This is quite a landmark episode in the history of Doctor
Who because it’s the final episode of the seventeenth season which is the 20th
episode of the season and the joint lowest (tied with season 12). This is also
the last episode with Graham Williams as producer and Douglas Adams as script
editor. It is also the last episode where the time tunnel sequence is used and
the last episode that the theme tune is used. Sadly after the humour
disappeared to a certain extent in the previous episode it returns in todays
episode. The only upside to this is that it meant that Lalla Ward got to drive
the plot (such as it is) through and it meant that when she was on screen I was
able to enjoy the episode. Lalla Ward does get some good scenes and it is
perhaps her strongest performance since she joined the show.
The Doctor doesn’t really do very much during the course of
this episode because he’s trying to get Romana back but this takes an awful
long time. Tom Baker really hasn’t been very good in this serial and I take no
pride in saying that. The thing about Baker’s performance is that he has become
a pastiche of his former self. Even Soldeed’s death is a bit over the top. The laughing
that Graham Crowden does wasn’t what was intended but I think that it sort of
makes a change to the normal deaths that the villains of the piece get.
The way that the Nimon were defeated was a bit of a
disappointment and the thing about the episode is that it never felt like they
were building up to something. If I didn’t know better then I would have
assumed that there were more episodes left in this story. It’s been a while I
think since I have noticed this problem but its definelty the case with this
story that there is a lack of a build up.
It’s a shame that this is the last story of Graham Williams’
tenure as producer because I don’t think it’s the send off that he deserves. I
have never thought that highly of Graham Williams as a producer before I
started this marathon but I have to say that that opinion has changed because I
think that he was a better producer than I gave him credit for. Yes sometimes
he struggled to get Tom Baker’s humour in control and he didn’t have quite as
good a run of stories as Philip Hinchcliffe but I think that he did what was
asked of him by BBC management and that is to try and lighten the show after
the Hammer Horror themed stories that preceded his time. It cant have been easy
behind the scenes and my appreciation of his time has improved. This is
probably one of his worst stories (before this I would have said Underworld
would be the worst) but I think that to judge him just on this story would be
unfair. Douglas Adams’ tenure as script editor wasn’t a complete success but he
seemed to do a better job of been a script editor than he was when he was just
writing.
This season has been one of inconsistency. It started off
with an average Dalek story before improving greatly with ‘City of Death’ and
then starting a gradual decline in terms of script quality and production
values. I think that the Tom Baker’s penultimate season as the Doctor wont and isn’t
remembered for the quality stories but more for what was the beginning of the
end for the show. When the show returned, it would have a totally different
tone to it and I wonder whether my opinion of it will change for the better or
for the worst.
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