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.

Season 15 Collection coming soon

Or so BBC Canada's shop is saying. No other details yet.

Story 281: The Tsuranga Conundrum

In which the Doctor and her companions find themselves on a junk asteroid - Seffilun 27 - in search of spare parts for the TARDIS. It is the 67th Century. They stumble upon a sonic mine which detonates...

They all regain consciousness on the Tsuranga - a hospital spaceship - four days later. The Doctor is naturally concerned about the TARDIS as junk asteroids are regularly scavenged.

In charge of the ship is medic Astos, who is assisted by Mabli. 

They meet several fellow patients, including celebrated military commander Eve Cicero, who is being accompanied by her estranged brother Durkas and her android consort Ronan. Also present is a man named Yoss, who is pregnant. He is a Gifftan, and both genders can give birth.

The Doctor is determined to get back to Seffilun 27 but Astos explains that they are on an automatic course for the main hospital on Resus One. Any deviation from their flight plan and the destination will assume that there has been a hostile takeover or an uncontainable virus outbreak, and the Tsuranga will be destroyed.

Astos then admits that they are close to an asteroid field, which is in close proximity to a disputed region of space. An alarm sounds, indicating a hull breach.

The Doctor and Astos go to investigate as scanners indicate a life-form has come on board.

Graham discovers Durkas trying to hack into his sister's medical records. He explains that his sister has an easily treatable illness, and has recently started acting  differently towards him - pushing him away. He wants to know why.

Ronan, meanwhile, is pressuring Mabli into giving Eve extra medications. As a relative newcomer she agrees.

The Doctor discovers that the life pod on one side of the ship has disappeared due to damage. Astos reports that the one on the other side is still there. The Doctor warns him not to enter it but is too late. It launches with him on board. It has also been damaged and it explodes. Mabli is left in charge of the ship.

The culprit proves to be a tiny creature which seems to devour anything it touches. It rapidly moves through the ship's infrastructure, wrecking the systems.

Checking the database, they discover that it is an omnivorous Pting - one of the deadliest creatures in the galaxy due to its destructive behaviour. They have the added issue of being toxic to the touch.

The Pting triggers a preliminary alarm, which will be detected on Resus One. Three such alarms will see the ship automatically destroyed. Eve explains how she has experience of dealing with the creatures. Their priority is to stop it destroying their engines, then to get it off the ship before they get to their destination.

Graham and Ryan find themselves called upon to assist Mabli as Yoss goes into labour.

Eve reveals that she has a terminal health condition, and has been acting coldly towards her brother only to spare his feelings.

It is decided to take a short-cut through the asteroid field, with Eve piloting the ship using a holographic interface. Ronan and Yaz succeed in isolating the Pting as the Doctor removes the explosive device which would have destroyed the ship. The Pting eats it as it is jettisoned into space. The blast does not kill it, however - simply feeding it.

The strain of piloting the ship leads to Eve's death. Yoss gives birth and the ship arrives safely at Resus One, from where the Doctor and her companions can get passage back to the junk asteroid.

The Tsuranga Conundrum was written by Chris Chibnall, and was first broadcast on Sunday 4th November 2018.

I'll declare this right from the outset - I regard this as one of the worst Doctor Who stories of all time. I saw it on transmission, and again (grudgingly) when I bought the box-set, but since then I simply cannot bring myself to rewatch it. It finally convinced me - after some mounting concerns - that the Chibnall era wasn't going to be any sort of highlight for me.

The reasons are several, and in places are symptomatic of the problems which ran through much of Series 11.

The Doctor is at her most patronising, spouting glib platitudes left, right and centre. She awards her companions points when they say or do something she approves of - like giving a treat to a dog. As usual for this series, the companions are given very little to do. Despite being trapped on a damaged spaceship that could be destroyed any moment, Graham and Ryan stop in the middle of a corridor to have a chat - the sort of thing we see in any badly scripted direct-to-video dramas. The guest characters are walking cliches, assuming they have anything to do at all. What was the point of Ronan being an android? I assumed it would be relevant to the plot, but really wasn't. More could have been made of his ability to touch the toxic Pting. The only decent performance / character is Astos, who gets killed off after 15 minutes.

The Pting looks childish. The story really needed a more monstrous creature as a threat. It is all overly lit, which always lessens the drama. The sets look like JJ Abrams directed this.

The plot makes little sense. We have a hospital ship which has only two staff, one of whom is inexperienced, and no flight crew or security - despite operating in a potential war zone - and if anything goes wrong it gets blown up by remote control. There's far-fetched, and then there's far-fetched.

My biggest beef is the ending. A problem I've highlighted before is Chibnall's "tell, don't show" approach. Despite having a couple of nice spaceship shots, the thrilling denouement of this story is a woman waving her hands about in a white room. We could have seen the ship dodging through the asteroid field. We could have seen images of what Eve was seeing on her headset. We get neither.

The only good things - and there are a couple - are the aforementioned VFX shots (what little we get of them), and the fact that the Doctor actually does something this week...

Gripe over.

The totally wasted guest cast comprises Brett Goldstein as Astos; Lois Chimimba as Mabli; Suzanne Packer as Eve; David Shields as Ronan; Ben Bailey-Smith as Durkas; and Jack Shalloo as Yoss.

Packer is best known for a long-running role in medical soap Casualty - so probably felt quite at home here. Goldstein is a comedian as well as actor, now very well known for Ted Lasso. David Shields will be seen in WWII USAF drama Masters of the Air,  which also features Ncuti Gatwa. Bailey-Smith also does comedy, as well as being a rapper. He performs under the alias Doc Brown.

Overall... I'll quote Radio Times, who called it "A dismal misfire". It's desperately trying to be Alien meets Casualty, but the emotional drama is all too superficial.

Things you really, really don't want to know:

• Chris Chibnall claimed in 2023 that he was planning a sequel to this story, working title "Ptings". Thank goodness the axe fell on his tenure when it did...
• One nice moment amongst the misery is the glimpse of classic era beings like Silurians, Zygons and Davros on the alien lifeform database. More recent creatures included an Ood and a Weeping Angel.

Episode 99: Golden Death

NB: This episode no longer exists in the archives, nor is there a full set of telesnaps. Representative images are therefore used to illustrate it.

Synopsis:

The TARDIS materialises in ancient Egypt, in the middle of the building works for the Great Pyramid at Giza. 

The Dalek time machine is about to arrive close behind it. Mavic Chen is informed that he must get the Core back or die, and counters that his human guile will succeed where Dalek force has failed. He is puzzled as to why the TARDIS hasn't moved off again - believing that the Doctor must have instruments which could alert him as to their presence.

The reason for the TARDIS remaining where it sits is that the Doctor needs time to carry out a more comprehensive repair to the lock mechanism, damaged on the planet Tigus by the Monk. Expecting him to have followed them, Steven and Sara go off exploring and to report back when they observe his TARDIS' arrival.

They see a vessel materialise - unaware that it is actually the Dalek ship. They also fail to notice that they have been seen by a man named Tuthmos - one of the works overseers. He reports what he has seen to architect Khepren and to Hyksos, the local military commander.

On seeing Chen and the Daleks emerge from their ship, Steven and Sara hurry to warn the Doctor - only to be captured by Hyksos and his soldiers. The pursuing Daleks exterminate several of Hyksos' men. 

He decides to go for reinforcements, leaving the captives in hands of Tuthmos and Khepren.

His repairs completed, the Doctor sets off to find his companions and witnesses the arrival of the Monk's TARDIS, which takes on the form of a large stone block. 

He realises with a shock that if this is the Monk's arrival, then what Steven and Sara saw earlier must have been a Dalek ship.

The Monk stumbles into the path of Chen and the Daleks. On learning that he is another time-traveller who claims to be a sworn enemy of the Doctor, he is ordered to seek him out and obtain the Core.

Meanwhile, Tuthmos and his men have moved the TARDIS into the central tomb chamber of the pyramid, believing it to be part of Pharoah's treasure.

The Doctor breaks into the Monk's ship and alters its external appearance to resemble a Police Public Call Box. He emerges, pocketing the Monk's directional control unit.

Sara succeeds in freeing her bonds and releases Steven. They overpower their guards and escape.

The Monk traces the Doctor's TARDIS to the tomb chamber - hoping to use it to flee should he fail to get the Core from him. The Doctor appears and confronts him...

Steven and Sara soon arrive in the chamber in search of the Doctor and find the TARDIS.

Sara watches in terror as a sarcophagus lid slowly opens and a bandaged figure begins to emerge...

Next episode: Escape Switch

Data:

Written by: Dennis Spooner

Recorded: Friday 17th December 1965 - Television Centre Studio TC3

First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 8th January 1966

Ratings: 9.2 million / AI 52

Designer: Barry Newbery

Director: Douglas Camfield

Additional cast: Walter Randall (Hyksos), Derek Ware (Tuthmos), Jeffrey Isaac (Khepren).

Critique:

A visit by the Daleks to ancient Egypt at the time of the building of the Great Pyramid was originally intended for inclusion in The Chase.

Revisited for this story, the initial plan was that the Egyptian soldiers would defeat the Dalek force, and a pyramid would be built to commemorate the victory. A lone Dalek survivor would make it back to Kembel (then called "Varga") with the Core. One plan had been that the Great Pyramid was actually built around a Dalek - and the ghost of this plot point features in the next episode as we see Egyptians start placing stones around a trapped Dalek.

The Monk, due to debut in this instalment, was left stranded in ancient Egypt at the conclusion as the Doctor had stolen a component from his TARDIS.

The draft script carried the working title of "Land of the Pharaohs". 

Khepren was named after Chephren, builder of the second pyramid at Giza. Hyksos was originally named Cerinus. The Hyksos were an ancient Egyptian tribe. Tuthmos was named after Tuthmosis, name of four Pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty.

Dennis Spooner asked for the pyramid to be the conventional type familiar to viewers, as opposed to the older stepped variety such as can be seen at Saqqara. The designer opted to base his model on the pyramid complex at Giza, near Cairo.

The three main buildings there are the Great Pyramid, and those of Khafre and Menkaure, and date to the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom (2500 - 2600 BC). The Great Pyramid was constructed for the Pharaoh Khufu.

Sara wanted to ambush the Daleks and demonstrated her karate skills against the Egyptians, whilst the Monk explained his lifestyle as simply being a wanderer who would lend his abilities to anyone who asked for them - irrespective of their motives. He mentions being open to helping dictators and tyrants, Presidents or Daleks, so is much more of an amoral character. He cares nothing of consequences as he will always move on to the next situation. 

It's a much more cynical version of the Monk from the apparently bumbling, comedic one we are familiar with.

His TARDIS was to be seen to change into a Greek column, a "Wild West" stagecoach, a creepy-looking tree, an igloo, a space rocket, a sarcophagus, a small six-seater aeroplane, and a "Martian" or "Xeros space museum" building before settling on a Police Box.

The building is a reference to The Space Museum, previously script-edited by Spooner.

Filming took place at Ealing between Monday 4th and Wednesday 6th October. The fights between Daleks and Egyptians took place over the first two days, with Barry Newbery's impressive pyramid complex model (pictured below) being filmed on the final day.

Camfield and his assistant, Viktors Ritelis, were unhappy with the extras sent to play the Egyptian soldiers as they lacked the necessary weapon and fighting skills he wanted. They also thought them half-hearted in the action scenes. As such, only a few shots were retained for editing into the completed episode.

There were delays setting up Newbery's 12-foot square model, and Shawcraft announced that they were now so busy that they should not be called upon exclusively to service the show's VFX. Work ought to be shared with other contractors.

Also on the Wednesday, scale models were filmed of the Monk's TARDIS changes - which now included a motorbike, a "Prairie Schooner" covered wagon, ceremonial state coach and WWII tank.

During the afternoon of camera rehearsals on Friday 17th December, the studio was visited by Sam Rolfe - creator and producer of MGM "spy-fi" series The Man From U.N.C.L.E. On holiday in London with his family he had seen an earlier instalment of this serial and thought that the Daleks might be marketable to US television - something he shared with their creator.

He was photographed with his children on the "Dardis" control room set, an image of which later illustrated an article about Rolfe and his series in Radio Times, published in February 1966. (The image above is, I believe, one of those colourised by Clayton Hickman).

William Hartnell, who had recently announced to journalists that he was contemplating leaving the series, now qualified his remarks to suggest that he would go in another two and half years, as he hoped that the series would run for five years, by which time it would hopefully be made in colour.

With three different time machines in this episode, all seven recording breaks were mainly employed to move the various props around.

The episode opened on a shot of the pyramids model, and closed on a close-up of a bandaged hand emerging from the sarcophagus.

It is clear from the audio which exists for this episode that Hartnell was getting over an illness when it was recorded, as he sounds as though he is losing his voice at times.

Trivia:

• The ratings dip slightly - by just under half a million - but the appreciation figure rises to over 50 once more.
• Walter Randall makes his third appearance in the programme, the first being as Tonila in The Aztecs. A friend of Camfield's, the director had previously cast him in the significant role of El Akir in The Crusade. He will use him again in The Invasion and Inferno.
• Derek Ware was one of the very first actors to be filmed for Doctor Who, having arranged at Ealing the climactic fight between Kal and Za - and featured as stunt double - in An Unearthly Child. He had appeared on screen a number of times, including speaking roles such as the bus conductor in The Chase, as well as acting as fight arranger.
• Amongst the Egyptian soldiers is David Anderson, another fight arranger and actor on the series (e.g. Captain of the Guards in The Aztecs).
• Another soldier is Barry Noble, who would go on to have a reasonably successful singing career in the later 1960's. He made a number of appearances in the series as a background artist, including playing a Cyberman in The Moonbase and a Chameleon in The Faceless Ones.
• This was the third of three episodes of the story in which future director Michael E Briant stepped in to act as Production Assistant.
• The programme had small photo features yet again in Radio Times, with images of Jean Marsh and Hartnell:

• The 3rd February 1966 Radio Times piece on Sam Rolfe:

What's Wrong With... The Power of Kroll

It's hard to believe that this story is pretty much the same as The Caves of Androzani. Many of the narrative beats of the hugely popular Robert Holmes Season 21 story are to be found here.

Whilst the writer rated the Davison story highly, he did not like this Season 16 one at all.

The problems began with the failure of the story which was to have filled the fifth slot of the Key to Time season. Ted Willis - the writer responsible for the cult classic Get Carter - was supposed to provide a story for the season but unfortunately a drink problem meant that he failed to submit anything useable. 

Holmes, who had only recently managed to escape from Doctor Who, had already submitted a script (The Ribos Operation) for this year and found himself being asked by Graham Williams and Anthony Read to supply another.

He was asked to include the biggest monster ever seen in the series - and one thing he never took kindly to was having to adhere to any "shopping lists" from producers or script editors.

Williams' boss was so unhappy with the design on this story that he ordered that its designer never work on the series again. Set elements highlighted as poor included the close-up of a countdown clock where you could see that a piece of metal had been very crudely cut out, and the very shaky rocket silo set.

(If Tom Baker is going to be expected to hit something with a hammer, it really needs to be pretty sturdy).

Philip Madoc was another series veteran who hated this story - his final appearance in the show. He thought he was being offered the main villain role of Thawn.

Several roles had to be recast as people dropped out.

The Kroll model shots posed a problem as the camera on location wasn't masked off properly - creating a rigid line across the screen, with live action below and model work above.

Probably not a good idea to talk about wiping out the 'Swampies' when you have one of them working for you and he can hear what you're saying...

The Doctor is supposed to respect other cultures and their art and literature - so why does he nonchalantly toss the sacred text of the tribe into a pool of mud?

Why does the Doctor have to touch the body of Kroll with the locator? Couldn't he have just touched a tentacle? How did the segment get onto the end of the wand, and how can a single giant specimen of creature transform into lots of little individual ones? Kroll must have been pretty big in the first place to have eaten the high priest and the disguised segment, so why not transform into other big squids, if that was the original form?

Finally - the Doctor deals with beings which look like people dressed up as aliens all the time, so what was so different about the Kroll impersonator at the end of Part One...? A post-modernist joke by Robert Holmes?

Inspirations: The Lodger

This was the third adaptation of the revived series of a story from other media, after Dalek and the Human Nature two-parter. 

It is also this year's companion-lite story, with Amy only featuring briefly in short scenes set within the TARDIS set.

Steven Moffat gave the writer Gareth Roberts the working title of "The Man Who Came to Dinner" - the title of a Bette Davis screwball comedy of 1942 in which a family are forced to put up with an uninvited guest following an accident.

The first of the 60th Anniversary Specials was an adaptation of a Doctor Who Weekly comic strip, and The Lodger is similarly an adaptation of a strip from the monthly iteration of the magazine.

In DWM 386 (in the shops from 30th March 2006, just as Series 2 was about to begin) Roberts gave us a single issue strip called The Lodger. 

In this the Tenth Doctor is stranded in the London of 2007 when the TARDIS dematerialises without him. Rose is still on board as the ship jumps a time track to arrive a few days into the future.

With nothing to do but to wait for him to catch up with it, the Doctor is taken in by Mickey Smith - becoming his lodger for a few days.

This period coincides with an alien threat to the Earth.

As with the TV version, the Doctor annoys his host by being better than he at many things - including football. 

These scenes allowed Matt Smith to show off his soccer skills. He had been aiming for a career as a professional footballer when injury diverted him into acting. The sequence wasn't written for Smith's benefit, however, as he hadn't been cast when Roberts wrote the first version. (He had actually hoped to get it made for Series 2).

James Corden - a friend of Smith's - is also an obsessive football fan, so was the obvious choice to play Craig Owens.

The Doctor wears a No.11 shirt - a reference to him being the Eleventh Doctor and this being the eleventh episode of the fifth series.

Mickey mistakes the sonic screwdriver for his electric toothbrush, and in the TV version we see it sitting in the toothbrush mug in Craig's bathroom.

Roberts builds on the strip by having his new landlord a stranger to the Doctor, and gives him a girlfriend. We also see the Doctor best Craig at his job, appearing to be more successful with clients and more popular with colleagues. Roberts will build on this "Doctor gets a job" scenario in his next two stories.

For the alien threat, Roberts originally intended to use Meglos - the cactus-like creature from the story of the same name. This is because of its use of the Chronic Hysteresis time-loop, and The Lodger was to include the Doctor experiencing time-loops in action.

As it is, we get a dimensionally transcendental time machine with a central control console - which prompted many at the time to suspect that a Time Lord was involved. It would later transpire that this craft belonged to the Silents, who would make their entrance in Series 6.

The time-ship was actually based on unused concept art for the Eleventh Doctor's TARDIS.

The street name - Aickman Road - is an homage to the supernatural writer Robert Aickman (1914 - 1981).

The vacancy arises at the flat due to the previous flatmate gaining an inheritance from someone he never knew about. The Doctor had previously gained his teacher role in School Reunion by having someone winning the lottery, and he obtained a winning lottery ticket as a wedding present for Donna Noble.

He sings La donna e mobile in the shower - a song he had previously sung to himself in Inferno.

In Craig's flat we see a Jubilee Pizza box - a company which first featured in Dalek as a reference to the audio which had inspired it.

Tea is used as a restorative, having helped revive the Tenth Doctor after his regeneration in The Christmas Invasion.

The Doctor introduces himself to the Avatar as "Captain Troy Handsome of International Rescue" - referring two Gerry Anderson puppet series, Troy Tempest being the commander of Stingray and IR being the organisation from Thunderbirds.

He also has a postcard on his fridge for the Vincent Van Gogh exhibition in Paris which the Doctor and Amy took the painter to in the last episode.

Behind the fridge is the crack in time, and in the TARDIS Amy finds Rory's ring, but obviously doesn't know it belonged to him after he was removed from time by the crack in the Silurian story.

Next time: It's been mentioned twice this year but we finally get to see the Pandorica. Moffat has to trump RTD in season finales, so gives us a whole load of familiar aliens joining forces...

New Year, New Doctor, New Series, New DWM

By way of wishing you all a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year, here is an interesting link to a breakdown of the Series 14 trailer. 

No spoilers, but it does also provide a rundown of the expected shape and content of the 2024 season.

Doctor Who: 2024 series trailer breakdown (cultbox.co.uk)

Thanks to the Unleashed show, we know that the next series will debut in May - presumably the Bank Holiday weekend at the start of the month.

I'll state this now, but as far as this blog is concerned it will be Series 14. I am not in the least interested in RTD2's desire to kowtow to Disney by titling this Season One. Moffat tried these games back in 2010 and no-one then took a blind bit of notice, and I suspect that other than the producers no-one will take notice again this time.

Above is the cover for the next issue of DWM, out on Thursday.