Blu-ray
BBC Studios
RRP: £56.16
Starring: Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, John Leeson, Matthew Waterhouse, Sarah Sutton and Janet Fielding
Contains:
The Leisure Hive, Meglos, Full Circle, State of Decay, Warriors’ Gate, The Keeper of Traken, Logopolis, K9 and Company
Of all the series in Doctor Who’s long history, Season 18 stands as perhaps the most singular and distinctive.
Partly this is because, in our collective memory, Tom Baker belongs as much to the 1970s as the Fonz and Evel Knievel. So when John Nathan-Turner checked his watch, saw that it was now the 1980s and promptly set about dragging the show into the age of the BBC Micro (glitzy new neon titles, Fairlight synth theme and all), its outgoing star already looked like a man out of time. Even his raggedy costume had been replaced by a smart Sunday-best version to stop him making the place look untidy.
In hindsight, it’s easy to mock Nathan-Turner, script editor Christopher H Bidmead and (lest we forget) exec producer Barry Letts’ desire to rid the show of the “undergraduate humour” of Douglas Adams. But it’s true that there’s a ‘Footlights revue’ aspect to the previous run, not least in its frequently makeshift production. Season 18, by contrast, displays a new level of technical competence – flair, even. And how strange that it should be Bidmead, the computer journalist, and not Adams, the wide-eyed and curious polymath, whose series ended up being the most about ideas.