I bet there must be at least a few people reading this wondering what I'm doing reviewing a release that's over four years old. Well, I can give you two for starters: One, nobody else has bothered to review it; Two, I think it's an absolute gem, and I feel duty-bound to tell everyone else what a good adventure this is.

To enjoy Nightmare of Eden, the viewer needs to get rid of a few preconceptions- Firstly, pretend it's not a Season 17 story. Secondly, it does require a kind eye. If you like your Doctor Who to be glossy and place style over substance, then nothing I will say here will convince you that it's anything but cheap pap. But, if it's the little things like a good, engaging plot that you want, then this is for you.

Bob Baker, along with his long-time writing partner Dave Martin, wrote numerous stories for Doctor Who throughout the 1970's, some of which had the most zany plots ever to grace the show. So anyone expecting an outlandish adventure will be pleasantly surprised to find that Eden has it's plot pretty much rooted to the ground- well, as rooted as a story set on a spaceship can be, anyway. The story centres on a collision between a hyperspace collision between a passenger spaceliner and a privateer vessel, which leaves the two ships stranded in orbit around the planet Azure, with the passengers' lives in peril. Posing as Galactic Salvage and Insurance, the Doctor and Romana answer the distress call, and attempt to separate the two ships, only to discover that the passenger ship is infested with a deadly race of creatures, the Mandrells. As if that wasn't enough, one of the Mandrell's victims is found to be taking the deadly drug Vraxoin- thought to have been stamped out long ago. Naturally, as the Doctor tries to identify who has discovered a new source of the drug, he finds himself under suspicion from the authorities.

All the interconnected threads of the story fit together nicely. In the 1970's, I imagine there can't have been too many mainstream shows in Britain that would have been prepared to tackle the issue of drugs, as much a current affairs hot potato then as it ever was, head-on like this. So, it's the show's credit that the drug-smuggling plot is so well handled. This is no small part down David Daker; whose performance as the drug addicted Captain Rigg is chilling. If it had been Robert Holmes writing the story, we'd be applauding it, and it also proves Season 17 wasn't just about witty one-liners. Of particular note are two scenes in episode Three: the first sees Rigg laughing as he watches, via the ship's the monitors, the Mandrells on a murdering rampage. When questioned, he quips; 'What does it matter, they're only economy class?!' The second sees him beg a shocked Romana, 'I need something for this feeling,' as the effects of his addiction take hold. Daker's delivery is superb, and thoroughly convincing.

It's a pity, then, that he doesn't get better support from the rest of the guest cast. Barry Andrews puts in a good turn as the undercover agent Stott, but is given little to do except shoot at Mandrells, and explain the odd plot development. The two actors in more central roles are a bit more disappointing- particularly Lewis Fiander as the scientist Tryst, whose European accent is atrocious- it even varies between German, French and Italian as the story goes on! (On that note, why is it that Doctor Who could never have a mad scientist speaking in an English accent?) Whilst Geoffrey Bateman as Dymond shows less life than the scenery. Speaking of which…

Oh the spaceship sets look awfully cheap. There are probably worse examples knocking around, but that doesn't mean that these sets are good. Which is a shame, as the forest scenery is, for the second story in succession, actually rather good. It's not quite up there with the one they managed for 'Creature from the Pit' but it's a good effort nonetheless, and a rare positive for the design team in a serial where the production values have hit the floor. The Mandrells are supposed to induce shock when they make their appearance at the end of Episode One- instead; you're more likely to piss yourself laughing! And the costumes are terrible too, but more of that later.

So again, it's down to Tom and Lalla to bring some credibility to the story. So much of their success as a team was down to their terrific on-screen chemistry, so it's nice to watch a story that gives them the opportunity to show off as individuals. This story finds Tom Baker, in one of his more jovial moods, which won't be to everyone's liking. Of all the stories of Season 17, this is probably the one that got the least input from Douglas Adams. There's humour there alright, but to my mind it doesn't posses the trademark subtleness and intelligence of Adams, making me believe that Tom himself made a few amendments to his dialogue in an attempt to wring a bit more humour from the script. As this probably implies, it threatens to get very silly at times. If his 'Pied Piper' trick isn't taking things too far, then the infamous 'My arms, my legs, my everything!' line certainly is. That said, it's difficult to criticise Tom too much- his mere presence seems to transcend every scene he's in, and at least he's curbed his once-worrying tendency to overact when the situation least needed him to. Lalla Ward comes out with real credit, though she's helped by a storyline that doesn't involve her having to follow the Doctor's every move. It's just a pity that the awful costume she's wearing makes her look pregnant. Why on earth couldn't they have just given her the great 'Doctor' costume she wore for Destiny of the Daleks? This is a relatively minor quibble as by now, Lalla has well and truly hit her stride, and has made the role of Romana her own.

So there you have it. How much enjoyment you get from this story depends very much on what put in, so to speak. The production as a whole has some very obvious flaws, and I can't pretend otherwise. How you react to this will basically depend on whether you see your glass as half-empty or half-full. The fact is that Nightmare of Eden could have been, perhaps should have been, a lot better than it is, certainly from a production point of view. But then again, it could have been a whole lot worse, and if you're prepared to look past some of the negatives, or at least accept them, and go into the story looking to be entertained, then you will be. Fans of Tom's more madcap adventures will love this, and it's worth a watch, if only for it's plot. Give it a whirl.

“At last, the future of Gallifrey is assured.”

I have a confession to make. The Deadly Assassin has been my favourite story from the moment it was broadcast, and when I was younger, the Sontarans were my favourite monsters. I thought The Invasion of Time was fantastic, and played the big gun battles at school. I’d been waiting for such a long time for a decent copy on tape, and was terribly excited when they finally released it. 

Watching it recently episode by episode, I realised the gulf from how I loved it as a kid to it scraping about five out of ten for me now. It seems to have suddenly fallen in my Who story ‘likes’ from about number 50 to, ooh, past number 100. Why? The story is much more traditional than The Deadly Assassin, and blatantly trying both to pull back from it and to be an epic to outmatch it. It ends up as a glittery and hollow pile of padding which doesn't have the force to carry off the 'Doctor turning bad' plot with which it begins, alternately entertaining and infuriating, then at the end dull – except for the Doctor *really* turning bad in a lazy way they don’t even notice. In short, it suffers from the curse of the sequel, and helps make Gallifrey dull for ever after.

OK, so that’s the short review. Now come with me, and I’ll take you through each episode, the highs and the lows, and spoilers abound… To start with the context, Season 15 is perhaps the most disappointing year Doctor Who ever produced, with nosediving production values not yet being salvaged by the Williams wit finding its feet. Almost every story ends with something being blown up; almost every set and costume looks cheap. You might call it ‘Boom and Bust’, or ‘The Year They Got Lazy’. There are worse seasons, certainly, but never have expectations built up by steadily rising standards of brilliance over the preceding three years been so cruelly dashed. Scripts and acting are falling back into familiar, obvious patterns; Leela is going downhill faster than any other companion. It just looks so flat, so dull, so slipshod – and Tom has gone off the rails in a way that he will avoid for most of the following, far superior year. 

Unfortunately, in many more ways than being the climax of the steadily increasing mentions of the Time Lords in every story, The Invasion of Time is an appropriate summation of Season 15. From the beginning of episode One, you can see the problems. K9 has now settled into his forever-after mix of C3PO and R2D2 (bitchy pedant meets cute little robot), with a big gun added on, and the Doctor is now relying on him to shoot things altogether too much. Added to this laziness, he gains every fan’s undying hatred when he demands the TARDIS speak, then retorts, “You are a very stupid machine.” Die, tin can, die! ;-)

The Vardans start well, with cool high-backed chairs and froody multi-squared computer screens. Unusually, it’s very clear that a fair while has gone by between Underworld and this story, for the Doctor to have laid all his Vardan plans. Oh, and for Leela to have got herself a giant frog to play with in the exploitation shots in the pool. Landing on Gallifrey is an immense relief – for the first time in the entire season, we have a set that looks grand and impressive, the more so when the Panopticon has clearly been redesigned (a bit) rather than broken out of storage. The ghastly plastic floor level blue and green chairs are a let-down, but generally it’s interesting and believable again.

Tom Baker is arrestingly abrupt as the Doctor declares himself – and rather worryingly, Andred immediately sides with him and starts ordering around the most senior Time Lords at gunpoint! I mean, it seems a rather gun-ready society, doesn’t it? Shame that Borusa’s best comeback line now is “Then let him rot in a black star,” or trying to lock him up – John Arnatt gives a great performance to disguise it, but, really, Borusa’s character is already suffering from poorer scripting and much poorer lines.

The ceremony at the end isn’t badly done, but suffers from having far fewer Time Lords milling around than last time… At least Borusa doesn’t put on his frock until it’s playtime, even if he does then utter the grisly error “Their *elected* President.” Call me a Deadly Assassin pedant, but the whole point of that story is that Goth, who would blatantly have won an election, wasn’t going to get the job because the President makes the choice instead of a popular vote – hence the need for a *deadly assassin* to trigger the unprecedented step of an election. Sigh. With this, the ‘Rod’ blatantly being the ‘Great Key’ from last time, albeit presented on a hideous inflatable cushion, the Supreme Council rather than the High Council, and the Great Key business with the Chancellor’s secret (so why did everyone think Goth would be President, if it’s an alternate career summit and they can’t become President? Admittedly, the ‘balance of power’ is quite nice, and perhaps the Matrix wipes the knowledge from Chancellors-turned-President, but couldn’t they write it down?) you wonder if only the designers watched Assassin, and the authors didn’t listen at all. Still, episode one has considerable style, and blessed relief in the production values department. Gomer and Savar even have a nice bit of banter in much the same way as the two old coves in the Assassin dressing room.

Part Two is much less interesting, and with so much padding on view, it’s clear that this story has nothing like the ideas of Assassin. Rather entertainingly, a very similar cliffhanger (white-clad President collapses on Panopticon dais) is followed by a similar resolution, with guards milling around and escorting the Doctor away, though this time it’s the cruder Borusa who’s trying to have him locked up, while the clever one complained about the crude Chancellor. Mind you, it’s still just about working as a character piece for the Doctor, and Tom is still remembering to act just enough to pull it off. It’s a nice touch that Leela is ordered to the enquiry by Borusa – having failed with the Doctor, he’s still looking for public scapegoats, and the alien’s a prime target (though he blatantly knows she didn’t do it, having switched his story from “The Matrix rejects the candidate!” to “She attacked him”). 

When the Doctor comes round and startles us by turning on Leela, the story is still firing on all cylinders (which is more than the guards’ stasers do. Half the time they have no effect at all, but occasionally they have a white ‘diamond’, as last time. It’s, er, almost as if they did it in a hurry and didn’t finish putting all the effects). However, the lead is already becoming erratic. “This is rather more than a student prank,” says Borusa, calling our attention to Tom’s increasingly studenty performance of late. He ranges from the sudden roars (“Get out! Get out! Get out!” he cries near the end) to the hammy overplayed scene where he’s trying to find Borusa’s voice print, and he’s no longer entirely convincing. The episode ending has a considerable power, though, despite the Vardans already looking like a bit of scrunched-up plastic…

Episode Three is full of political intrigue and the threat of the Vardans – but unfortunately it doesn’t come off. Kelner is too silly, Andred is too callow, and the Vardans simply don’t work. They move very badly and are too blatant a matte, even ignoring their unspectacular appearance. Kelner plots with his pet guard to take over as President *later*, but protect the Doctor until then; so when did the Castellan bump up, illegally and unratified by a president, to become a High – er, Supreme – Councillor? And a really high-ranking one at that? While Kelner plots risibly, last week’s instant fascist Andred now goes for instant, insipid resistance, and unfortunately enthuses no-one. 

Leela deciding to banish herself because the Doctor wanted her banished, and he always has a plan, is rather a nice touch – the faithless one from her first story has found a faith she can believe in. At least she’s given a bit more to do than her comedy part in the last episode, where lines like the stage-whispered “I’m with him,” or the ‘posh’ echo “One does,” made it almost impossible to believe she’s not an average Twentieth Century woman. “I can survive anywhere,” she declares, and runs smack into Nesbin and the Outsiders, a last chance for her character to reassert itself.

Meanwhile, Tom gets very smug (K9 suggested lots of people call him that an episode ago – but this is the first time he’s really looked it) when Borusa learns from him. For this alone, you could forgive Andred for planning his assassination, but as for appointing Kelner ‘acting Vice President’ (since when did the Time Lords have them? It’s a different structure entirely, surely, with the Chancellor as deputy)… Borusa is locked up (for the next episode!) after rather a great scene where he faces down the Vardans and is zapped by one. Again, you’re almost persuaded that this story could be great. Unfortunately, Andred’s assassination plot is a bit crap. His plotters are unconvincing, and seem more human than Time Lord - Gomer is an old Time Lord (claiming his 10th regeneration makes him less vigorous), played by an old man; Andred’s callow youths are played by young men. Old actors playing ‘young’ Time Lords would have shown more thought. Then Andred’s rallying cry of ‘In the name of liberty and honour’ is just so limply delivered that you want to scream.

Into the fourth episode, and as with all undramatic ‘Doctor about to be shot’ cliffhangers, we’re amazed that, um, he isn’t. The excuse this time is especially weedy - the Doctor has apparently set up K9’s Earth blaster so it fires inside TARDISes, while Gallifreyan stasers don’t. Convinced? The Doctor has some relatively good barbs to Andred about his ineffectual palace revolution (“What can you pull off?” indeed), but it’s getting more and more stretched, and constant balancing acts of Gallifrey’s ‘crown jewels’ on K9 were probably funny in the studio. Andred using a calculator so K9 can show off and do the sums faster looks, ah, rather dated now. And probably then.

On the other hand, the Vardans have a much better episode, even though they suddenly laugh unconvincingly and tell Kelner they’ve suspected the Doctor all along (just as their voiceovers at the beginning – er – disprove). The life-size Vardan talking to Kelner, with a minimum of movement, doesn’t look too bad – and the one sitting at Kelner’s chair is mildly entertaining. Of course, once they appear in their little soldier suits, they make the cardinal dramatic error of having the leader being by far the smallest and slightest of the three, and not much of an actor to boot, which rather undermines his authority as he stands there shouting. As the Doctor observes, “Disappointing, aren’t they?” At least one of the others is fairly cute…

The Doctor enters the Matrix to get some ideas on dismantling the Quantum Forcefield (doesn’t sound as cool as the Transduction Barriers, so we never hear of that again from anyone, huh?). He gets some nice shots on location with lots of mechanics and a Vardan, which is different padding from usual. The Outsiders run through the sandpit several times to build up tension for their approach, rather less successfully. Oh well, Leela had fun hamming it up with her target practice before her band of six go off to conquer New York (at least, we assume it’s a city of similar density, and a similarly implausible idea). Shame that she just gets to be the butt of the stupid “What does proficient mean?” joke instead, and that K9 is also reduced to ‘nodding dog’ comic relief. At this point, the episode seems to have been a bit of a letdown, without even an appearance from Borusa to cheer it.

But then there’s the gorgeously blobby electronic music underscoring *that* cliffhanger…

Yes, Episode Five starts with fantastic oomph, and it’s a pleasant surprise to find that it keeps moves along at a fair old lick, largely helped by the mix of waspish Chancellor Borusa and some cool fx gunfights for the kids. Yes, it’s more running around, but it’s less tedious with it. Borusa is certainly a big pull this time, talking to himself as he listens to the Doctor, then forming a great double act that pulls some acting out of Tom (and even Tom’s ‘alliteration’ quip to Stor is done with his old grimness). His placing of the Great Key *not* in a forest of them, but in his desk drawer, is fabulous – even if the whole Chancellor / Key thing is a bit silly. For some reason never specified we get the idea that the Sontarans cannot ‘conquer time’ “Not while I -“ – er, why? What does the Chancellor do with the Key that would stop them? And if it’s not been used for 10 million years…? At least we don’t get Terrance Dicks’ ‘a lesser Key was stolen by the Master’ line (yeah, right, like the Eye of Harmony’s not important). Perhaps the Chancellor must use it to ‘switch all the TARDISes on’ as part of his duties, but it’s not something the script bothers to justify.

OK, Stor’s asthmatic East End sound is a bit peculiar, and the eye-holes don’t look vacuum-safe, but the Sontarans are generally fairly effective (still constantly helmeted so far; strange we didn’t get that as the cliffhanger!). They also have three fingers again - and their gun effects, with blast fields shifting and wobbling around, definitely look much better than K9’s thin red line (which at one stage shoots a Sontarans in the groin, only to see it carry on. It’s difficult not to jump to the conclusion that they have no nadgers). Is this the first ‘K9’s magic blaster has no effect’ scene? Kelner oils over the Sontarans to a ludicrous extent immediately, but when required to do some technical work (largely on film!) for the Sontarans, suddenly becomes more confidently evil and an impressive expert, rather than a weaselly cipher. He says that taking over the defence systems is only possible using the TARDIS – “and the Doctor’s capsule is the only one operational,” oddly (unless the Great Key has switched them all off). Still, Part Five has been something of a success.

Oh dear.

In Episode Six, the wheels come off so fast they fly out of the screen at you.

Like Episode Five, this involves lots of running around and blatant padding, but it stands much less well as an episode on its own, and ends up even worse as a climax. The plot doesn’t have enough to go on for a third of the time, and it makes very little use of what there is. For a start, Part Five was largely enlivened by the Chancellor, but this time it’s ten minutes in before Borusa appears, and he has precious little screen time. Other characters fare worse. Leela is roundly humiliated. It’s really only the last couple of stories that her character has really collapsed, but collapsed it suddenly has. It starts with the “You got lost” / “How do you know?” comedy routine, then her kissing K9 (demob happy), and closes with her staying with Captain Dull of the Guard. Strewth. Kelner is back to cipher again, claiming “I’m not an engineer, sir,” which is a blatant lie considering his accomplishments in these last two episodes, and poor Rodan spends most of her time hypnotised!

The TARDIS interiors must be greeted with some sympathy, given their unfortunate background in industrial disputes, and don’t seem that bad, though occasionally poor (you sort of get used to it). Showing a ‘brick and pipes’ corridor leading straight out of the console room is a good touch, and the lounger area where Borusa relaxes with news of the Titanic and a blue drink through a curly straw with the potplants and giant roundels on the wall works surprisingly well. Going round and round the same large area is very tedious, however, as is Tom constantly ‘stumbling’ on the same point of the ramp in the corridor approaching it – and the jumps between film and video are very obvious. “I’m a Time Lord, not a painter and decorator,” cries the Doctor, “I’m preoccupied with Sontarans, Daleks and Cybermen.” When Tom acts up, we know the script is falling down. At least the ancillary power station is quite pretty.

I feel obliged to note that Stor has his trooper drag in a large gun-like beamer to burn through the blocking bar across the TARDIS internal door… And, wouldn’t you know? It works! It seems Gallifreyans are the only race in the universe who can’t build guns that fire inside their own ships. Stor has much bigger vacuum-unsafe eye holes – all the better to fail to convince you with – and mostly just stalks up and down brick corridors, glowering, taking his helmet off and putting it back on again for want of anything else to do. 

Again, Borusa is cool and entertaining, and manages good acting even in scenes like the ‘Doctor’s lost his memory’ one, with a slight smile, but there’s too little of him to disguise the paucity of everything else. How does he instantly recognise the Demat Gun (or even know to look for it)? It’s just a great big gun! The ultimate weapon (again), eh? “I could rule the Universe with this gun, Chancellor.” Oh, please. “It’ll throw us back to the darkest age,” cries Borusa, desperately trying to make us believe. Some have theorised that, as it’s powered by the Great Key, it’s either a Time Destructor or it erases your timeline (which erases the Doctor’s memory, but people in the TARDIS are shielded from changes in reality). Unfortunately, nothing we see on screen gives us more than ‘It’s a bigger, clumsier Ogron disintegrator.’ It’s just dull, and why on earth has he built it? It doesn’t serve a more interesting plot function than a pistol. Or a club. Or even a net. The Doctor catches up with Stor awfully quickly, then Stor threatens to explode a grenade (very slowly) – “You’ll destroy this entire galaxy,” pleads the Doctor. Er, why? How? Yes, I know a fan might work it out that it's because he's stood on top of the Eye of Harmony, but for 'average' viewers, that was explained briefly 18 months ago! It’s a very confused, very rushed (inexcusable after all the padding) and very poor conclusion. It’s rather sad that the whole thing is, again, resolved by the Doctor and a big gun. Particularly a big gun whose rather nice whiteout effect has no explanation behind it, and which the Doctor has – uniquely for the series so far – designed and planned with lots of alternative equipment to hand, rather than just finding or cobbling together in desperation.

So, by the end of it, the Doctor has built the (albeit unconvincing) ultimate weapon. And he uses it, unhesitatingly. And he doesn’t even resist the temptation not to *keep* using it – that decision is made for him by a handy deus ex machina. Do we ever see the Doctor more out of character until he blows up Skaro? In retrospect, we can perhaps see the whole plot and resolution of the Key to Time as a remake of The Invasion of Time, but getting it right. Yes, the wheels still fall off a bit in the last two stories, but at least the Doctor is recognisably Doctorish and not Rambo at the end!

The Doctor, of course, then handily loses his memory. So how did he know which TARDIS room to look for his friends in? Oh, and we’re to presume that, when Borusa took the Sash off the Doctor and the Doctor let him, that was the Doctor’s resignation as President, too! At least Arnatt is good enough for us to infer Borusa’s wiles when the script fails to fill them in. Incidentally, although the Doctor may have had his own memory wiped, Rodan built the key under unconscious hypnosis and instruction from… K9. So, the dog knows how to build one! And it’s staying with Borusa. Hmm… Then all we’re left with is the worst exit for a companion since Dodo.

So, in the end, The Invasion of Time is a disappointment. There are much worse stories, but most of those have much less promise to go so wrong. I’ve really got back into watching Who stories episodically again rather than all in a lump, but cutting up some stories episode by episode (as they were intended to be watched but with the deadly ability to dwell on the dodgy bits) is clearly a killer. Worse, it’s the end that lets it down most badly, as the Doctor’s behaviour is actually more worrying than at the beginning, but it hasn’t occurred to the production team that he’s other than ‘heroic’. I liked big guns and this story when I was six. It’s difficult to be as enthusiastic about them these days, when I’m not convinced either make very good Doctor Who.

One of the really irritating things about 'Robot', the first Doctor Who story to feature Tom Baker, is the voice of the robot - you can't help but hear it as a slighly less frightening, non-branded copy of the better known Dalek. The writers would like the robot's voice to be written in the jagged diagonal typeface found in the pages of the Dalek comic, but it would be lucky to even get italics. In all ways, Kettering's robot is a bit sad. Clearly, to look at this robot, you would never mistake it as a Dalek, and you kind of sympathise with it when Sarah Jane Smith tells it that it has been programmed to behave "all wrongly". Yes, robot, it isn't your fault that you've been programmed to behave the way you do, walking a bit like the Mitchelin man, talking a bit like a violent pepperpot. But, alas, this is the robot we are stuck with, in this remarkably below average Doctor Who story. 

What is there to say about 'Robot' that is positive? Well, there is Tom Baker. The skipping scene, with Harry, is remarkably funny, and must have been unbelievably odd, coming straight after the bravado of Jon Pertwee. Equally, Baker makes the riff on "unbreakable sounds ominously like unsinkable" the best dialogue in the episode (and there is some awful dialogue to be found here). A quick negative, while on the subject of writing: the bizarre unveiling of the 'robot' couldn't possibly try any harder to sound like a speech from a 1930s Nazi rally, and this blunt symbolism really doesn't do an already weak story any favors. 

However, following after this comes the Doctor's disarming and completely Doctor-like stand-up comedy routine. This is not only the Doctor we would come to love for 10-or-so years on television, but it is also the Doctor that we have always loved: Baker catches, in his performance, the special something that makes the Doctor who he is, and builds on it. His performance is a shot in the series' arm, and we are still seeing the benefits of it today, in, for example, the Eighth Doctor of the novels. 

So pretty frothy, in terms of plot, dialogue, and characterisation, by all accounts... but it is saved by a charming performance from Baker, teeth, scarf, and all.

"Why should we remain forever underground, cowering from the memory of things that happened centuries ago?"

Revenge of the Cybermen was one of the first Doctor Who stories I saw (at the tender age of three), so it always retains a special place in my heart. I never fail to enjoy watching it, but even I have to admit that, on many levels, it's actually rubbish. Yes, there's atmospheric shooting in Wookey Hole, the Cyberdesign looks good in photos and Kellman and Vorus shine as characters amid the cardboard, but so much just doesn't work. The Earth people are tired, the effects are risible, the music is irritating, the Vogan masks are ill-formed and characters dull - even Kevin Stoney delivers the line "It's going to hit!" not with the terrified panic of the novel, but in a tone of faint disinterest, apparently playing his role as Father Christmas. Gold is introduced as the Cybermen's nemesis, yet undoubtedly gold-firing Vogan weapons are useless against them. Above all, the script and the Cybermen themselves fail dreadfully - ironically, neither displaying much in the way of logic. 

So what went wrong? How did it so stunningly fall short of any other Hinchcliffe and Holmes story's themes or quality? All real fans know they were the new masters of innovation after the stale old season that preceded their work, that they could do no wrong. It's a *fact* that they made the Golden Age of Doctor Who. We know they were brilliant. We know they can't have got tired or uninspired. We know that, if this was the result, it must have been *somebody else's fault*.

At last, the true story can be told.

REVUE OF THE CYBERHAMS

In the midst of a production run of quality drama, usually dwelling on gruesome 'body horror', possession and lurking, subterranean ghouls, one story stands out as really not seeming like a Hinchcliffe / Holmes story at all. You've all wondered about it. What on Earth was Revenge of the Cybermen doing in Season 12? I have the answer. Hinchcliffe and Holmes had nothing to do with it. 

Picture the scene, back in 1975; the new production team is about to start work on their masterpiece, the triumphant conclusion of a trilogy of stories stamping their own, distinctive universe-view on the Doctor's past foes and establishing the new Doctor in the process. Yet, lurking in the shadows like a Bob Holmes underground megalomaniac are the twisted figures of the old guard, waiting for a last stab at glory.

That's right. Suffering Who withdrawal symptoms, Letts, Dicks and Pertwee committed a hideous crime. Falling upon the new team in an unguarded moment, they knocked their successors unconscious and bundled them into a cupboard (unknown ‘til now, the real reason why Terror of the Zygons was delayed). They then took their places, to produce a final 'Season 11' story. Pertwee had always wanted to face the Cybermen, and his team were confident they could make a 'top monster' return story every bit as dramatic and successful as Death to the Daleks. Pertwee donned a dark wig and used his famous talent for silly voices to impersonate Tom, and managed at least to be more convincing than 'the Doctor' at the end of The Monster of Peladon part 4.

So embarrassing did the BBC find this incident (they weren't the only ones, I hear you cry, but hush!) that it has remained a secret until now - although many must have guessed. Across three decades, details of the storyline as originally amended by Robert Holmes have been lost, but his settings can now be pieced together. They make for a story rather different to that overseen by the men who brought us ‘classics’ like The Eight Doctors and (whisper it) The Ghosts of N-Space. . .

To set the scene, it's perhaps best to consider the two great Hinchclomesian themes. First comes what might be termed the dastardly, demented, devious, disfigured, deformed, deadly, depressive denizens of the dank, deep dark. Or, if you prefer, 'something nasty in the cellar'. The brooding, not to say unhinged, physically limited villain buried down below is a staple in most stories of the time, seen most clearly in the characters of Davros, Sutekh, Morbius, the Master and Magnus Greel (and infesting other Holmes scripts from the Krotons and Linx to Sharaz Jek and Drathro).

Second, there is the much-remarked-on gothic / Hammer horror theme of possession and 'body horror'. Again, these ideas run through virtually every Hinchclomesian story (and most other Holmes-influenced scripts). Within this theme, an extraordinary number of stories really stand out - just look at The Ark in Space, Planet of Evil, Pyramids of Mars, The Seeds of Doom, The Masque of Mandragora, The Hand of Fear and The Face of Evil.

Now the background is fresh in your mind, I'm sure it takes little prompting to realise that Revenge of the Cybermen was to have been Hinchcliffe and Holmes' early masterpiece. In their rewrite of the script, the Cybermen were far more than mere joke robots, fit only for clumsy fight scenes (which Terrance later let slip he'd written by using one of them – the monsters’ storming of the spaceship / space station - again, with a more professional production team, in Shakedown - the Return of the Sontarans). 

Imagine how sinister the Cybermen would have been as the 'walking dead' of The Tenth Planet reborn, with the higher production values and greater willingness to go for outright horror of the mid-70s. You don't have to look to the more recent Borg for inspiration; the human shape corrupted by chillingly wrong body language and an utterly inhuman way of speaking that marked the Cybermen in their first appearance is the best prototype you could wish for.

In Holmes's version, perhaps better titled Last of the Cybermen, the Cybermen are far into the future of their previous appearances. Worn out and alone in the wake of the Cyberwar, without spare parts or reinforcements, this Cybership's crew is near termination point. Their human parts are, at long last, starting to decay, their cybernetic parts malfunctioning. They must survive.

The Cybermats are introduced to the Beacon to inject humans with a form of paralysing agent, a neural inhibitor that also forms the first stage of the cybernisation process (much as we saw in The Moonbase). Their aim is to have the Beacon in quarantine long enough to convert its facilities into a Cyber-factory. This makes perfect sense; after all, the human bee-hive of The Ark in Space showed where Holmes's thoughts at the time were leading. Just as Holmes followed The Deadly Assassin almost immediately with a thematic sequel to explore the same ideas, so this story was to have been Season 12's equivalent of The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

Graphic body horror reaches its heights as the ancient Cyberleader, having been unable to hibernate and now literally rotting to death, is restored with the voice and body of the much-loved crew member who apparently copped it in episode one. It's a shame we had to wait until Frontios for ideas like this to reach the screen (now there's a story that's out of place - an odd mixture of Quatermass, Hartnell, Hinchcliffe and Holmes, and precious little like the surrounding tales).

However, this story isn't just an unmade masterpiece through its lost depiction of the living dead. The other Hinchclomesian theme, of the lurking fiend, was also well to the fore. While the Cybermen's cold, clinical, scientific corruption of humanity was perfectly suited to raising the goosebumps with body horror, the Vogans were created as the ultimate in twisted underground-dwellers. Like living dead themselves, the Vogans are 'pallid, devious worms' who have hidden in the dark for so long they have become as deformed and demented as any Hinchclomesian mastermind. With the Vogans, Holmes designed an entire race of Magnus Greels.

Voga was to have been a darker, more claustrophobic, paranoid ruin of a world. In the tame 'Season 11' story that we've all seen, we are drawn to Vorus only because he's the one Vogan that's remotely interesting – though we generally see him as a mad glory-hunter who endangers all those nice old dodderers, he was originally a much more tragic, almost heroic, figure. 

The Vogan civilisation is scheming, twisted and repressive, with paranoid manipulators always jockeying for a bigger position in their tiny planet. Vorus was a misfit mirror image to that, a glorious anti-hero with a real motivation to raise his world and his people out of their cancerous existence - not just to stir up a load of happy old cowards for the sake of it. David Collings could have pulled off a prototype Sharaz Jek, too. As it was, the state of Kevin Stoney's performance matched the Cybermen's deterioration since his last appearance with them... If it *was* Kevin Stoney. Records are unclear, but I wouldn't be surprised if Pertwee had also spirit-gummed on an unconvincing beard to play Tyrum, as Stoney's proven abilities would surely have produced a performance much closer to the devious, sinister, embittered Vogan leader of the Holmes draft.

So there you have it. The Hinchclomesian masterpiece that was never made, thanks to the terrible crimes of Dicks and Letts. The basic story of Revenge of the Cybermen is quite sound - it takes little imagination to convert it back into the 'Season 12' version, now that you know how Holmes and Hinchcliffe had planned it. Yet without understanding and delivering on the themes that brought it together, it just collapsed back into the pile of clichйs that Holmes' extraordinary talent was normally able to fashion something magical from. Instead of a logically desperate group of Cyber-survivors in conflict with their sinister enemies, we had a romp. Tough and gritty it was not; desperate, but in quite the wrong sense. At least even the old production team had the sense not to let Gerry Davis anywhere near it after his first draft.

The lost draft still leaves the Cybermen with that ludicrous vulnerability that was to plague them for ever more, of course, but what can you expect? Not everything even Bob Holmes touched turned to gold, you know.

The reinvention of the look and feel of “Doctor Who” in Season 18, Tom Baker’s final season, has been well documented, most notably in the superb book “The Eighties”. John Nathan-Turner and Christopher H. Bidmead hit the ground running, taking advantage of the best video effects available to the BBC in 1980, some of the Radiophonics Workshop’s finest new talents using modern equipment, and commissioning stories from mostly new-to-Who writers with a more pure, undiluted approach to science fiction than before, taking on some thought-provoking central themes, and with the linking theme of decay and regeneration leading up to the momentous events of Baker’s last story, “Logopolis”. The team were also lucky to have some very creative directors on board. Old hands Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts’ presence was mainly supervisory.

The team achieved all of their aims with the season opener, “The Leisure Hive”, which overcame the programme’s limitations with total confidence. A director unafraid to throw money everywhere didn’t hurt either! The following story, “Meglos”, was something of a step-back to the previous season, but in “Full Circle”, all the promise of this ambitious season came to fruition.

When people talk about ‘classic’ “Doctor Who”, the stories that top most people’s lists are usually of the epic quality of “Talons of Weng Chiang” or “The Caves of Androzani”. However, equally classic are the stories that don’t set out to be flashy or mark epic points in the Doctor’s history, but simply bring together all the elements on hand to make a solid, good quality “Doctor Who” adventure that is a joy to watch again and again. Doctor Who is packed with them and “Full Circle” is one such story. It’s driven by some interesting ideas, has strong performances from all involved and is a well-realised television production.

“Full Circle” is basically a story about evolution and social engineering. A humanoid civilisation is preparing for its eventual return to its home planet, whilst changes on the planet’s surface sees strange things happening that are part of the civilisation’s history and yet not fully understood, obscured by the traditions and rituals of the Deciders, a benevolent yet authoritarian committee bound by custom and procedure. Like Clare Daly in “Carnival of Monsters” and Shardovan in “Castrovalva”, certain individuals have vague inklings that there is something amiss about their way of life, but they are too much a part of their self-contained microcosm that they cannot think outside the box. The Deciders name is ironic, as they are not able to think freely, being bound by rules and regulations that conveniently wallpaper over any cracks – “Any inconsistencies must be accepted”. In his own quiet way, Andrew Smith is making a subtle commentary on society bound by legislation and procedure just as much as obvious satires such as Paradise Towers, Happiness Patrol and The Sun Makers. The endless pointless repairs to the Starliner remind me of local councils constantly digging up roads to use up their annual budget and maintain achievement levels!

At the heart of “Full Circle” we have a mystery of a microcosmic society based around confrontations and revelations. In Season 18, the Doctor remains cool, curious and casual on the surface, and his passionate ‘humanitarianism’ bursts through in one of his finest serious parts in the role, when he rails at the Deciders for their “procrastination”, and at the elder Decider’s obscuring of the origins of their race in order to maintain his bureaucratic hold over the society’s true evolutionary path. Definitely up there alongside his “Appreciate it?” outburst in “The Pirate Planet”, and the banquet scene in “Warriors Gate”.

This powerful scene, full of some memorable comments from the Doctor, comes right after viewing the disastrously fatal attempt to operate on the marsh child in the laboratory, and their treatment of the marsh creatures as an inferior subspecies for experimentation, because they are not humanoid. These scenes put me in mind of the Third Doctor’s similar idealistic confrontations, most famously in “Doctor Who And The Silurians” – in many ways, “Full Circle”s addressing of the Deciders’ attitude towards the marsh creatures (a mixture of primitive fear and cold scientific callousness) is a more successful revisit of that story’s themes than its true sequel “Warriors Of The Deep”. As with “The Silurians”, the amphibious creatures are not the real villains, as they are simply trying to survive and develop ‘naturally’ – which is why the revelation about the humanoids’ true origins is such a brilliant twist in this story, and underlines the theme of natural evolution versus social engineering. It is always good to see the Doctor side with the ‘threat’ rather than the humans, as it emphasises the universality of his pro-life creed.

I can’t mention the marsh creatures without commenting on their appearance. Although they are obviously the latest in a long line of men in rubber suits, the design of their masks makes them a lot more credibly disturbing, a mixture of veins, seaweed-like fronds and barnacled flesh. Although they have the annoying Doctor Who tendency of walking around with their arms outstretched, zombie-style, the cliffhanger in which they emerge slowly from the misty, bubbling water is one that is still breathtaking. The other great cliff-hanger is Romana’s spider attack. Even though they are clearly toy spiders, the shot of the spider bursting from the fruit and leaping onto Romana’s face is so tightly edited it still makes me flinch. Top marks to Peter Grimwade. 

The direction and editing in this story is of a consistently high quality, and well complimented by Paddy Kingsland’s soundtrack. Kingsland’s score still sounds remarkably fresh, using a variety of sounds and moods to complement the story’s various settings. However, the similarity of many of the themes to those used in his classic score for “The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy” does not go unnoticed! 

George Baker gives a good performance as Login. One of Doctor Who’s specialities is portraying the little man who is caught in the wheels of the machine – Laurence Scarman in “Pyramids of Mars” coming to terms with his brother’s possession, and Rex Farrel, the tragic pawn of the Master in “Terror of the Autons”. He portrays Login as a warm, personable everyman who is a family man and a pillar of the Starliner community, with so much faith in the Deciders and their manuals that he does not question the pointless repair tasks that are being conducted all over the Starliner; and is wonderfully ‘real’ when the Doctor opens his eyes to the deceptions of his superiors, and has greatness thrust upon him when he has to take the initiative to launch the Starliner.

“Full Circle” is Adric’s story, so I’ve got to say a few things about him. Adric comes across pretty well in this story, and was initially well served by his first lot of stories. Adric is not likeable in the sense that Sarah Jane Smith was likeable – he is socially awkward, at once both insecure and arrogant like most teenagers, and a bit screwed-up thanks to his inability to fit in anywhere. Nevertheless, he is a trier, and it is this aspect of his character that balances out his personality’s flaws. In “Full Circle” he is not a companion, so the problems with his character that led to his exit do not affect his part in the story here. Matthew Waterhouse is not the best actor in the world, but he is certainly not the worst to have appeared in Doctor Who, so I’ve never thought it entirely fair that he’s so universally disliked!

Here, and in subsequent stories with the Fourth Doctor, his well-meaning bungling was intended to provide the ‘human factor’ to balance out the otherwise infallible crew of two Time Lords and a computer, and he briefly enjoys a charming tutor/student relationship with the Doctor in “The Keeper Of Traken” and “Logopolis”. Taken on his own merits in “Full Circle”, Adric is mostly inoffensive – give or take his proclamation that “I’m an elite!” – and not the petulant brat of the Fifth Doctor stories.

“Full Circle” is also famous for being the first story written by a fan. I wonder if the news that a fan – one of us – could get a Doctor Who story made was a factor that influenced fans to try their hands at writing Doctor Who scripts and books, from successful writers such as Paul Cornell to every budding Who fan that’s got a Doctor Who story hiding in their hard drive or in their desk?

Given the latter day precedent for fan writing to be full of returning monsters, continuity references and other ‘fanwank’ tendencies, it might seem surprising that “Full Circle” is a very original story. At the end of the day, it does prove the fact that to write a successful Doctor Who story, the main criteria is to understand the format and come up with a good idea, and anything else is window-dressing. A review of “Full Circle” quoted in David J. Howe’s The Television Companion makes mention of the fact that the opening TARDIS scenes refer to Leela and Andred (“The Invasion Of Time”) and the Doctor taking on the Time Lords (“The War Games”) – but this isn’t gratuitous continuity. It’s entirely in keeping with the series and its ongoing history that the Doctor would mention his past adventures or previous travelling companions, in the right context, and this is a nice reminder that despite each season having its own internal continuity they are all part of a larger series of adventures. 

The only line that possibly betrays Andrew Smith’s fan status is the Deciders’ comment that “all inconsistencies must be accepted” – perhaps an in-joke at the expense of the continuity cops that had started to rear their heads? 

“Full Circle” is mainly known for the fact that it serves two purposes. It is the first part of the ‘E Space Trilogy’, a loose hook to maintain the viewers interest over successive stories, and it also gently ushers in the eventual departure of one companion, Romana, whilst ‘accidentally’ introducing a new companion, Adric. Stories that have external concerns grafted on to them often suffer as a result and tend to be considerably less than the sum of their parts. “Planet Of Fire”, for example, is not a bad story but has to accommodate Turlough, Kamelion, the Master and Peri and ends up as a bit of a mess. Fortunately, “Full Circle” does not have such weighty demands thrust upon it, and as a result is a story that one can enjoy regardless of being part of a story arc (a pretty tenuous one at that) or having to introduce a new companion, but it is for those two facts that it is mostly remembered. In a season book-ended by the stylish “The Leisure Hive” and the epic events of “Logopolis”, it’s very easy to overlook “Full Circle” – if this is the case, you are missing out on one of the undiscovered classic of the Tom Baker years.

What’s not to love about this story? 

I mean that question with the utmost sincerity. Considering the reputation it seems to have acquired for being stupid, annoying and cringe-worthy, it might be slightly wrong of me to rate this among my personal favourites. Because, damn, it’s good. 

CREATURE FROM THE PIT has it all; Tom, Lalla, crazy astrologers, funky female villains, giant space blobs that crush people, K9 eaten by stampeding plant life… Every moment will bring new joy to your heart, as the Doctor one-liners his way through the episodes with a contempt for authority that would make an anarchist jealous. It may not have the greatest plot ever produced by human endeavour, but since when did anyone watch these things for the plot? The dialogue, the high-camp atmospherics, the sheer FUN of this story is enough to warm the hardest of hearts. 

Yes, the monster looks like a man wearing a bin-bag. Yes, some of the sets are an embarrassment to the word cardboard. Yes, it has K9 in it. And the story doesn’t overcome these flaws. It revels in them. It takes the bad and the good, throws them in a blender and illuminates the resulting mess with a set of disco lights. This is art, people! 

Adrasta is a fantastic villain, utterly fitting to the tone. She may spend most of her time setting up jokes for the Doctor, but she could beat the Rani in a handbag-duel any day of the week. Romana is as worship-worthy as ever, and the Doctor manages to transcend wonderful and become the walking incarnation of cool. The story might lag a little in places, but what it lacks in tension is more than makes up for in wit and enthusiasm. 

It’s also one of the most quotable Doctor Who stories ever. Everything gets a mention in here; teaspoons, astrology, eggshells, aluminium… Priceless, I tell you, priceless. 

OK, so not all the amusing moments are intentional, but why let that detract from the joy? You’ll spend far more time laughing with than at, and it’s not as though CREATURE FROM THE PIT is alone in its dodgy effects and abysmal bit-part actors. This story is all the more enjoyable for its short-comings, and it manages to avoid the expected embarrassment factor by sticking its tongue into its metaphorical cheek and laughing along with the viewer. 

It’s witty, it’s clever, it’s camp, it’s lovable. But above all else, it’s fun. 

If you hate CREATURE FROM THE PIT you’re bad, wrong person. Simple as that.