The Collection: Season 15 - Review

Season 15 saw the arrival of Graham Williams as producer of Doctor Who, brought in to counter some of the excesses of predecessor Philip Hinchcliffe. Horror and violence were to be toned right down, and in their place there would be more humour. Script Editor Robert Holmes - responsible for much of that horror and violence - agreed to stay on for six months to help Williams settle in. His presence, and Williams' inability to produce a season with an umbrella theme due to time constraints, has led to Season 15 having a transitional feel. Williams and new Script Editor Anthony Read would favour classic literature over classic horror movies - and a little movie called Star Wars was beginning to have its presence felt across the globe - so we get a mix of space opera and stories which would not have looked out of place under the old regime.

First up is Horror of Fang Rock. This was a very late replacement when Terrance Dicks' planned tale of alien vampires had to be shelved since it might be seen as being disrespectful to a forthcoming adaptation of Dracula. It was seen as a low-key launch to the new season at the time, but its reputation has grown and grown over the years. It's gothic horror meets base-under-siege, and is famous for being the one in which every single guest character dies. With terribly cramped and oddly shaped sets, in unfamiliar studios, director Paddy Russell elects to frame Baker foreground throughout, with his back to the other characters. This allows him to dominate, whilst still letting us see the reactions of the others.

Apparently this story was going to get a Special Edition before they ditched these to go down the Blu-ray boxset route. Whether it would have seen new CGI VFX, I don't know - but it gets them here. I know lots of people don't like these, but I'd strongly recommend you watching with them switched on. The most obvious thing is the new Rutan - a CG enhanced physical prop - but the electronic effects from the initial shooting star to the Rutan mothership are greatly improved. Some nice replacements for the model work as well. The shipwreck and the TARDIS in the rocky landscape look so much better.

The Invisible Enemy is one of two stories on this set which already had the option to view with the CGI option switched on. It's a real mixed back though. Titan is given a murky yellow sky - more scientifically accurate, but dramatically and visually weaker. Things aren't helped by having failed to treat all the window shots in Titan Base.

Inspired in its third episode by Fantastic Voyage, it's best known for the introduction of K-9 - and for the very mixed success of the VFX. Some great model work courtesy of Ian Scoones, but a dodgy giant prawn for a monster, misaligned laser beams and obvious pre-cut damaged walls have given this story a poor reputation overall (though admittedly that was the fault of it being a hurried retake).

If Fang Rock could have sat comfortably within the Hinchcliffe-Holmes era, then so too could Image of the Fendahl. Borrowing from Quatermass and the Pit, its setting of an old dark house, skulls and devil worshippers, with monsters lurking in fog-shrouded woods, could equally have formed the basis of a Hammer Horror. The Gorgon springs to mid, as Sherlock's mum swans about the mansion killing with just a look.

The Sun Makers is Louise Jameson's favourite story, and we can see why. Robert Holmes uses the programme to vent his spleen against the Vatman, in a blackly humorous critique of the Great British tax system. No monsters as such, unless you count human(oid) ones. The juxtaposition of humour and drama doesn't always work - the death of the Gatherer leaving a bad taste. The tone is variable.

Underworld is based on the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, but that's about all you can say about it. No CGI enhancement here, unfortunately. Infamously, inflation of the day led to the production team being unable to complete the planned sets, so actors were recorded on blue-screen to be CSO'd onto model caverns. The spaceship set (reused for both Minyan ships) is good, and there is some excellent model work with those spaceships - but those cave sequences let the whole thing down, along with some poor performances.

The other story from Season 15 to already have a CGI option is the final one - The Invasion of Time. This had a complex genesis, what with the original David Weir story having to be torn up as unfilmable, and then industrial action hitting the production. Williams liked the Time Lords, and their history had already been alluded to twice in the series so far - including the reason for their non-interference stance. Robert Holmes suggested the four-parter / two-parter structure, and gave permission to use the Sontarans. They were Anthony Read's favourite of the established monsters.

It's nice to see one of the classic monsters, as they're rare in this period of the show, and their presence nicely tops and tails the season after their mention in Fang Rock, which debuted their old enemies.

The story - and the season - ends with K-9 Mark I being superseded by Mark II. Leela gets a truly dreadful send-off, thanks to Williams refusing to believe that Jameson was serious about leaving.

The final episode is a let-down overall.

Considering the nature of the visual material they have to work with, the picture quality is superb throughout.

On to the Extras and, whilst not as packed as Season 20, we get quite a few excellent items.

Fang Rock gets a really good, in-depth, "Making of...". Cast and crew are well represented, whilst the main component is a two-day stay at a real lighthouse near Beachy Head for Louise Jameson and Toby Hadoke.

The pair also form one of the Sofa panels, joined by Betsan Roberts - widow of director Pennant Roberts and long-time friend of Jameson. I'm afraid Hadoke doesn't really work as a panellist. He knows the episodes inside-out and simply spouts facts and trivia. It's far more entertaining to see people watching the episodes afresh.

This is also an issue with Matthew Waterhouse, who joins Katy Manning on the second panel. Waterhouse was a fan and also knew these stories very well, so pretending he doesn't won't wash. Someone needs to tell him that repeating everything people say on screen is neither amusing nor interesting - even when you do it in a funny voice.

The third panel comprises Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton and - for a change - Colin Baker. Fielding isn't anywhere near as annoying this time, which just goes to show that she and Davison simply act up together. Baker is rather upset at the amount of violence on screen, including the Doctor wielding various weapons - his argument being that his era wasn't doing anything that hadn't already been shown before.

As it's her only full season, Jameson gets the Matthew Sweet interview, as well as a couple of convention appearances and a 2003 archive BBC interview. The fantastic Time War trailer piece is also included.

We also get two items from the 50th Anniversary celebrations - an interview with John Leeson and a companions panel, which includes Jameson.

The final disc contains an absolute gem of a new documentary - a biography of the producer Graham Williams. Clocking in at nearly 100 minutes, it's a thorough look at the man and his work - similar in style to the documentaries on Lis Sladen and JNT on other sets. His widow and children are interviewed along with friends and colleagues, revealing a deeply complex figure. 

Be prepared to be moved, as it doesn't shy away from the circumstances of his death.

I sincerely hope that we get similar productions for the other producers when it comes to one of their seasons.

All this plus the pre-existing DVD extras ported over, and a wealth of pdf material.

15 down, 11 to go... Here's hoping that we finally get Troughton's Season 6 for the next release.

Season 15 Collection confirmed

Following the leak on the Canadian BBC Shop site this morning, it was later confirmed that Season 15 (AKA Tom Baker Season 4 for you US readers) is indeed the next Collection Blu-ray boxset to be released.

As usual, on-line sellers only have a placeholder date but it is generally expected to arrive in March.

This is also Leela's only full season, and Louise Jameson features in the brilliant trailer - The Final Battle - in which we learn of Leela's fate as Gallifrey fell during the Time War.

As well as being on the sofa, she also gets the in-depth Matthew Sweet interview treatment.

Horror of Fang Rock gets new VFX and a making-of documentary.

Many of us had hoped that Underworld could have something done about its effects, but to be honest it has some very good model work and it's only the CSO, of which there's a lot, that lets it down.

The Invisible Enemy and The Invasion of Time already had optional new VFX for their DVD releases. Neither Image of the Fendahl nor The Sun Makers (Jameson's favourite story) really needed anything doing in that department. 

Unfortunately Fielding is on sofa duty yet again, though this time she and Sarah Sutton are accompanying Colin Baker - the only person who might give her vocal chords a run for their money. Another potentially interesting pairing is Katy Manning and Matthew Waterhouse.

Despite there already being a very good Graham Williams tribute / documentary on a previous release, there's a new one here - it being his very first season in charge.

Tom features in this, but also gets his own separate "Tom Talks" feature.

All that, plus the existing extras ported over from the DVD releases.

What's Wrong With... The Invasion of Time

One of the things we fans have is a knowledge of what went on behind the scenes on various Doctor Who stories. Some have a rough idea about the better known events, whilst others - and I count myself here - have a fairly in-depth understanding of the programme's history, thanks to reading a lot and absorbing all the extra detail to be found on the DVD releases, etc.

Whilst the casual viewer might watch a programme which appears to have been thrown together, has terrible set / effects, or is badly plotted, I know just why it may have come across that way on screen. It might not justify production decisions, but it does explain them as often as not.

Season 15 was particularly badly hit by two events totally out with producer Graham Williams' control - inflation and industrial unrest.

We saw how the former affected the previous story - Underworld. It was still a factor with the series finale, but added to this was the coincidence of a BBC strike.

This affected the studio work, so a lot more of the serial had to be made on location. This shows on screen - both in terms of the juxtaposition in image quality between film and video, and the nature of the locations themselves (a lot of brick walls in a futuristic space-time machine, for instance).

With The Invasion of Time, problems had reared their head long before the story went into production, however.

Script editor Anthony Read had offered the slot to an old friend, David Weir. A Gallifrey setting was requested, after the success of the previous year's The Deadly Assassin (and sets and costumes still existed, saving money). Weir came up with the idea that the planet's original inhabitants, who allowed the Time Lords to set up home there, were cat people. As cats like to play with and torment their prey, these cats would stage huge gladiatorial events. The script called for thousands of cat folk in an arena the size of Wembley Stadium. Did we mention inflation already...?

It quickly became apparent that the script was unworkable, but time was pressing. Williams and Read were forced to come up with a replacement at the last minute, keeping their Gallifrey location but ditching everything else.

BBC politics led to the story going out under the authorship of "David Agnew" - a pseudonym to be used if the writer wasn't supposed to be writing, or had withdrawn their name due to being dissatisfied with some aspect of a production.

As for the story itself, there was one other major headache to add to the others which had already plagued this production - the decision of the second lead actor not to renew their contract.

One thing everyone notices about The Invasion of Time is the hugely unsatisfying departure of Leela at the conclusion. From out of nowhere, she suddenly decides to stay in the rather dull and dusty environs of the Capitol to marry a man she has only just met and has barely interacted with throughout the previous six episodes.

If it's badly handled, it's because right up until the last minute Williams was hoping that Louise Jameson would change her mind. It was never going to happen - she had already signed up to play a pair of Shakespeare roles at Bristol Old Vic. She had already been compelled to suffer the antipathy of co-star Tom Baker for the last 18 months. He hated the character of Leela, and this crossed over to him being quite stand-offish with Jameson. The role was unrewarding, and the working environment was strained, so why put yourself through another year of it?

Williams and Read ought to have grasped this, so their lack of forward planning is hard to explain, let alone justify.

On to plot, and we can just about accept the Doctor taking Leela to Gallifrey so soon after him refusing to take Sarah. He is working under the malign influence of the Vardans, so isn't exactly tripping over himself to adhere to Time Lord rules or laws.

What doesn't make sense is his not dropping her off somewhere else first. On Gallifrey, he knows the risk she poses and has her thrown out of the Capitol at the earliest opportunity. Why bring her to his homeworld in the first place?

Whilst we have a reuse of set designs and costumes, the previous story had used a bit of TV trickery to show massed ranks of Time Lords in the Panopticon. The Capitol is rather sparsely populated in this story.

The relics of Rassilon - of which there are many - start to get a bit confusing. We heard about his key in the previous story, where it was identified as an ebonised rod which slotted into the floor and released the Eye of Harmony. That key is now the Rod of Rassilon, and the key looks like a conventional mortice one. Unless the Key of Rassilon and the Great Key are supposed to be two different things...

Other relics are introduced - like the coronet - or have new functions - like the Sash. It was implied in The Deadly Assassin that the latter was purely ceremonial and if it had a practical use it no longer works (it certainly didn't save the Lord President from being shot dead).

What is odd about these items is that K-9 - a machine - can use them to do what it does to eject the Vardans and time-loop them.

The Vardans travel via any form of wavelength, including thought - so why do they need a great big spaceship?

Why are the Vardans working for the Sontarans, and not the other way round? The ability to travel by thought etc. should have made them an invincible species.

When we finally get to see them, the image is greatly disappointing after the build-up...

Talking of Presidents, have the Time Lords really gone all this time without electing his replacement?

Borusa had previously specifically pointed out that it would not be a good idea for the Time Lords to be seen to be disorganised and leaderless.

It should have been obvious that the Doctor only invoked Article 17 to save his own neck, and never had any intention of actually becoming President of the High Council. Surely they weren't waiting for him to turn up again?

The space traffic control centre is one of the highest security areas on Gallifrey - but no-one seems to have thought about how the Transduction Barriers are powered. All you have to do is pop down the basement, knock out one guard, then blow up the machinery - and Gallifrey is defenceless.

Why do the people who have renounced life in the Capitol continue to live so close to it? With a whole planet to explore, you'd think they would have sought their new life well away from their old one.

A continuity gaffe is the Doctor wearing his scarf on the Vardan flight deck, whilst we can see it on the TARDIS hatstand at the same time, and he returns to the ship not wearing it.

The Sontaran two-parter feels tacked on at the end - partly in keeping with the Robert Holmes model of handling six part stories but also, presumably, a victim of the rushed rewriting process.

This also leads to a very confusing and underwhelming conclusion.

Much is made of how awesome the Demat Gun is, yet it simply acts like an ordinary laser rifle in the end. It is used to shoot two Sontarans, including Commander Stor, then the next thing we know the invasion's off.

If the weapon removed people and things from time, then that throws up all manner of paradoxes, such as how Stor could lead the invasion if he never existed in the first place. If the gun is sentient and can handle these paradoxes, then the story certainly never states it.

Stor knows all about the Great Key, but isn't aware that the Doctor and the President are one and the same. The entire invasion plan hinges on the Doctor becoming President. The Sontarans were employing the Vardans, so why did they not tell Stor this vital fact?

Why did Kelner try to destroy the TARDIS with the Doctor inside it - in possession of the key which Stor is looking for?

Why are there only a handful of Sontarans for such an important campaign as the invasion of the Time Lord planet?

Why was Stor put in charge of this mission, when he can't even put his helmet on straight?

What's Wrong With... Underworld

Just like The Space Museum, you could recycle the old joke about this story having only three things wrong with it - episodes two, three and four...

Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way first. After its opening instalment, Underworld looks terrible.

Basically, inflation in 1977 was running rampant. Producer Graham Williams took a short holiday and came back to find that this story had run out of money, with only one main set built and paid for. This was the Minyan spaceship. A large part of the action was located in a cave system. Filming at Wookey Hole or Chislehurst Caves would have been great - but the budget wouldn't stretch, so the plan had been to build cavern sets in studio.

Problem was, the money had already run out. Williams was advised by his superior to consider scrapping the story altogether, but as the series' new producer he did not want to leave his first season in charge unfinished.

It was already a budget-saving decision that the spaceship set could be used twice, redressed to be the interior of the P7E as well as the R1C. 

For the caverns, it was suggested that a model could be used, with the actors placed in scenes using them via Colour Separation Overlay (CSO). Convinced it might work, and keen to present a full season, Williams agreed.

The results are there for all to see on screen. CSO just about gets by in small doses, depending on how scenes are lit and what the background image looks like.

As well as looking false throughout, Underworld also sees figures lose body parts, especially their extremities, due to the process.

Bob Baker and Dave Martin did do their research, such as visiting a nuclear power station prior to writing The Hand of Fear, or reading up on Black Holes for The Three Doctors - but at the end of the day they were dramatists rather than scientists. This story has more than its fair share of bad science.

Whilst you would get gravitational equilibrium at the centre of a planet - where up and down are the same - the notion of floating towards it is silly. (And just look at Tom Baker in the scene. He looks utterly bored and appears to be only grudgingly participating, giving the ends of his scarf the odd flap).

The rocks smother the spaceships despite them not being that big. The Doctor talks about these rocks forming out at the edge of the universe, where there shouldn't really be such large solid objects. More likely to have gases and microscopic material where the universe is dispersing into a void.

Matter is much more likely to form at the core of things, which are newer, than out at the edges, which must be older to have already travelled out that far.

The other Graham Williams space opera based on Greek myth - The Horns of Nimon - at least gives a reason for a spaceship attracting matter towards it (the Hymetusite crystals), but here gravitational forces seem to be confused with magnetism.

The Doctor may be a clever Time Lord, but he has only been travelling the universe for a few hundred years. Jackson has been a space captain for thousands of years - yet the Doctor has to explain some very basic scientific concepts to him.

What's the point of the Quest? There is a Minyos II. What have the Minyans been doing all this time whilst Jackson and company have been away? Have they been procreating naturally, or have they also been having to rejuvenate all this time? Might they not have adapted or found alternatives in all this time, and no longer even want the race banks? 

Why does the Oracle defend the race bank? It doesn't seem to have any understanding of it, nor need of it. Why not just give it away and get rid of these troublesome visitors?

If the P7E was heading for the same location, at what point did the Oracle go mad and take the ship off to the edge of the universe? What was it doing out here in the first place? We can understand the computer going crazy and developing this oppressive society after a great length of time, but not way back when it was on its way to Minyos II with the R1C right behind it.

Wasn't it a bit of a mistake to give Herrick unopenable grenades, when the possibility was very high that the R1C might not be able to get away in time before they exploded?

The Doctor is dealing with a computer which, as I've mentioned, ought to have just given away the race banks to get rid of those disrupting its ideal society. This would have been logical - yet the Doctor is suspicious of it. Just because he's proved right doesn't explain the initial decision.

The Minyans do not appear to have mastered faster than light travel, so it's going to take a few hundred years to finally get to Minyos II. You'd think the Time Lords would have given them that back in their interventionist phase. Why does the Doctor not offer the services of the TARDIS to get everyone to Minyos II quicker? It's going to be very cramped on the R1C with a hundred or so Troggs on board as well. Hopefully there's enough food and water onboard to last 370 years.

The Doctor picks up an object which has "Made on Minyos" written on the base. It's supposed to be a joke - and a quick way of establishing the crew and the Doctor's foreknowledge of them - but it's like having an object marked "Made on Earth". Unless the story is set in a time when our produce is sold to other planets, it doesn't make sense.

At one point the P7E guards chase the Doctor and Leela who hide in an ore truck. The guards run into a dead end in which there are only these trucks - but don't have the sense to suspect that their fugitives might be hiding in one, under a sheet. They just have a glance round then walk away...

What's Wrong With... The Sun Makers

The Sun Makers is set on Pluto. Thus, it's a victim of its times as Robert Holmes wasn't to know that in 2006 Pluto would be downgraded to a mere minor- or dwarf-planet, one of many similarly sized bodies in the Kuiper Belt.

It would be an odd choice for a base at the best of times, being so far from the Sun, but Holmes was more interested in the name than in the astronomical body itself - a plutocracy being a society ruled by the wealthy.

What exactly is the point of running six artificial suns? The population live in totally enclosed environments, so why go to all the bother and expense of producing something no-one needs? There's mention of the elite being able to enjoy the sun, but the only rooftop we see looks like a multi-story car park in Bristol.

In the opening scene we see Cordo speaking to one of the Gatherer's underlings. She's about 10 feet off the ground, which is surely a bit of a design flaw. If the point is that she doesn't have to interact with the populace anyway, why even have a window in the first place. A monitor screen or intercom (or call centre) would surely have sufficed.

The bank card which the Doctor attempts to use is so obviously based on a Barclaycard credit card (at the time there was only that or American Express). Even sticking pieces of coloured tape on it fails to disguise this.

Much is made of how rare wood is on Pluto, so it might not have been a wise design choice to have the guns look like they are made of wood. The barrier put up to block the corridor also looks like it's made up of big lumps of wood.

For the representative of a business for which profit is king, the Collector isn't much of an economist. The Doctor overcomes him by introducing a growth tax which wrecks the economy.

However, it's the Company which collects all the taxes, so the money raised would have gone to it anyway.

The other thing about the ending of the story is that we've only seen events in one of six Megropoli. The Collector may be unique to Pluto, the sole representative of the Company, but there are still five other Gatherers with their guards and repressive regimes to deal with before the human race is free.

Is it one of the Company's ways of making money that they employ only one Gatherer for the whole of Megropolis One? There must be millions of people living here, and yet Gatherer Hade deals personally with the trivial affairs of a lowly D-Grade worker like Cordo.

Not only that, but he personally goes up to the roof to challenge the workers who have gathered there. We've seen many guards join the revolution, but surely he could have found a couple still loyal to the regime to do this basic police work.

He's a humorous character, despite being one of the villains, so it leaves a bad taste in the mouth when he is killed in such a nasty fashion - thrown from the roof of a building hundreds of floors high.

(Terrance Dicks spotted this and, in his novelisation of the story, had his killers feel guilty afterwards).

Whilst Hade is a funny character, Mandrel is presented as a vicious bully throughout the first couple of episodes - yet he gets off Scot-free. Is the Doctor simply swapping one monster of a leader for another?

Whoever emerges as the next leader of the human race, their government will need to be paid for. How are they going to go about raising income when everyone has had such a bad experience of taxation?

What's Wrong With... Image of the Fendahl

I can recall that when this story was broadcast, everyone was asking the same question: just who let the Doctor out of the locked room? It can't have been Thea as we see her elsewhere - and we later see her come looking for him in the room. Neither Adam nor Max would have any reason to free him, and both appear to be elsewhere at the time as well. 

Dr Fendleman might just be a possibility, if unconsciously under the influence of the Fendahl - in which case it is the Fendahl which has freed him. However, it would have no reason to free someone opposed to it either.

One theory is that no-one did it - it was just the delayed action of the Doctor's own attempts to open the door. If that is the case, then it doesn't look like that on screen. We're definitely meant to think that someone has sneaked up and unlocked it, then moved away to avoid detection.

Did Anthony Read simply fail to spot and correct an error in the script?

The novelisation does not help, as it wasn't written by Chris Boucher. Uncle Terry goes for the delayed action option.

The Doctor's explanation about the Fendahl's influence over the human race is... Well, he gives three of them, which is a bit confusing and annoying - especially when the third explanation is that it might just all be coincidence. It would have been nice if Boucher could have committed himself. 

The Doctor thinks that it is the influence of the Fendahl which has led to the dark side of Man's nature. So what caused the people of all the other planets to have a dark side?

Negative emotions and behaviours simply exist across the entire cosmos, so why think there's something unique with humans?

The Time Lords of old put the Fifth Planet of our Solar System into a time loop, after apparently blowing it up. Why blow it up when you can just stick the whole thing in a time loop?

Saying that, the supposedly god-like Gallifreyans really mess up the time loop. It fails to contain the Fendahl - as its skull makes it to Earth. It fails to contain the planet, as parts of it make up the asteroid belt; and it fails to contain knowledge of these events, as the Doctor knows all about it from his youth.

And he's able to visit it with Leela - so almost as rubbish a time loop as a Chronic Hysteresis.

The Fendahl is said to have stopped off on Mars on its way to Earth and destroyed life there. What life would this have been millions of years ago (the Flood?), and how could the Ice Warriors have later evolved on a sterile world?

Martian history is confusing enough without this adding to it.

Where did the little Fendahleen come from, which we see covering Thea's body in the kitchen? The creatures are created from the coven members, who haven't been transformed yet.

Indeed, where does the one we don't get to see in the woods come from? Is it simply a psychic force at this stage? If so, why physical wounds?

The fully-grown Fendahleen are able to affect the muscles of their victims to stop them running away - but don't influence the arms, so their victims can still shoot them or throw salt-bombs at them. Why not disable their victims completely?

There's a real cheat with the resolution to the first cliff-hanger - a whole scene slipped in of Leela jumping back from the cottage door, before the shot is fired, which we didn't get to see the previous week. 

This was the sort of thing that the old Saturday morning cinema serials like Flash Gordon, Underwater Kingdom, Radar Men From The Moon etc. used to do. People complained about them then, so why should they be any more acceptable in Doctor Who?

The Fendahl Core has fake eyes all too obviously painted on Wanda Ventham's eyelids.

The Doctor offers the skull a jelly baby - and it's clearly a liquorice allsort. He'll do this again in later episodes.

The Doctor knows details about the two earlier victims of the Fendahleen - the hiker and the security guard - when there hasn't been time for anyone to tell him about them.

It's a huge coincidence that the Priory will implode after 100 hours usage of the time-scanner - and the device just happens to have been running 99 hours.

Finally, the Priory is apparently sucked into a space / time warp, destroying it completely - the inference being that it ceases to exist. Yet the Doctor removes the skull from this event, thinking that a supernova is going to be more effective. That's just a big explosion. Wouldn't removal from space / time altogether be a better solution?

What's Wrong With... The Invisible Enemy

The Invisible Enemy was the second story of Season 15 - but the first one recorded that year due to the cancellation of Terrance Dicks' vampire adventure. This swap around led to some production issues.

The pressures of studio recording added to the headaches.

For instance, we all know about the pillar which K-9 has to demolish to create a barrier in the corridor in the Bi-Al Foundation. This has clearly been pre-broken. However, the pillar was perfectly finished at the start of recording, the break concealed. Unfortunately, the scene had to be reshot - and the design team simply didn't have the time to finish it properly to the way it was.

K-9 itself caused all manner of problems due to its construction - using a remote control mechanism which interfered with the electronic cameras. These caused it to go out of control. The operator, Nigel Brackley, had to be very close to the prop to operate it without this interference posing too big a problem.

Later, Tom Baker impatiently dragged K-9 along very quickly on its leash, shearing the gears.

It was too heavy to lift, so a lightweight dummy had to be made for later appearances, once the decision had been made to turn it into a regular companion.

K-9's blaster ray never seems to emit from the same place twice. At one point Leela is knocked out, when the beam hasn't even touched her. Also, it was ordered to kill at the time, so why only stun?

When first attacked by the Virus, the Doctor surmises that he has been affected by the equivalent of St Elmo's Fire - but this is an atmospheric condition. Why would he think something like that could occur in deep space, and get inside the TARDIS in the first place?

The space shuttle crew slaughter their Titan base colleagues, when the Virus wants to infect people and spread its influence. A waste, surely? After this it always leaves its victims living and infected, so why destroy potential recruits?

Marius is an expert on alien biology - so why is he sent for when the Doctor is brought in? They don't know he's an alien. In fact, he'll be logged on their system as an Irishman!

We see the damaged Bi-Al Foundation long before the shuttle crashes into it. (This was due to the undamaged model footage being mislaid, and the wrong material used to replace it).

How can the clones be clothed?

Has Leela honestly never seen what she looks like? Has she never seen a reflection in her travels so far? Wouldn't she have seen a mirror when she changed clothes at Professor Litefoot's home?

Everyone knows they have only an 11 minute lifespan, so why make such a fuss about where the clones will emerge? They are hardly likely to survive that long.

The size of the Doctor's insides isn't taken into account. How can the clones be expected to travel all the way to the part of the brain where the Nucleus is settled and out again through the tear duct - bearing in mind they will have to hunt for the Nucleus. They don't know where it is.

And if time is so pressing, why does the Doctor's clone spend so much time sight-seeing and blabbing to the Leela clone?

The Doctor tells Marius that he thinks Leela's immunity is psychological rather then physical in the second episode. He then discovers this to be the case in the third episode, only after looking for physiological reasons. It then turns out, in the fourth episode, that she did have a physiological immunity after all.

How can the clones' genetic material be absorbed by the Doctor when they are so small? The action in the brain at the end is confusing. Why does the Nucleus look so different? How can something with six legs be so immobile?

Why do some bits of Leela survive (hair and knife) and not others. It's just not directed / edited very well.

The clones are physical entities, inside a biological being. How then can they witness "imaginings" at the interface between "brain" and "mind"? The interface surely cannot be a physical environment.

The Nucleus thinks it will benefit from entering the macro-universe as it won't be so vulnerable to attack - but full-size it is more vulnerable. It was much more insidious in its micro-level existence.

You can shoot or blow up a man far easier than you can attack a microscopic virus.

All the language we see printed is in a phonetic Year 5000 language - e.g. "Egsit" instead of "Exit". Except the word "Oxygen" is printed normally.

What's Wrong With... Horror of Fang Rock

This story had more than its fair share of things go wrong, but they tended to be behind the scenes rather than problems we might have seen on screen.

Graham Williams found himself taking over a series which had come in for a great deal of criticism from certain quarters for its horrific content. Mrs Whitehouse was claiming victory over a public acknowledgement that the cliff-hanger to The Deadly Assassin's third episode should have been cut by a few frames. The new producer was asked to reduce the horror and violence, and elected to use humour and fantasy to plug the gap. 

(It's ironic that his very first broadcast story is very much in the style of his predecessor, one of the very few in which every single guest character dies, violently).

Another issue facing him was a hefty reduction in his budget - partly due to inflation, and partly due to his predecessor having blown his budget in a very big way. It was BBC policy that an overspending series had its budget cut for the following year.

Luckily Robert Holmes had agreed to stay on as script editor for six months, to allow Williams to settle into the job and find a replacement for him.

 

The producer had hoped to have a whole season with an overarching story involving powerful beings above and beyond the Time Lords, but this could never be ready in time. Holmes already had scripts lined up for Season 15, and the first of these was to be a tale involving vampires, from Terrance Dicks.

Known as "The Witch Lords" or "The Vampire Mutation", the story was all set to proceed when the drama department put the kybosh on it. One-time Doctor Who director Morris Barry was producing a big budget two-part adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, to star Hollywood's Louis Jourdain as the Count and Frank Finlay as Van Helsing. A Doctor Who story about vampires might be construed as spoofing this production, so Graham Williams was ordered to ditch it.

The Invisible Enemy was pulled forward to begin production first - causing its own set of problems which we'll look at next time - and Dicks was asked to come up with a replacement story in double-quick time. As he told it, Holmes handed him a children's book on lighthouses and told him to get on with it - mirroring the time that he had handed Holmes a children's book on castles and forced him to write a medieval story for Season 11 (which became The Time Warrior). "I dragged him kicking and screaming into the Middle Ages, and he dragged me kicking and screaming onto a lighthouse".

Another problem arose when it became clear that no studio space could be found for this story in London. For the first time, a serial would have to be produced at one of the BBC's regional studios - in this case Pebble Mill in Birmingham. It wasn't geared up for drama productions, or for the necessary VFX requirements, so a great deal of work had to be done to get the studio ready. Everyone was impressed by the commitment from the Birmingham teams, who were keen to see more drama filmed there.

Tom Baker had his routines, which invariably involved hitting the bars and clubs of Soho as soon as rehearsals or recording had finished, and he was not best pleased about having to spend time away from his usual haunts.

Additionally, his ego and his arrogance had grown considerably since he had last worked with Paddy Russell, who was a no-nonsense director. They had already sparked off each other during the filming of Pyramids of Mars when he had been reluctant to don the Mummy costume, but nowadays he had become very proprietorial about the role.

During rehearsals for Fang Rock he had been particularly offensive to John Abbott, who was playing Vince - accusing him publicly of not having learned his lines, before throwing the actor's script out of the rehearsal room window. Bullying, basically.

Once at Pebble Mill, Tom refused to take direction from Russell for a scene where the Doctor had to rush in through a door. He was supposed to pause as he came in, in order to be captured by the camera, but he kept moving forward. In the end, Russell simply ignored him and so the camera rested on Leela instead. His loss was her gain.

Russell had other problems - the cramped nature of the lighthouse set limited camera angles, and the glass walls of the lamp room caused further headaches.

As for the story itself, it has few flaws. A small group of people in a confined space, with a fairly straightforward plot, there's little that could go wrong. If the only things to worry about are the model of the ship looking too much like a model, or the claim that the fireball was red when we've seen that it was purple, then you have little to worry about.

The Rutan gets criticised - I think some people were hoping for the Creature from the Black Lagoon - but it's actually an okay effect, and the reason for it blobiness is perfectly logical. Dicks argued that, as the Sontarans were rigidly militaristic, then their archenemies would be the exact opposite - a more amorphous species.

Adelaide rushes off after one of her emotional outbursts - which is out of character. She goes off on her own when she knows there's a killer about, despite being the most frightened of all the guest characters.

Reuben is mocked for his distrust of electricity - only to have been proven right. Would the Rutan have bothered with the lighthouse if it hadn't been powered by electricity?

Did the Rutan mean to land here in the first place? If it has come to assess the planet for use by its military command, is an isolated building on a lump of rock in the middle of the sea a good place to pick? It could have been automated for all it knew, with no humans to assess.

What was the point of sending in a scout if the mothership is going to turn up in a few hours anyway?

There's still an intact Rutan ship in the sea off the south coast of England (no one says it crashed). What if the Rutan hadn't come alone? The Doctor just assumes that this is a lone scout.

The climax is unsatisfying. The mothership appears to be just a blob of VFX light, which can be destroyed by some other VFX light. What did the Doctor do to make a lighthouse lamp turn into a laser, with just the Edwardian tech he has to hand? Lucky the mothership was so vulnerable. How did the Rutans manage to survive their war with the Sontarans so long?

The Doctor quotes The Ballad of Flannan Isle at the end - but wouldn't the mystery of a lighthouse full of electrocuted bodies and a pile of green goo have prompted a ballad or two of its own? Maybe Torchwood hushed it all up...

When Colin Douglas made The Enemy of the World, Frazer Hines recalls him complaining about Doctor Who being beneath him and he would never make another one. What changed his mind? (The pay cheque, one presumes).

Like the Zygons, the Rutans can be shown in human form for much of the time, which is a cheap and effective way of delivering a story - so why did they never bring them back?