Underworld

Underworld is one of the stories most hated and derided by Doctor Who fans. I'm not sure I hate Underworld personally, but I don't feel able to defend it. There is very little to like about this story.

The idea of the Time Lords as gods, intervening in a culture is interesting, though this idea is largely forgotten. The set of the Minyan spaceship is a great design, but this serves to reflect on how poor and cheap the 'alien city' set looks. We could regard the presence of cave people as a nod to An Unearthly Child.

The use of CSO to create cave scenes was a bold move. It is generally agreed that the results are disappointing, but I am confident that had they used corridors for these scenes, Underworld would have looked even cheaper and more underwhelming.

The performances do not help. The Minyan crew have been on a quest that has been unsuccessful for a thousand years. They should seem weary, perhaps bitter and possibly half-crazed. None of that comes across in the guest cast performances.

The intention of this story seems to be to create the sense of epic space fantasy, along the lines of Star Wars. To that intent, it borrows the myth of Jason and the Argonauts to try to create that mythic feel. Unfortunately, the borrowing feels so obvious that it feels rather false. There is no sense of the creation of any sense of fictional history, such as we get in Star Wars. The use of big science themes also seems to run counter to the intent. Star Wars had spaceships and robots, but it never dwelt on hard science themes, that would have distracted from its operatic grandeur. Underworld aspires to be great space fantasy epic, but in the end it is a dull and bland science fiction story.

Season 15

We are finally out of the Hinchcliffe era. Yay!

Unfortunately the first season of the Graham William years was horribly uneven. While Hinchcliffe had his rotten turnips like Android Invasion, for the most part he managed to maintain a very average standard throughout his producership, though this came with a tendency to rely on stock horror plots. Graham Williams producership was characterised by a wide variety of different kinds of story. Sometimes the experiemnts worked as with City of Death and at other times, they were dismal failures, like Creature from the Pit. This unevenness is very apparent in his first season.

Image of the Fendahl and Horror of Fang Rock are often seen as leftovers from the Hinchcliffe era. I think this is a mistake. Not only are they better than any Hinchcliffe stories, but they are quite different in style. These stories drop the shock tactics of Hinchcliffe's use of death and violence and offer a far more psychological and cosmic horror. Williams was under strict orders from the BBC to tone down the violence in the show and this makes for a much more tasteful season.

The reduction in violence was also accompanied by more comedy and in general, a rather lighter tone. There is none of the heaviness of Pyramids of Mars and Deadly Assassin, even in the two horror serials. Eventually this emphasis on comedy would reach the point of flippancy and spoil the show in Season 17.

Williams wisely dropped, or at least underplayed, the rather chauvinistic idea that the Doctor was trying to civilize Leela Eliza Doolittle-style. Leela was used more as a figure of fun in this season. The Doctor for the most part seemed indifferent to her in Season 15 and shamelessly exploited her in Invasion of Time. As he did not invite her on to his TARDIS, I see no particular reason why the Doctor should be especially fond of Leela.

Season 15 sees the introduction of K9. Although I like the Williams era, in general, I find K9 really annoying. Perhaps he was not so bad with Leela, but when Romana was introduced to the TARDIS, he really became a problem. Having three know-it-alls on board the TARDIS was too much.

One thing that is quite noticeable in Season 15 is the influence of Star Wars. There is an increased emphasis on space stories and attempts to create spaceships (some of them quite good).


Horror of Fang Rock- 9/10
The triumph of great script writing and great acting over budget constraints. Amazing how Terrance Dicks managed to write this at the drop of a hat.

The Invisible Enemy- 4/10
An attempt to do a much more spacey story. Some of the effects and modelwork are great, but much of it comes across as a little silly.

Image of the Fendahl- 9/10
Chilling cosmic horror, but not without a sense of humour.

The Sunmakers- 4/10
A very poor attempt at satire and much of the humour falls flat.

Underworld- 3/10
An attempt to capture the mythic feel of Star Wars. It mostly comes across as very dull and the effects are overambitious.

The Invasion of Time- 7/10
A story that has a lot of faults, but deserves a better reputation. It has some really great moments. The scenes in the TARDIS are much better than the JNT-era TARDIS scenes.

Image of the Fendahl

The Fourth Doctor and Leela face a terrible being that is connected to the evolution of the human race.

Gothic horror in Doctor Who is most associated with the producership of Phillip Hinchcliffe. However, after Graham Williams took over as producer, his first season included two stories, Horror of Fang Rock and Image of the Fendahl. I would argue that these two stories are in some respects rather supeirior to much of the gothic horror of the Hinchcliffe era. Brain of Morbius, Pyramids of Mars and Robots of Death are good stories, though they have considerable faults (most notably a strongly sadistic tendency) and are very much one-trick ponies. I think the two Williams-Gothic stories manage to transcend some of the limitations of Hinchliffe-Gothic. Where Pyramids of Mars was grim and humourless, Image of the Fendahl has a terrific sense of fun. Where Brain of Morbius looked horribly cheap, Image of the Fendahl manages to minimise the impact of its cheapness. Where Robots of Death showed a sadistic delight in violence, Image of the Fendahl tones down the brutality and relies on atmosphere (though the Doctor's giving Stahl the gun to kill himself is a bit of a shock).

The strongest element of Image of the Fendahl is its tremendous sense of atmosphere. Its a perfect story to watch on a dark autumn evening. It creates such a strong sense of overwhelming cosmic terror. This is particularly enhanced by the large absence of a musical score in favour of creepy sound effects.

Image of the Fendahl is a story about a monster that is not really a monster in the conventional sense. We don't see what it is that kills the hiker. We see a sinister old skull, we see maggot-like creatures and we see a sort of goddess figure, but neither is in the fullest sense the Fendahl. The Fendahl is a kind of intangible cosmic terror. Like the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, this serial relies on a terror of something that is never fully realised and never described. The story implies that the Fendahl is really a concept, death itself. This metaphorical idea generates a sense of climate in the story does not really fit with the science fiction trappings. A more effective metaphorical evil would be used later in Curse of Fenric.


The worm-like Fendaleen are very well designed. Their maggot-like appearance makes them as much potent symbols of death as the skull. The goddess-like figure that Thea is converted into is very effective, even with the daft use of make-up to create bi eyes. Seeing Death as a woman is unexpected, but fits in with a number of mythologies. The Fendahl woman is most effective in that she does not speak and interacts little with the characters. This makes her an utterly alien and unfathomable figure. This is a considerable improvement on Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars. Gabriel Woolf was fantastic at playing Sutekh, but the fact that he talks and communicates with the Doctor removes his aloofness as a god-like figure. For all Gabriel Woolf's brilliance, Sutekh remains another masked villain. The same may be said about Azal in The Daemons. In contrast, Image of the Fendahl gives us a Quatermass-like sense of dealing with the incomprehensibly alien.

The stereotypical yokels have been criticised, but they do add a sense of fun that does not really detract from the darkness of the story as happened with The Daemons. Mrs. Tyler is hilariously fun and her grandson is a great character too. Even Ted Moss is a decent enough character, if underused, character.

Adam Colby is a great character that stands out. Usually male non-regular leads are wet and bland, but Colby is given some great witty lines. He comes across as quite a convincing smug young scientist. Wanda Ventham puts in a pretty good peformance as Thea Ransome. Fendelman and Stahl are also well played.

Louise Jameson is on top form as Leela. I am of the unusual opinion that Leela was better used in Season 15 than Season 14. After the departure of Hinchcliffe, the rather banal 'Eliza Doolittle' idea of the Doctor educating Leela seems to have been largely dropped. I feel the idea of Leela needing to be civilized rather demeans her character and does not seem true to the Doctor. I much prefer the idea that the Doctor likes having Leela around because she is funny and is useful for threatening people. In this story, Leela is wearing the dress version of her costume rather than the original leotard. I think this looks a lot better. I have mentioned before that I think it is doubtful that a primitive tribe like the Sevateem would be able to make boots of the quality that Leela wears (let alone that metal knife!). I think it would have been more likely that Leela would have gone barefoot like a female Tarzan.

Tom Baker is also great. At this stage, he was able to lead without always being the dominating centre of attention. We also get to see him being paralyzed by the power of the Fendahl skull. In later stories he would become pretty invulnerable.

This is story is one of the best of the Graham Williams era.

The Sunmakers

The Fourth Doctor and Leela go to Pluto and instigate a revolution.

I think this is generally an overrated story.

This story is often regarded as a political satire. The problem with the Sunmakers as satire is that the system that is satirised makes no sense and neither does any coherent ideology challenge that system.

The Sunmakers has lots of fun demonising taxation and has the Doctor pouring scorn on taxation (giving no thought as to how essential public services can be paid for without taxation). No doubt right-wing viewers must have all smiled at this. However, true to the show's left-wing tendency it also satirises capitalism and gives us an evil, profit-fixated company. Unfortunately, the synthesis of these two opposing systems makes absolutely no sense.

It would seem that on Pluto everything is owned by the company. Everybody works for the company and the company raises all the taxes. The problem with this is that the taxes are coming from the very wages the company is paying. Why not simply pay all the workers lower wages? The whole tax-gathering operation seems pointlessly inefficent.

On the other hand, it is quite fun seeing the Doctor and instigating a revolution simply by his mere presence. Nevertheless, I think the revolutionary theme was handled better in the rather less well-regarded Happiness Patrol.

A good deal of the humour in this story is very subtle and likely to be missed by many viewers. For instance, corridor P45 and the fact it is set on Pluto (a 'plutocracy').

The acting is a mixed bag. Louise Jameson puts in one of her best performances, on the other hand, some of the guest cast are rather less inspiring. Governor Hage is fun, even if a little over the top. Citizen Cordo is a well created character, a man engulfed in misery who is transformed by meeting the Doctor. The underground dwellers are a little cliched. It also seems quite unlikely that they would change so swiftly from being bandits to committed revolutionaries.

The Collector is maybe just a bit too nasty to be quite convincing. It is interesting to know that really he is a sort of seaweed, but we are disappointed when we don't get to see him in his real form. Likewise, it is intriguing that the Doctor should be taken for an Ajack. Naturally, we want to see what an Ajack looks like.

There are lots of corridors in this story. Thankfully, some of them are large enough to look less like a t.v. set than some other Doctor Who corridors.

I think the killing of Governor Hage is a little unfortunate. There is nothing to suggest that the revolutionaries are going too far in their use of violence.

For all its faults, The Sunmakers does at least compare favourably with The Invisible Enemy and Underworld, though it really makes one wish one was watching Horror of Fang Rock or Image of the Fendahl.

The Invisible Enemy

The Fourth Doctor and Leela encounter a strange alien parasite on Saturn's moon Titan.

Season 15 is one of the less well regarded seasons and this story is considered to be one of the disasters of that season. Personally, I don't dislike Season 15, but this story is rather weak. It is hard to find much that is really good about this story.

The opening has something of a Space 1999 feel. The new direction of Doctor Who as space opera, instead of gothic horror is firmly established in this story. It goes on to give us a daft sci-fi take on cloning. These clones can only survive eleven minutes, though it seems an incredibly long eleven minutes!

None of the guest characters are interesting or believable, though K9 gives a great debut and Frederick Jaeger gives a reasonably good performance as Professor Marius (apart from his silly German accent).

As much as K9 is a bit silly and a post-Star Wars robotic cliche, I cannot quite bring myself to dislike him. It is good to see a new element introduced into the Doctor Who format.

The spaceship model work is good, but the set designs are rather unconvincing. The hospital seems a bit deserted.

As well as Space 1999, the story takes inspiration from Fantastic Voyage, with a journey through the Doctor's body. This particularly unconvincing, as it appears to have an environment in which the two clones can breathe and walk about.



The nucleus' physical form when it appears full size is rather funny, but I like it. Nothing better than a giant crustacean.

The Doctor implies that humanity has not left the solar system until 5000. This would of course contradict earlier stories where humanity has left the solar system at least as early as the Twenty-second century. This must be some second diaspora. possibly connected to the turmoil of the wars involving Magnus Greel a few years earlier (Talons of Weng Chiang)

I think what I like most in this story is the moment when Leela approaches a cold and grim hospital receptionist. The far future is not that different!

Horror of Fang Rock

The Fourth Doctor and Leela arrive at an Edwardian lighthouse where the inhabitants are being menaced by an alien entity.

This story is a great illustration of how effective Doctor Who can be on a low budget. With its claustrophobic setting this story has a very stagey feel, but it still manages to terrify.

This story is very simple. The Doctor and Leela arrive at a foggy lighthouse. A mysterious alien being starts killing both the crew and a group of shipwrecked travellers. The Doctor confronts and defeats the aliens. What makes this simple story work, even on a low budget, is the brilliant script writing and the sterling quality of the acting from both the regulars and guests. Tom Baker was apparently throwing hissy fits throughout the filming, but somehow director Paddy Russell kept him under control sufficently to put in a superb performance.

There is a clever continuity reference, in that it is the only story to feature the Sontarans archenemies, the Rutan, first mentioned in The Time Warrior. Envisioned as a jellyfish-like creature, it looks a bit unconvincing as a green beach ball with ropey tentacles and it is killed rather easily. However, the terror created by the cast enables the story to generate a sense of menace regardless.

The story is clearly inspired by and references the poem, Flannan Isle, concerning mysterious disappearances at a lighthouse. The Doctor quotes the poem at the story's end.

This story is the first to be produced by Graham Williams. It has something of the horror feel of the Hinchcliffe era, nevertheless it thankfully lacks some of the more gratuitous horror and violence that caused so much controversy under Hinchcliffe.

I really dislike the story Pyramids of Mars, finding it much too dark. So it is strange that I really like this story. I think the difference is that in Pyramids of Mars, we are lead too feel much more sympathy for both the cast and the non-regulars. We have the poor chap who sees his brother turned into a servant of Sutekh the Destoyer, gallant Sarah Jane Smith seeing her version of 1980 eradicated and the Doctor tormented by Sutekh's power. In Horror of Fang Rock, all of the non-regular cast die, but we are not lead too feel much sympathy for them. The aristocratic travellers are a rather rotten lot and although the lighthouse are crew are treated with a degree of empathy, old Ben is rather xenophobic. The Doctor shows little concern for the people he is trying to protect. He projects an uncanny distance from the events. As is often said, he was the most alien Doctor. Leela too, shows herself too be equally distant from the viewer in her alienness. She taunts the dying Rutan and threatens Palmerdale with her knife. When she fears she has lost her sight she begs for death. There is something fascinating about the ending with the only survivors of the story being this mysterious alien figure and this savage, brutal woman.

The Invasion of Time

The first story review on this blog! I am starting with this story for no reason other than that I watched it this week.

This story is generally poorly regarded. I do not think it is without faults, but personally I rather like it. This is a story I read as a Target novelisation when I was a new and very young fan. I remember really enjoying it, even though I found the plot difficult to understand.

The plot is very oddly structured with, the first part showing the Doctor supposedly being an agent of the Vardans in their attempted conquest of Gallifrey and the second part featuring the Sontarans.

It almost seems like we have Sylvester McCoy showing up a decade too early, with the Fourth Doctor being even darker, more manipulative and far more morally ambiguous than the Seventh. This is how I like the Doctor to be. I always prefer a darker Doctor and hate the holier-than-thou portrayal of the Pertwee years. I wonder about the Doctor's real motivations. Did he really become Lord President simply to destroy the Vardan fleet? This seems an uncharacteristically military concern for the Doctor. I suspect he was up to a little more than this, perhaps seeking some lost information from the Matrix.

The Time Lords are portrayed as a rather stuffy and dull lot, other than the wiley Borusa (I have a fondness for this schoolmaster turned politician) and the wonderfully oily Kelner. It is unfortunate that we see so few of them. Gallifreyan society is not convincingly portrayed. Rodan was a bit of a fragile creature, but she was still rather sweet and had a great rapport with Leela. It might have been nice for Leela to have stayed and Rodan to have become a joint companion. This makes me wonder how a Doctor-Leela-Romana team would have got on. It might have made for some interesting conflicts.

The Capitol set is better than some fans make out. Although a little small, it is at least very three-dimensional. I do have a problem with the scenes outside the Capitol; that quarry just does not convince. Even worse, we see not a glimpse of the city from outside it. At least there is an orange tint on the camerawork to remind us that the Doctor's planet has a burned-orange sky. Shame there were none of those trees with leaves of silver.

The Vardans look great as floating tin foil, but when they materialize as humanoids, they are very disappointing, as the Doctor himself admits.

The Sontaran costumes are okay. It is unreasonable to complain about Stor's cockney accent, but as a character he fails to impress. He does not display the depth in Lynx's character back in The Time Warrior.

There is the question of what happens to the Sontaran fleet. My guess is that the DMAT Gun somehow had the ability to desroy the Sontaran fleet (it is supposed to be some amazing and terrible weapon).

The score with all the organ bits works quite well in my opinion.

The spacecraft modelling was impressive; it is rather a pity that we would see a silver washing-up bottle spaceship a couple of seasons later in The Nightmare of Eden.

I loved the surreal chase through the inteirior of the TARDIS. It is fascinating to see how large the ship is. The carnivorous plant was a nice touch too.

There are a lot of complaints about Leela's departure from the TARDIS. It is true that there is a lack of chemistry between Andred and Leela that makes their announcement a surprise, but we have to bear in mind that the concept of romance before marriage is a very western one. It is likely that in Leela's culture, marriage is a decision made on more pragmatic grounds. A person who is strong and able to fight is an excellent prospect as mate for one in her culture. Leela made the decision to stay on Gallifrey, so she would naturally seek a mate who proves capable, as does Andred. Some fans would have liked to have seen Leela die fighting, but I question the desire to raise the show's bodycount. It is a children's show and a life affirming one. Why kill off a character unnecessarilly?

Andred is sometimes described as a Time Lord, which would clearly evidence Time Lord sexuality. However, there is evidence that becoming a Time Lord is something acquired. It may be that Andred is a non-Time Lord Gallifreyan who has not been made a Time Lord.