17 – Seventeenth Season – Tom Baker

Destiny of the Daleks

At the end of The Armageddon Factor, the Doctor had installed a randomizer into the TARDIS circuitry to prevent the Black Guardian from knowing where he was going. Of course that also means that the Doctor has no idea where he is going, which in some respects takes us back to the First Doctor, who frequently had no control of his destination. And Romana decides to regenerate, taking the form of Princess Astra from the previous story. In other words, Romana II is now being played by Lalla Ward. The TARDIS does land in a somewhat desolate place where the ambient radiation levels are rather high. While exploring, explosions are going off, and suddenly the Doctor is trapped under a stone column. He sends Romana to get K9, but while she is off three people in white show up, free him, and take him back to their ship. Lalla can’t get into the TARDIS because it is now blocked by rocks and debris from the explosions. On her way to return to the Doctor she is being followed by a gaunt man. When she gets to where she left the Doctor he is not there, of course, but the gaunt man comes in, and Romana tries to get away, only to fall into a chute to a lower level, where she is captured by Daleks. The Doctor meanwhile is on the alien ship and discovers that he is on the planet Skaro! And these aliens are on a mission to fight the Daleks.

It turns out that the aliens are actually robots known as the Movellans, and they have been at war with the Daleks for centuries, but it is a war in which no shot has yet been fired, The problem is that the battle computers are completely logical and can anticipate what the other side will do in every circumstance since they are also logical. And since neither one can as yet see a way to get a decisive advantage, they are just posturing instead of fighting. For the Movellans to be robots and completely logical is fine, but up until now it has been very clear that the Daleks are not robots and are not unemotional or totally logical. It is an interesting story premise, but it disrupts our understanding of the Daleks.

As usual the outdoor location scenes were filmed in a quarry. And the book the Doctor is reading is by a character from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Douglas Adams was the Script Editor for this season.

Reviews

City of Death

The story opens with a space ship taking off and exploding. Then the focus shifts to Paris, where the Doctor and Romana are enjoying the City of Light. Art comes up for discussion, so they go to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa. But they keep getting hit with time loops which make them dizzy while also repeating that same few seconds over and over. In the Louvre one of those time loops hit, and the Doctor appears to black out briefly, but in fact he had stolen a bracelet from a woman who was there in the room. She turns out to be the wife of Count Scarlioni. Also there is a detective, Inspector Duggan, who is concerned about possible art thefts, such as the Mona Lisa.

Count Scarlioni is not what he seems He is financing experiments in time travel which he seems to finance by selling art treasures. And it is the device his employed Professor has made that caused the time loops. When it is used, the time loops happen. Most people don’t feel anything, but of course the Doctor and Romana are Time Lords so they are much more sensitive. It turns that Count Scarlioni is not human, he is an alien whose ship landed on Earth and then exploded 400 million years ago, and he wants to get Time Travel to go back and prevent the explosion. Julian Glover is very good in the role of Count Scarlioni, and of course he was in Doctor Who earlier in The Crusade where he played Richard Coeur de Lion

Douglas Adams’ hand is evident in the humor, and this includes a wonderful scene with Eleanor Bron and John Cleese as two pretentious art lovers examining the TARDIS. This is deservedly considered one of the best of the classic Doctor Who stories.

Reviews

The Creature from the Pit

This was actually the first show of the season to be completed, which accounts for Lalla Ward’s Romana being a little tentative. She hadn’t found her take on the part yet. The other problem is that the script was written for Mary Tamm’s Romana, so it made Romana more reserved and haughty than Lalla Ward would be normally. The plot involves the TARDIS landing on the planet Chloris, which seems to be a jungle planet. The Doctor investigates a large object which he says is an egg, when they are captured by the Lady Adrasta and her guards. Lady Adrasta has a nasty habit of throwing people she doesn’t like into a pit, where they would be devoured by a creature. When the Doctor mentions the egg she becomes very insistent on knowing everything he has found out. When the Doctor contradicts one of her engineers, she decides the engineer has failed her, and takes him to be thrown into the pit. But after that the Doctor leaps into the pit himself, where he meets an old astrologer who has been there for some years, having been thrown in by the Lady Adrasta. Then they meet the creature which is a green blob, but the Doctor gets to know the creature somewhat and deduces that it is a vegetarian and is not eating any of the people Lady Adrasta has been throwing in.

Chloris is indeed a jungle planet, but one in which metals are extremely scarce, and Lady Adrasta has secured a monopoly on the only source of metal, giving her power. And we learn that the creature is actually an ambassador from the planet Tython, where metal is abundant but chlorophyll is very scarce, so they wanted to set up a mutually beneficial trade arrangement. But this would have upset Lady Adrasta’s monopoly, so she had the ambassador thrown into the pit. The solution has to start with the death of Lady Adrasta, which the Doctor manages.

This is justly regarded as a minor effort in the Doctor Who series. And the creature of the title is pretty silly.

Reviews

Nightmare of Eden

A problem has arisen when a passenger liner emerges from hyperspace in a space already occupied by a freighter. And the navigator seems to be completely unconcerned about anything. The TARDIS lands on the passenger liner and the Doctor is puzzled by the behavior of the navigator, and learns that he is taking a deadly drug Vraxoin, which accounts for his behavior. The Doctor follows the navigator as he goes back for more of the drug because it is highly addictive. The Doctor takes what is left and puts it in his pocket, but is later mugged and the drug is taken away from him. On board the ship is a scientist who has a device that reminded me of the Miniscope from Carnival of Monsters, but it is some kind of device called a Continual Event Transmuter (CET), which to the Doctor and Romana is very primitive. It looks at first like it is just a recording on crystals, but then we learn that you can enter and leave the scene it is displaying, in particular a planet called Eden.

The story has two main threads, one of the Doctor trying to separate the two ships, the other a mystery about who is smuggling this deadly addictive drug. The monsters in this story are the Mandrels, creatures from Eden who look scary at first, then you realize it is just men in suits made to look like monsters. But I would consider this an improvement over the previous story.

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The Horns of Nimon

This story is loosely based on the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The Nimons are Minotaurs in appearance, but can shoot laser beams from their horns. The Nimon on the planet Skonnos (Knossos in the original myth) is receiving young people as tribute from the planet Aneth (Athens in the original myth). He has made a bargain with the leader of Skonnos to deliver advanced technology that would let them rebuild the Skonnos Empire, all in exchange for the tribute, which in addition to the young people includes crystals of a particular type. Sounds too good to be true, and the military leader of Skonnos expresses his skepticism of the deal since if the Nimon is so powerful why is he doing this for Skonnos. One is always wise to beware of Greeks bearing gifts, after all. The Nimon’s residence on Skonnos is a labyrinth where the walls and corridors are constantly shifting. After defeating them the Doctor puts the Anethans on a ship to go back home, and notes approvingly that they remembered to paint the ship white, and insinuates that he was at the original events on Knossos where a similar color choice was significant.

Not a bad story. Lalla Ward’s Romana is becoming quite significant in the plot. Too bad this is basically the end for her story. But the effect of severe budget restrictions is undeniable. And ironically, Producer Graham Williams was trying to save money for the season closer, Shada, which ended up not being made because of a labor dispute.

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Shada

Reviews

Season 17

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