Doctor Who 18x27

Matthew Waterhouse as Adric • John Fraser as The Monitor • Anthony Ainley as The Master

With Nyssa from Traken unexpectedly rejoining the group, Adric aids the Monitor of Logopolis in trying to save the Doctor before time runs out. The Master, at liberty to prepare, is finally ready to reveal his true target, which unknowingly sets off the biggest catastrophe of all time.

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1. "What is the secret of Logopolis? Who is interfering with the Numbers? What is the imminent all-enveloping end?" (Radio Times)

2. This episode was first shown on 14 March 1981.

3. It was seen by 5.8 million viewers.

4. The Tardis is made to glow using the electronic Quantel image-processing system.

5. Barry Letts advised against using such optical trickery to shrink the Tardis.

6. "The base is apt to wander, instead of staying attached to the floor."

7. That's why you don't see the floor at all here!

8. Instead, he recommended using a succession of scale models in different sizes.

9. That was how he'd done it in 1973 (in 'Carnival of Monsters').

10. This is a quarter-sized model.

11. In the script, the Monitor continues, "And more than honour - much more."

12. The script asks for "a distorted high-angle view" here.

13. "It is as if some terrific pressure is bearing down on him."

14. Anthony Ainley tried to develop a stronger vein of humour in the Master,

15. to balance his otherwise unremitting wickedness.

16. John Nathan-Turner vetoed that version of the performance, expressing a preference for "wit rather than belly-laughs".

17. A fish-eye camera lens was specially hired for these distorted shots.

18. The footage on the screen was inlaid during post-production.

19. At the time the Tardis scenes were recorded, the Logopolitan sets hadn't even been built.

20. The Monitor's costume was originally covered with spangly sequins.

21. John Nathan-Turner first saw the sparkly creation on the recording day.

22. He didn't like it.

23. That was June Hudson's dinner break gone.

24. She and her assistants had to retrieve the costume from John Fraser after camera rehearsals

25. and cut off the offending sequins with nail scissors in time for the evening recording session.

26. In the script, the Logopolitans are speaking into the apertures at their workstations,

27. so the room is full of murmured numbers rather than the rhythmical clacking of abacuses.

28. A photographic flat creates an illusion of depth behind the doors.

29. This is the same set and extras that we saw in the last room.

30. 'Logopolis' went into pre-production on 27 October 1980, when Peter Grimwade began work.

31. The first planning meeting was held on 14 November.

32. By then, casting was well on its way to meet the serial's modest requirements.

33. Tom Georgeson (the Detective Inspector) Was the first to be booked (on 7 November).

34. Casting followed for Aunt Vanessa (11 November), the Watcher (14 November), and the Security Guard (25 November).

35. The principal guest role was the hardest to fill, but John Fraser's contract was finally issued on 2 December.

36. A late change to the line taxes John Fraser's memory for a moment.

37. In the script, "Adric looks at the print-out in his hand with new respect" after what the Monitor has told him.

38. June Hudson designed the costumes during November.

39. Tegan's wasn't ready in time for a photocall on 21 November, so Janet had to wear a uniform from stock.

40. Pre-production also saw no fewer than five major production personnel dropping out.

41. The original allocation was: John Howell (Sound Supervisor); Peter Logan (Effects Designer);

42. Dennis Panchen (Film Sound); Errol Ryan (Technical Manager); and Alec Wheal (Senior Cameraman).

43. In the script, Tegan says, "Looks to me like the Monitor's running some sort of slave colony!"

44. "Adric's throat is very dry now," says the script, "and he speaks with obvious effort."

45. Production began on 15 December 1980 with a read-through of the full script.

46. Then the exterior scenes were filmed on location over four days:

47. 16 December (suburban house, Part 1; river and bridge, Part 2);

48. 18 December (Pharos Project, Part 4); and 19 and 22 December (roadside, Parts 1-2).

49. The Doctor knows this because the buzzing sound has stopped. Now there's only the usual Tardis noise in the background.

50. The filming period was notable for having the shortest daylight hours of the year.

51. The cast and crew had to be at Television Centre at 7 a.m.

52. A 30-seater coach took them to the location, and each day's filming was due to wrap at 3:30.

53. The "real gripping hands" betray the props' origins as "Action Man" dolls.

54. After a break for Christmas, the production went into rehearsal in preparation for the studio recording.

55. Five studio days were allocated, in two blocks, 8-9 and 22-24 January, respectively in Studio 3 and 6 at Television Centre.

56. The first block covered the Tardis and Pharos gantry scenes, including the Doctor's transformation.

57. The second block was devoted to Logopolis and the rest of the Pharos Project.

58. Rehearsals at the BBC's Acton building began with another read-through on 29 December.

59. The cast then rehearsed for eight days, up to 7 January,

60. and another nine days, 12-21 January, in preparation for the second studio block.

61. The penultimate day of rehearsals was Tom Baker's birthday.

62. The "eye" of the Tardis scanner is in the lamp on the police box roof.

63. Nyssa's introduction as a fourth series regular

64. arose from the producer's wish to surround the new Doctor

65. with as many already established characters as possible.

66. The Doctor misquotes T. H. Huxley's essay, A Liberal Education (1868).

67. John Nathan-Turner liked the stark simplicity of the Tardis console room

68. as a focal point of contrast with the complexity of the worlds outside.

69. The term "console room" was a new coinage introduced in the series.

70. Hitherto it had always been known as the Tardis control room,

71. but Nathan-Turner wanted to ring the changes.

72. The figure of the watching stranger was conceived in response to the need to end the serial with the Doctor's transformation.

73. Adric's mistake is more understandable when you remember that he has never seen the Master in either of his bodies.

74. In the earliest version the Doctor disabused him after the meeting on the bridge.

75. Bidmead conceived the stranger as a kind of embryo.

76. The catastrophe which is about to be unleashed is of such a scale

77. that it distorts the structure of time itself and causes a version of the Doctor's future self to be overlaid on his present.

78. However, Bidmead didn't want this explanation spelt out,

79. so Peter Grimwade treated the character as a phenomenon that had to be explained by images rather than words.

80. Director and author had markedly different takes on the serial.

81. Bidmead wanted to emphasize technology and rational thought processes,

82. whereas Grimwade approached it as a magical, mystical plot with more metaphysics in it than science.

83. In the first outline, it is Adric, not Tegan, who suspects that the Logopolitans are slaves.

84. Their "all-consuming dedication" is central to the story as Christopher Bidmead conceived it:

85. They work as if driven by "some high threat" - because, of course, they are.

86. Barry Letts wasn't happy with Bidmead's emphasis on their utter asceticism,

87. "They may not be driven by individual needs," he wrote, "but they still have them.

88. "Not to talk (as they're clearly not telepaths) Would make survival just about impossible in the environment we've seen."

89. In the earliest version, the Master looks older, not younger.

90. Anthony Ainley (died 2004) owed his casting to previous roles in two BBC classic serials.

91. In Nicholas Nickleby (1977), produced by Barry Letts, he had played Sir Mulberry Hawk.

92. He struck up a friendship with the costume designer, who was none other than June Hudson.

93. In 1980, he dropped in to see her at the BBC, and she expressed a wish to work with him on her current series: Doctor Who.

94. Ainley liked the idea, and phoned his agent.

95. As luck would have it, this was at the very moment Doctor Who was looking for a new semi-regular villain.

96. John Nathan-Turner instantly fancied Anthony Ainley for his Master.

97. He'd worked on Nicholas Nickleby too, but he remembered the actor even better for an earlier role

98. as a slimy Prague clergyman in The Pallisers (1974), a series which often influenced his casting decisions in Doctor Who.

99. Ainley's contract was issued on 12 September 1980, while the serial 'Warriors' Gate' was in production.

100. In the draft script, Tegan took her aunt's death more casually.

101. "Surely Tegan should be upset and be comforted by the Doctor," commented Barry Letts.

102. All three of the Doctor's new sidekicks in the 1980-1 series join him after the death of a close relative.

103. In the script, Adric identifies Nyssa's new bracelet as "a sort of communications device", picking up one of the serial's leitmotifs.

104. The bracelet is the centre of a minor sub-plot in the earliest version.

105. Using the sonic screwdriver, the Doctor gets it off Nyssa's wrist in time to stop her strangling Adric,

106. but the bracelet then takes on a life of its own and pursues them, firing laser bolts.

107. The Doctor calculates its strategy and manoeuvres it into destroying itself,

108. only to realise that it was too simple to be a real trap.

109. The Master planted it to divert the Doctor's attention from his main activities.

110. The script assumed a much larger sonic projector screen, so that we barely glimpse the Logopolitans behind it.

111. That's why the camera zooms in here, to conceal what's about to happen to them.

112. This set was also used, redressed, for the Pharos Project corridor in the next episode.

113. Some of the original viewers were better informed about the mysterious watcher than others.

114. Those in the know had heard Peter Davison's guest appearance on Radio 4's Start the Week that January.

115. When the presenter Richard Baker asked him how he was going to make his first appearance at the end of 'Logopolis',

116. Peter gave the game away by telling listeners that the strange "cloaked figure" would turn out to be him.

117. Dorka Nieradzik thought of the watcher as the Doctor's soul and conscience.

118. Accordingly, she designed his make-up to suggest a supernatural figure, like a ghost.

119. In the script, the Doctor passes a cell with a Logopolitan sitting in the entrance, motionless and silent.

120. He reaches out, and the alien mathematician disintegrates at his touch, "a hollow, fragile shell".

121. Studio recording was as fraught as ever.

122. On 9 January, the session overran its allotted finishing time of 10:00 p.m.

123. The wrap was only fifteen minutes late, but that was fifteen minutes' overtime multiplied by the entire cast and crew.

124. The overrun was partly caused by a succession of technical problems on the first and second days.

125. A videotape machine broke down, a studio monitor broke down,

126. the line-up (equipment testing) at the start of recording took longer than it should have.

127. All that and a faulty Tardis console too!

128. But the main cause of the overrun was the time spent

129. getting right the very last scene recorded on 9 January: The Doctor's transformation.

130. Both the Master's outfit and Nyssa's were designed by Amy Roberts for 'The Keeper of Traken'.

131. Out of her Traken context, Nyssa was nicknamed "the fairy" on set.

132. Barry Letts expressed intense distaste for the Master's next line.

133. "There may be a place for walking corpses," he said, "but I don't think it's in Doctor Who."

134. Post-production ran from January to March, with each episode dubbed to a master copy on the day before transmission.

135. The video effects were added to the recorded pictures in an eleven-hour session on 28 January.

136. This was bedevilled by another overrun after a hungry recording machine chewed up some tape.

137. The radiophonic music and special sound were prepared in late February,

138. and the final sound dub took a total of 52 hours on five days between 22 February and 13 March.

139. Paddy Kingsland composed, in all, 41 minutes and 30 seconds of incidental music for 'Logopolis'.

140. Part of his brief from Peter Grimwade was to write music

141. that would negate the script's more alarming qualities and implications.

142. For example, Grimwade felt that some viewers might mistake the watching stranger for Death,

143. so Kingsland scored his appearances with comforting, positive resonances,

144. designed to suggest that the character was, on the contrary, a figure of Birth.

145. A music cue that's coming up will interfere with an intended effect in this scene.

146. When the Master switches off, we're supposed to hear a continuing absolute silence - not some music!

147. In the script, the streets of Logopolis silt up as the Master's sabotage takes effect.

148. The city's contoured cerebellum smooths out.

149. "From all around comes the creak and shuffle of shifting structure."

150. In the studio, the corpse was nicknamed the "dustman".

151. Christopher Bidmead imagined the Master as a charismatic figure of extreme evil,

152. akin to Milton's Satan in the epic poem, Paradise Lost (1667).

153. He was keen to get inside the character and find out how he works.

154. One of the central features of the scripted characterisation is that, unlike the Doctor, the Master has no aesthetic sense.

155. At one point he dismisses the Doctor's assessment of the situation as mere "poetry".

156. "You're a poor scientist," he tells the Doctor. "It's easy to see why you make so many mistakes."

157. "And why you make so few friends," retorts the Doctor.

158. It's made of crumbly polystyrene.

159. Studio recording at the BBC typically began with camera rehearsals.

160. For 'Logopolis', the cast rehearsed only in partial costume, and changed for the recording itself.

161. For example, Sarah Sutton wore the Nyssa jacket with a pair of her own tight corduroy trousers,

162. a look which so impressed John Nathan-Turner that he had it adapted as Nyssa's regular costume in the 1982 series.

163. Earlier in the 1980-1 series, the Tardis slipped into another universe, where the Doctor met Adric.

164. Tegan's Australian accent is especially broad in this serial,

165. partly as an artistic decision to differentiate her from her well-spoken "English" predecessor, Romana,

166. but also partly because her early scenes were played against another heavily accented character, Aunt Vanessa.

167. The accent was toned down in later serials because it would have been too strong against the predominantly British casts.

168. During the 1980s, Doctor Who periodically tried to dispose of the excess baggage of its past,

169. and establish a looser format on the lines of its original, simple premise: A man travelling through time and space in a police box.

170. Here, Christopher Bidmead attempts to write the Time Lords of Gallifrey out of the series for good.

171. These initiatives never came to anything, because the production office also believed

172. that the series' fans loved seeing the return of characters and settings from its long history.

173. So the Doctor did return to Gallifrey, without reprisal, for his alliance with the Master, at the start of the 1983 series.

174. Tegan's line was originally written for Nyssa, and vice versa.

175. The episode was always scripted to end on the Doctor's handshake with the Master,

176. but originally it was earlier. All this business with the Tardis came at the start of Part 4.

177. Because he's working with the Master, he says in the script, "That makes me a highly unsuitable person to have around."

178. Also seen in this episode were:

179. Charles Stewart, Colin Thomas (Logopolitans)

180. John Tucker, Walter Turner (Logopolitans)

181. Peter Whitaker, Bill Whitehead (Logopolitans)

182. Uncredited production contributors

183. Dave Bezkorowajny (Visual Effects Assistant)

184. Lan Hewitt (Graphics)

185. Sarah Bird (Contracts Assistant)

186. Gordon Phillipson (Grams Operator)

187. Charlotte Norman, Suzanne O'Mahoney, Viv Riley (Make-Up Assistants)

188. Demelza Rogers, Karen Turner, Karen Waite (Make-Up Assistants)

189. Derek Leigh, John Stephens (Props Buyers)

190. Chick Hetherington (Show Working Supervisor)

191. Sandra Wynne (Floor Assistant) re you doing? - Please.

192. As Time Lords, you and I have special responsibilities.

193. - Together, then? - But, Doctor...

194. I've never chosen my own company.

195. Nyssa, it was you who contacted me and begged me to help you find your father.

196. And, Tegan, it's your own curiosity that got you into this.

197. And Adric, a stowaway.

198. - The Tardis! - It's followed us from the Central Register.

199. - How can it get here when there's no one in it? - Did I say there was no one in it?

200. It must be the man who brought me to Logopolis...

201. I don't want any further argument. One, two, three of you into the Tardis. Quickly. Go on.

202. - Look, we want to help you... - It's impossible.

203. My friend in there will look after you. I'm collaborating with the Master. Now, go on.

204. - Battle stations. - The man's a murderer.

205. Come on, Nyssa, he means it.

206. - Together? - One last hope.