and the Doctor’s line of “I didn’t catch one fish” must have seemed a very strange thing to say to the 500 000 people who hadn’t watched part one.

My top ten list is loaded up with the deep and rich stories such as The Curse Of Fenric, City Of Death and Kinda – The Androids Of Tara is a perfect alternative however, when I want one. It will never be a classic as it is so essentially empty and so I’m only giving it an average rating, but it gets that by default more than anything else; settle down with a swiss roll and some dry cider and it’s a delight from beginning to end.

*Besides, I think K9 probably only stunned those guards anyway. Wouldn’t really suit the tone otherwise.

Like ‘City of Death,’ ‘The Talons of Weng-Chiang’ represents a kind of series zenith for lots of Doctor Who fans; for many, it’s simply The Best Story Ever, with The Best Doctor Ever, from The Best Production Era Ever, etc., etc. Now, I don’t intend to make hamburger out of this sacred cow, exactly, but I will perhaps take an unflinching look at it, udders and all.

The most usual objection to be made against the story, when any objection is made at all, is that it is racist. The fan response to this tends to be a combination of “It’s not racist, it’s mocking the Victorians’ racism!” and “Well, things were different in the 1970s.” The second statement is certainly true, even if it doesn’t really excuse much; the first doesn’t quite wash. Victorian racism is indeed on display throughout ‘The Talons of Weng-Chiang,’ but, oddly, Robert Holmes’s script never explicitly criticizes it, and the few truly identifiable swipes against it (Chang’s dry “I understand, we all look alike”; the Doctor’s one or two sarcastic responses to generalizations about the Chinese, e.g.) cannot be said with absolute certainty to come from the screenplay, and could easily be ironic line readings chosen by the actors or the director.

These observations out of the way, it is probably fair to say that this objection to ‘Talons’ has been somewhat exaggerated. No, the script isn’t aggressively critical of 19th century attitudes about race, but it isn’t enthusiastic about them either, and if this were the story’s only troubling aspect it might be easier to see why it’s so often overlooked.

But judged simply in terms of its entertainment value, ‘The Talons of Weng-Chiang’ seems to me to be only a fair representative of the Philip Hinchcliffe era, and not nearly as good as some. In particular, the story often strikes me as a poor man’s ‘Brain of Morbius.’ Michael Spice’s presence aside, the plot has many parallels to the earlier story – both have crippled, technologically advanced megalomaniacs relying on human administrators to restore them to their former glorious states, via methods most unwholesome. But Greel is a less convincing villain than Morbius, whose unhinged rants make much sense when one considers the unending frustration that must be experienced by a brain sitting in a jug. Greel’s ranting, on the other hand, seems unconnected to his physical malady; in fact, one would think his disintegrating body would have made him too weak for the kind of relentless roaring Spice does in the role. Furthermore, while Holmes’s evocative “infamous minister of justice” and “butcher of Brisbane” lines are wonderfully sinister, they don’t quite jell with the pathetic paper tiger we see here, who can’t even do anything when his servants fail him but belittle and yell. And boy, does Spice yell – in fact, if anything, he seems bent on out-shouting his performance in ‘Morbius.’ In my view, a weak, obviously dying, more truly phantom-like Greel would have made more sense with this plot, but Spice didn’t choose this road, and the result is generically hammy Who villain, hardly belonging in the pantheon of greats. 

The rest of the problems are relatively minor, but they’re still worth noting. Henry Gordon Jago is a well-loved Holmes creation, but his alliteration rather grates on me, and he doesn’t really get a chance to be anything but pompous until the final episode. There’s a strange Anglocentric quality to some of the jokes, notably the Doctor’s strange, out-of-character one about Birmingham – why would a Time Lord know or care about such things? And speaking of the Doctor, Tom Baker puts in a decent performance, but the character strikes me as strangely all-knowing here. Perhaps it’s all part of the Holmes homage conceit (I mean Sherlock, not Robert, this time), but even so, the Doctor seems to do very little real deduction, but rather just leaps to the correct conclusions based on some very convenient foreknowledge (about the Tong of the Black Scorpion, the Time Cabinet, the Peking Homunculus, and of course the mythology of Weng-Chiang itself). He is the Doctor, of course, but it all feels a bit unnatural – I much prefer a Doctor who does a bit of genuine detective work, be it in this story or any other.

All this said, there are of course some wonderful, rightly beloved elements sprinkled here and there throughout the episode. I don’t generally find Louise Jameson very convincing as Leela – the character is brilliantly conceived, but the actress rarely sells it for me, despite looking the part (and then some, ahem). However, here her snarling contempt for Greel, and her lack of fear, shines through perfectly, and the line “When we are both in the great hereafter I shall hunt you down, bent-face, and put you through my agonies a thousand times!” gave me chills. And her interplay with Litefoot, an extremely likeable character, is charming; you sense that Jameson and Trevor Baxter got on rather well. I actually think the giant rat puppet works surprisingly well, especially when it’s rushing the camera, and of course Mr. Sin is a creepy, surreal idea with a terrific name (and I think he looks a bit like Jennifer Paterson, but maybe that’s just me). The screenplay and direction keep the action moving along, and in Episode Six everything comes together so well that we almost forget the bumps we encountered on the way there. And then there’s Mr. Chang . . .

Probably the greatest irony of ‘The Talons of Weng-Chiang,’ with its nebulous racial sensibilities, is that it is the story’s one ‘yellowface’ character that emerges as its single most successful element. Li H’sen Chang is an extremely complex creation – cold, and hideously unconcerned with the lives he takes for his master; and yet the character has a genuine pathos about him, even a tragedy. In his performance, John Bennett radiates cool loathing for the bigotry and blindnesses of his Victorian surroundings, and one can easily see how Chang could want to believe that an ancient god from his homeland would come to deliver him from a degrading, performing-monkey existence in a vulgar, foreign music hall – even to the point of grasping at straws, or committing murder. Holmes gives Chang the most beautiful lines of the story – even throwaway ones like his description of the Doctor as having “hair that curls like a ram” have a touch of poetry in them, and by the end we are genuinely angry at Greel for his thankless mistreatment and misunderstanding of his patient, deluded servant. Chang’s final scene, in which he is allowed to recognize some of his mistakes, and make a kind of peace with his fate, is a welcome piece of mercy on Holmes’s part, the character expires with a dignity that was sorely lacking in his Victorian life anyway. 

Of course, it would have been interesting to see an actual Chinese actor do the part . . . .

Tom Baker's final story has a really bright and creative idea in it. The planet of Logopolis itself is a really very exciting. The idea of a society that is completely based and has such faith in the power or math is quite good. A faith that is so strong they can actually use it to hold back entropy is such a powerful idea that it deserved to be at the front of this story instead of just the background.

Sadly enough there isn't much else in this four part story to get excited about. Baker's color and charisma were pulled way back for this story and it hurts. It may have worked as an idea to promote the dark and funeral like feel of the story but without the Doctor there are no pick up moments or bright points in the story and it just makes it dreadful to watch. The mysterious Watcher in the background doesn't add much depth to what is going on. Even the TVM regeneration was better than this.

The first wheel spinning episode is incredibly dull. The Master lands his TARDIS around a real police box and disguises it as a police box so the when the Doctor lands his police box he'll actually be landing both around and inside the Master's police box. Then the Doctor and Adric wonder from console room to console room. Soon Tegan manages to get herself into the TARDIS so she can start wondering from corridor to corridor. YAAAAAAAAAAWN! The story never really picks up from that point.

Adric is actually the only credible character in the story. Most of the tale is told from his point of view as he learns more from the Doctor, asks the right questions, and develops quite well.

Tegan has a miserable first start. Janet Fielding gives a way over the top performance that has no credibility to it at all. She was supposed to be a strong independent character but just comes off as being bitchy with personality swings you almost have to duck to avoid. There's nothing wrong, really, with playing a character at 100% but switching from one direction, doesn't believe a word the Doctor says, to another, desperately dependant on him, as fast as lightning is really lousy for character development. She decides that he is her only hope of survival and is counting on him to get her back to Earth so she snaps into action and completely ignores what he tells her to do.

The only character that comes of worse in this story is the Master. For the first two episode he turns it into a slaughter fest and all we get is the Master's hollow laughter in the background. To make evil characters work there has to at least be a reason for them doing what they do but there is none. A policeman uses a telephone from the box and the Master kills him. Aunt Vanesa opens the police box door and he kills her. As the story progresses he goes to Logopolis so he can start killing more people at a time. His evil scheme to finally destroy the Doctor is set in place by killing people at random? Even with that simple of a plan he fails miserably and gets in way over his head. The plan is as flat and as one dimensional as Ainley's performance. He never had the charisma or depth that an actor needed to make the character work and never improved much from his introduction. His message to the peoples of the universe that he tries to send out is so weak and laughable I can't imagine it being taken seriously by anybody who came across it. He's basically threatening people who've never heard of him or know the truth about entropy that if the universe doesn't immediately accept him as their ruler he will allow entropy to destroy everything. Nobody will be shaking in their boots when they get that signal.

After it's all said and done this story is a miserable waste of time. The worst of the regeneration stories.

Skip it.

The Graham Williams universe seems to consist of planets that resemble the home counties populated by peoples who adhere to Terran middle-class etiquette. This is endearing and reassuring in one sense, perfectly fitting for the then tea time slot of the programme, and contrasts fantastically with disbelief-suspended extraterrestrial settings. It can stretch one’s sense of belief to the extremes however – think of Drax and his cockney lingo picked up from his days of dodgy dealing in London’s East End and his true identity as a Timelord trapped on another planet in The Armageddon Factor. No less incongruously, The Ribos Operation pits the Doctor against the cajoling machinations of Garron, an interplanetary con-merchant who explains in one scene how he had almost succeeded in selling the Sydney Opera House to an alien speculator. Garron, evidently incredulous to the Doctor’s well-travelled presence, particularly regarding Earth, impersonates a town crier at the beginning of this story which the itinerant Gallifreyan immediately recognises as “a Somerset accent”. Here then, at the very beginning of a story and of a season, the uncompromisingly parochial Williams micro-cosmos asserts itself substantially for the first time. One might even say it does so earlier in the opening scene when the Doctor irritably confronts the White Guardian who is dressed in colonial attire, replete with sun-hat, and seated in a cane chair in dire need of a veranda.

Then there is the setting of the planet Ribos: an extrapolation of 19th century Tsarist Russia complete with crown jewels, snow flurries and ushankas. The incoming companion Romana too has a faintly Russian-sounding name in full (sorry, can’t remember the spelling) and is wearing a Zhivago-esque white fur-collared outfit missing its own ushanka. The Russo-evocative setting is amplified too by suitably sombre organ music emphasising the gloomy wintriness of a planet steeped in backward tradition – so much so that its inhabitants are completely ignorant of life on other planets and that aliens are mingling casually among them. This planetary obliviousness is exploited to the full by Garron and his indeterminately aged, monkey-faced sidekick Unstoffe: together they attempt to manipulate the battle-weary Graff Vynda-K into buying Ribos from them for his new base where he might regroup his forces for a last stand against those who have usurped his Levithian crown. Garron and Unstoffe plant a lump of the adamantine Jethrik on Ribos in order to deceive the Graff into thinking the planet is rich in this, the most valuable mineral in the galaxy. Garron also claims the Ribans (note here how Holmes expertly avoids the semantic ease of calling the inhabitants Ribosians or even Ribons, instead opting for the slightly lateral variation of Ribans) are ignorant of Jethrik’s properties, not to mention reputation, and through a laboured elaboration improvised by a disguised Unstoffe, further lead the Graff to believe that the Ribans refer to the mineral as Scringestone, possession of which ensures “you’ll never get the scringes again” (Unstoffe). Though it is true the Ribans are unaware of the mineral’s true value.

But the honest-faced Unstoffe is later morally redeemed when his conscience is awoken to the ironic plight of the vagrant known as Binro the Heretic: his gift to this misunderstood genius who was persecuted for his theory of life on other planets is to tell him that he himself is from one of those distant stars – a truly moving scene. Equally emotive and harrowing is the Graff’s ultimate lapse into delusional paranoia on realising he has yet again been strategically out-manoeuvred by a typical Holmesian capitalist (also see the Collector in The Sunmakers, Rohm Dutt in The Power of Kroll and so on).

Otherwise The Ribos Operation is a fairly comical tale and one of the most uniquely static stories in the show’s cannon: there is virtually no action throughout the story and its impetus is almost entirely in the exceptionally colourful, detailed and lively dialogue between the writer’s proverbially caricature-style protagonists.

Detail is the word which springs to mind in summing up the strengths of The Ribos Operation – strengths which far outweigh its situational inertia and suspension of disbelief. Typical of Holmes’s imaginative genius, he teases us with hints of a planet with a rich history and geographical variation; more specifically in this case, he has the characters making geographically specific comments like “Are you from the North?” (to the Doctor); this is also to my mind the second and last time since The Keys of Marinus that a script has detailed an alien planet to such an extent that the concept of countries has surfaced: the events of this story are in the often-mentioned country of Shir (not sure about the spelling). Not since The Talons of Weng-Chiang with its allusions to an Icelandic Alliance, the Phillipeno Army’s final advance against Rejyavik, and the Peking Homunculus, has Holmes so vividly evoked a fictitious backdrop to his stories.

The Ribos Operation is not a classic Doctor Who story in the traditionally recognised sense – it lacks sufficient drama for a start. But it is a classic of its kind, that kind being of the dialogue-driven, stage-play style Doctor Who, an infectious medium in which the mind is gradually immersed in a trance of perfect escapism: a fictional scenario which feeds the intellect and puts all mundane preoccupations to sleep for a deeply rejuvenative period. And most of all, as previously mentioned, this story typifies Holmes’s gift at tantalising the imagination with half-sketched details never fully substantiated, which echoes of Hemingway’s theory of ‘omission’: that which is unstated strengthens the story and makes people feel something more than they have understood. This stimulating of the imagination was one of the vital functions series such as Doctor Who exemplified.

The Ribos Operation was the opening story of the sixteenth season and saw very much a final break in style and tone with the previous Tom Baker years. There has been plenty of comment about the humorous style of the latter Baker years, most of it misplaced. The humour here is as subtle and as clever as the gothic content of the Hinchcliffe years. The addition of the humour works. Season 16 as a whole works as does, for that matter, season 17.

The season was given a running theme, a story arc, which has since been replicated but never equalled. Namely the search for the Key To Time. 

The main drivers for this story are the relationships between the six main characters. Firstly there is the Graff Vynda-K and his trusty sidekick, Sholakh. These are two battle hardened veterans. From the looks of Sholakh he spent all the battles in the front line and from the looks of the Graff he spent those battles as far removed from the front line as Melchett in Blackadder Goes Forth. The Graff is a man who is bitter and has been deposed, he is driven by revenge and the desire to reclaim the Levithian crown. Sholakh, being a career soldier knows little else. His loyalty is wholehearted to the Graff. Theirs is a relationship borne in adversity. 

Another relationship borne in adversity, albeit of a different kind, is that of Garron and Unstoffe. Garron is played with a larger than life panache by veteran screen actor Iain Cuthbertson, best remembered by me in the wonderful Children of the Stones. His put upon sidekick is played by Nigel Plaskitt and actor whose two main claims to fame are being the voice of a hare on a childrens TV show and being "Malcolm" in the Vicks adverts for blocked noses in the seventies. Chosen career criminals, and portrayed as lovable rogues (Gawd bless em, they never armed anyone apart from their own) they have gone from planet to planet conning people out of their hard earned (or otherwise) goods and money. Constantly with an eye over their shoulder for the Police being on the run has forged a bond between them although I doubt either trusts each other. 

The final key relationship is the Doctor and Romana. Romana is a very different companion to any we have seen before. An equal to the Doctor, not in awe of him and very very aloof. A Time Lady version of Margot from the Good Life with The Doctor playing Tom to her Margot. 

Romana will lose, as the series evolves, she lost her aloof edge as she realised what was out there in the big old universe. However in this story Romana is at her most superior and there is some sparkling dialogue between her and the Doctor throughout the story. The Doctors annoyance at her putting a hole in the console to fit the tracer was wonderful, as was her smug superiority at the Doctor getting caught in one of the nets on the outskirts of the city.

In fact the dialogue is the best thing about this whole story. It fairly sparkles. Next to the dialogue is the superb characterisation of the main characters. The characterisation, and the motivation, of the characters is very well defined.

So the basic premise of the story, Garron and Unstoffe are trying to sell the planet Ribos to the Graff Vynda-K. They plant some documents to make it look like there are valuable mineral reserves on Ribos. The Doctor and Romana turn up and throw a spanner in the works. The story keeps going at a fairly reasonable pace, there are some interesting natives especially the seeker and, of course, Binro the Heretic played by Timothy Bateson, a man who has made his name in sitcoms as "middle class neighbour" or "Bank Manager" gives a truly sympathetic performance as a man who thinks the world is not flat and the planet revolves around its own sun in contravention of the thinking of the day. The interchanges between him and Unstoffe, hiding in the Catacombs, where Unstoffe reveals to him that he is right all along and one day people on Ribos will know he was right were truly moving. Worth a life !

Thank You Robert Holmes, for yet another superb story.

There is a very interesting premise at the core of The Face of Evil, more interesting than a computer with a split personality that split up a colony ship into two separate tribes. The Doctor has often been portrayed as a flawed hero but we never really get to see evidence of this (later we would get some definitive evidence in Warriors of the Deep, Terror of the Vervoids…) so to hear him admit that on his last visit he tried to help and misjudged his tinkering (and his ego) is quite a shock. Much like The Ark it is fascinating to set the story long after the Doctor’s first visit and to explore the consequences. Whilst hardly apologetic the Doctor is clearly horrified to see the far-reaching results of his handiwork, you realise just how much of an impact, how much change he has caused when he doesn’t even recognise the planet or the people until the end of the second episode! I love this idea of the Doctor failing, its one of the reason I will take him over James Bond (actually my dream James Bond film would see him fail miserably and be forced to face the consequences just to subvert expectations) anyday because the Doctor can lose and lose spectacularly. A lot of people die in this story and none of it would have happened had the Doctor never visited. Or at least it would not have happened in this way. 

The Face of Evil is an often-ignored story from the treasured season fourteen although it is one that is having something of a renaissance in the twilight years of the series. It is a very clever story from fresh writer Chris Boucher that takes big ideas like God-worship and split personality and applies them thoughtfully to a tale that is low on heart thumping action but scores well with the intellectuals. Hinchcliffe is still taking risks three stories from his departure, most producers would keep it safe and just use writers they can rely on but Hinchcliffe is still drawing fresh talent to the show. A bold but successful step, the script is lively and bursting with hysterical dialogue and clever quips (but then with Robert Holmes lurking in the background this is practically a given). The story is beautifully structured, the first two episodes introduce the main concepts; the mystery of the Doctor’s influence on the planet, the scientific equipment scattered about a primitive colony. After exploring the Sevateem camp the story switches location for the last two episodes into the Tesh ship and introduces the heart of the problem in the memorable third cliffhanger. Because it is a more considerate story than usual it demands more time to deal with its climax, which unusually takes place halfway through the last episode with plenty of time to deal with explanations and the future of the colonists. It’s not a perfect story but you cannot fault the effort that has gone into the writing. 

How bizarre is it to see a companion less Doctor. I am glad they quickly introduced Leela because I don’t think I could have managed a whole story with the Doctor addressing the camera as he does at the beginning of this story (although it is rather fun imagining that you are the companion, that he is addressing you personally!). If the production team had been even braver they would have roughened Leela up even more, had her dirty and dishevelled, like she really lived in the wild. As it is the Dads need some incentive to tune in so Louise Jameson debuts in clean skins looking as thought she has just taken a bath. I can understand the decision to keep her squeaky clean but at least her behaviour and instincts are appropriately feral. 

There is immediate potential with Leela that isn’t apparent with so many companions and you can see instantly what the producer was trying to achieve. Much like Jaime and Victoria there is a lot of scope for having ignorant companions (and I don’t mean that in a derogatory fashion, Jaime and Victoria were companions from the past and Leela is a savage warrior) who require a lot of explanations for the scientific side of things. It allows the writer to feed information to the viewer without the companion looking stupid. But its more than that, I firmly believe the key to good comedy/drama is healthy culture clashing and to pair up an eccentric scientist with a homicidal savage then you have character gold. Maybe Leela wasn’t exploited to the full next year but there were enough wonderful moments where their ideals clash to validate this experimental companion. 

Indeed Louise Jameson’s compelling performance as the naпve savage is one of the highpoints of this story, you can see already the Eliza Doolittle/Proffesor Higgins relationship flowering just how Philip Hinchcliffe wanted. I adore the Doctor and Leela’s first scene together where he offers her a jelly baby and she recoils saying “Its true then! They say the Evil One eats babies!” And they stick close throughout the story, learning the facts of the story together and how Leela learns that her entire belief system is twisted and false is sensitively but firmly handled by the Doctor who refuses to molly-coddle her with the truth. By the end of the story Leela is talking about concepts she didn’t even understand at the beginning and even looking at her own people exactly the same way we saw her at the beginning, thus begins her education. 

Doctor Who and religion are sticky subjects, sometimes a story tackles the subject head on such as in the gripping The Massacre but more often they are background elements (look at the recent Halflife that has a fascinating religious background but is not the centre of the story at all). I was reading a brilliant piece of writing by Douglas Adams recently from his article anthology in The Salmon of Doubt about the existence of an Artificial God. One point he makes wonderfully well is that there are certain ideas you are not allowed to say anything bad about. ‘In the case of an idea’ he says ‘if we think, “Here’s an idea that is protected by holiness” what does it mean?’ It is very brave of him to make this move; to actively critisize religion by comparing it other much debated issues (politics) and reaching the conclusion that the validity of debating about religion is as important as any other. My point is The Face of Evil deals with a heavy religious theme and has the balls to be less than positive about it

It is almost a deconstruction of the God myth, Xoanon is simply a diseased computer with delusions of grandeur but the myth behind this ‘God’ is an extremely powerful and destructive force. It shows how propaganda can lead to a belief system of its own, through Neeva (tricked by Xoanon) the Sevateem are manipulated into fighting and killing on behalf of their ‘God’. And Leela who actively speaks out against Xoanon is threatened with execution and banished from the settlement! It exposes some of the dangers that come with intense religious beliefs and shows you how far people are willing to go in the name of their icon. Even more interestingly the story opens out into religious War, with the two fractured halves of Xoanon’s personality externalised in the Sevateem and the Tesh we see two homicidal factions that dismiss the others beliefs and wish to see their ‘false’ religion stamped out. All very interesting, I suppose the question is how far into exploring religion can a four part SF serial from the 70’s go? Much of what I have discussed here is background information and there to be picked up by those who choose but they will be others who should dismiss my claims and read something else into the story, or even that it has no comments at all to make and is only a rather witty adventure tale. I have no opinion on God one way or the other but I find it fascinating that the story throws religion in such an unforgiving light. I certainly find the religious angle far more interesting than the ‘brains vs brawn’ angle people usually apply to this story. 

What is bloody brilliant is the idea (and realisation) of a savage community with technological equipment scattered around their settlement. The way in which the Sevateem has compartmentalised these objects into their society is very creative. Neeva’s glove headgear is great fun and the close up on the survey ship alloy gong a phenomenal moment.

One huge fault with the story and one that the Hinchcliffe era is so keen to avoid usually is the design. It is a very drab looking story which starts with the sets; the bare and unconvincing jungle set, the sterile corridors of the survey ship, simple hut like dwellings, and reaches through to the costumes; savages in simple leathers (realistic but hardly eye catching), the Tesh in bizarrely camp make up and green quilted uniforms. Even the direction is lacking on occasions, occasionally there is a moment of genius (like the test of the Horda) but sometimes Pennant Roberts sticks to dull perpendicular angles for his fight sequences. It does not please the eye and I find myself bored and wanting some vibrancy (no trouble of that in the next too stories). 

Another massive problem is the third episode; this is another season fourteen story that suffers from the Curse of the third episodes. This instalment seems to comprise of some embarrassingly inefficient laser fights, both is the jungle and in the Tesh ship and a bunch of Manuel-inspired Tesh being civilised and camp with each other. It is not until the unsettling cliffhanger the things pick up where we are finally privy to some explanations. There is nothing wrong with the writing that the direction couldn’t have livened up.

One thing the story gets VERY right is the performances. The Sevateem are played with relish by a bunch of experienced actors and as such come across as a believable and rowdy group. Brendan Price’s Tomas is the token ‘nice guy’ but there is nothing stomach churning about his sensitive performance. David Garfield plays Neeva with the right amount of hypnotic naivetй; I love it when he interrogates the Doctor by waving scientific equipment in his face screaming religious propaganda. But best of the bunch (apart from Louise Jameson of course who flashes some leg and kills a handful at the same time!) is that slimey rattlesnake Calib, in Leslie Schofield’s enigmatic performance you can see a character who is watching every plot twist and seeing how they can twist it to their advantage. 

It is a story that takes the psychological and religious angle over straightforward action adventure but still manages to tell an entertaining story. It is far from flawless (its not exactly the first story you would show a non fan) but there is intelligence to the story that is hard to ignore. Personally I find it a little too dry in places, the direction freezing up too often but I would still bill it as a strong story in its own right and one that manages to push the boundaries far better than the acknowledged and overrated stories that make similar claims (Kinda). 

Just think, the entire universe could just be the manufactured handiwork of a computer with a mental breakdown! Makes you think, doesn’t it…?