Doctor Who 18x28

Directed by Peter Grimwade

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

With the universe collapsing, the Doctor forms an uneasy alliance with the Master to save it. In case all does not go well, the Watcher takes the Doctor's companions to a safe place, but his plans for them don't stop there. The one hope for all lies back on Earth.

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1. "Will the Monitor's program stave off fate? What is the Distant Stranger's task? How does the Time Lords' fatal duel resolve?" (Radio Times)

2. This episode was first shown on 21 March 1981.

3. It was seen by 6.1 million viewers.

4. The script for this episode was very heavily cut and revised, especially in the first half.

5. Nyssa's objection was a late addition,

6. establishing more securely the personal dimension of her conflict with the Master.

7. In the script, the Doctor tries to recall the last thing the Monitor said.

8. "We can't remember every trifle, Doctor," says the Master. "We're Time Lords."

9. "Who in our various ways have let our minds go, Master,"replies the Doctor."We need every ounce of our combined talents."

10. "It's not personal devotion," making her stick with the Doctor, says Tegan in the script. She just wants what's best for herself.

11. The light on the Tardis roof starts to wink, forcing Adric to go inside and leave the argumentative Australian behind.

12. Originally, Christopher Bidmead shared the reasoning and exposition more evenly between the Doctor and the Master.

13. The Doctor's lines here were originally the Master's, for instance.

14. This was altered in rehearsal to allow the Doctor to carry the bulk of the intellectual heroism in his final episode.

15. Bidmead envisaged the Monitor in terms of a captain staying at the helm of a sinking ship.

16. "And on so short a friendship," he adds in the script.

17. "The stability is now critical," the Doctor tells the Monitor. "You must come with us."

18. "For precisely that reason I must stay here, Doctor," replies the Monitor.

19. Notice how the actors create a sense of urgency in this exchange by overlapping their lines.

20. The script makes it clear that the Monitor is trying

21. to stave off entropy by hand-keying the program into the computer.

22. The Master thinks this impractical: "Loose, speculative, useless".

23. "You'll find it well annotated," adds the Monitor in the script.

24. "It was never like this on the course," she was scripted to say.

25. And, what's more, "Somebody's definitely going to have to pay for a new pair of shoes."

26. "With all these levels of recursion, it's hard to say what the result will be," says the Doctor.

27. Recursion later became a major theme of Christopher Bidmead's next script, 'Castrovalva'.

28. 'Logopolis' was not universally popular with scientifically-minded viewers.

29. The New Scientist's television reviewer damned it.

30. He thought the action "pedestrian", the plot "incomprehensibly complex", and the jargon "mundane".

31. In the script, the disintegrating Monitor resembles a two-dimensional cardboard cut-out,

32. which topples forward and shatters into pieces, "like a jigsaw puzzle".

33. The Master's nerve breaks at the sight of the Monitor's death. "Anything but that," he says in the script.

34. But the Doctor has already pointed out that there is no escape.

35. "The collapse will spread out like ripples in a pool throughout the whole of space-time."

36. What's needed is "A positive response. Something definite, resourceful.

37. "Entropy works by rusting the resolve quite as much as by crushing cities into sand dunes."

38. It's also got to the Master's Tardis. The door won't open in the script.

39. The computer too is crumbling to bits before their eyes, not just being dismantled.

40. "I sympathise," the Doctor tells it. "I've never felt so close to dissolution before."

41. And then, "as if releasing his pent-up frustration", he tears the machine to pieces with his bare hands.

42. It is "an experiment in optimism" he tells Tegan - and that's how he finds the bubble memory.

43. Bubble memory technology, developed in the late 1960s, was superseded by hard disks in the 1980s.

44. In the script, the stranger first switches off the Tardis viewer screen.

45. "The Watcher has stopped watching," quips Adric.

46. "If only that solved the problem," says Nyssa. "At least we should be allowed to see what's happening."

47. "Nothing like physical labour to relieve the intellectual strain," he says in the script.

48. Not very much physical labour, though: The rock's made of lightweight polystyrene.

49. After this shot, they had less than 15 minutes to dust off the Master before recording his next scene (the end of Part 3).

50. In post-production, the picture was treated electronically with Quantel.

51. In the script, the Watcher won't let them into the console room, so Adric shows Nyssa around the rest of the Tardis.

52. He says that "safe" is "a terrible word" - because he knows the Doctor isn't at all safe.

53. The script calls for Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite (1892),

54. but instead we hear Schubert's "unfinished" symphony (1822).

55. The Doctor and the Master discussed the piece in an exchange cut from an earlier scene.

56. Though unfinished, like the Monitor's program, the Doctor points out that it "still commands a certain following".

57. The Master considers it "a trivial work", but the Doctor admires its Finale.

58. "We won't quarrel over it, Doctor," says the Master. "We have our own Finale to worry about."

59. "The homely action" at the vending machine, says the script, "is a poignant reminder of all we are about to lose."

60. This business was a late addition worked out in rehearsal.

61. In the script, the Master takes out a real weapon, and the Doctor tells him to set it on "stun".

62. There is no such setting, insists the Master, but the Doctor proves him wrong

63. by using the butt of the device to knock the technician unconscious. ("Poor little man!" says Tegan.)

64. The technician is using a piece of new technology.

65. Personal stereos were developed in Japan in 1979, and first sold in Britain the following year.

66. At the end of the scripted scene, the Doctor, having stunned the technician, absent-mindedly steals his coffee.

67. Adric originally had more to say about the deterioration of the Tardis.

68. "Things often stop working for no reason. The Doctor's very good at coping with it, but it's a terrific strain on him."

69. This was scripted as a visual echo of Part 1, with the stranger pacing up and down as the Doctor did then.

70. "It's uncanny," says Adric. "From here... it might almost be the Doctor."

71. In the script, Tegan is gagging the unconscious technician with strips torn from his own white coat.

72. "Your friends the Logopolitans are the ones who have tampered with nature," the Master points out.

73. In the script, Adric says the watching stranger is very much like the Doctor.

74. But, adds Nyssa, he is "so solemn, as if he carried all the troubles of the world on his shoulders".

75. In the script, Nyssa is bored. "At last - something to do," she says.

76. As Adric works at the console, she asks, "What are these toggles for?"

77. According to Adric, they're "something to do with the geographical fine-tuning".

78. For these scenes, Christopher Bidmead suggested using high-key lighting to burn out the Tardis walls.

79. He wanted to create an effect of "airy insubstantiality",

80. indicating that even the Tardis environment changes when outside the normal bounds of the universe.

81. This was a late idea. In the draft script, it's not an outsider's view of the universe, just an ordinary star map.

82. In an earlier cut line, Nyssa spoke of entropy "washing out from the direction of Logopolis like a tidal wave".

83. As the script puts it here: "Curved lines, like meteorological isobars, are moving slowly across the screen,

84. "and as they advance, the stars they cover dim and die,

85. "as if a black ink blot were spreading across the universe."

86. Barry Letts pointed out that the entropy field must be travelling faster than light,

87. which is impossible, according to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity.

88. In the script, Adric offers to switch off the scanner, but Nyssa forces herself to watch.

89. She weeps, but ends the scene with new resolve. "Show me how these data banks work."

90. Bidmead imagined the Pharos Project occupying the site

91. of two previous projects, one scientific and one military:

92. It had once been a radio telescope observatory, then a radar defence system.

93. In the script, the Doctor says that the Monitor gave his life trying to complete the program. "We must try to do him justice."

94. The Master wants to start again, and the Doctor realises that's it: The system needs rebooting.

95. The Master says that's not what he meant by starting again.

96. "Let's not argue about semantics, Master," retorts the Doctor.

97. In the earliest version, the Pharos Project was at Cambridge.

98. Bidmead suggested that the exteriors should be filmed there.

99. Peter Grimwade had other ideas: On 6 November he took his designer on a recce to Jodrell Bank in Cheshire.

100. The Jodrell Bank Observatory opened in 1945,

101. and is the home of the Lovell radio telescope with its 250-foot dish.

102. The ideal location? Alas not.

103. The aim, says the Doctor in the script, is to realign the antenna "on whatever's left of Logopolis".

104. "That way we should be near enough to that CVE the Monitor was trying to reopen."

105. This dialogue was a late addition: In the script they don't consider any faster alternatives to going on foot.

106. The ideal Doctor Who location needs to be close to London, which Jodrell Bank isn't.

107. Its owners must be willing for the BBC to film there, which the University of Manchester wasn't.

108. In the end, they used the BBC's own premises at Crowsley Park in Berkshire.

109. "There is something proprietorial" about the way the stranger "leans in the doorway".

110. Crowsley Park is a BBC receiving station, with plenty of radio masts and ladders, but no satellite dish.

111. The shoot took place on 18 December 1980, and the clear skies made it a very chilly winter's day.

112. Anthony Ainley got even chillier after splitting the Master's trousers while running.

113. June Hudson, the costume supervisor, was not on hand.

114. She had to make a special journey from London to cover Ainley's embarrassment.

115. Sarah Sutton also found it terribly cold in her costume with its skirt cut from lozenges of flimsy netting.

116. In the script, the Master manages to zap a Pharos workman before the Doctor gets the weapon off him.

117. Wet weather contingency plans were made for the Crowsley Park shoot, but proved unnecessary.

118. In the event of rain, they were going to put the cameras indoors and shoot through the windows,

119. leaving the poor actors to get soaked!

120. The scarf wasn't supposed to snag on the tree,

121. but after seven years as the Doctor, scarf extraction was second nature to Tom Baker.

122. The Master's tissue-compression weapon first appeared in 1971, but was redesigned for this serial.

123. The script describes it simply as "unpleasant looking".

124. Its particular shape was requested by John Nathan-Turner.

125. He asked that it should resemble a torch.

126. The dish is a miniature, positioned on location very close to the camera to create a false perspective.

127. An early, abandoned idea was to take establishing shots of the dish at Jodrell Bank.

128. That was never going to be practical, because later the dish has to move on cue.

129. The easiest way of achieving that was, inevitably, with modelwork.

130. "Chillingly, we realise he has had 'an idea'!" Says the script.

131. A total of 16 minutes and 29 seconds of 'Logopolis' was shot on film.

132. As always at the end of a Doctor Who series, the budget on this serial was very tight.

133. On 16 December, John Nathan-Turner was notified that there was too little money to build all the necessary sets.

134. He was asked to reduce the requirement by one set, which would entail a rewrite to relocate scenes.

135. Instead, he found a way of making one set significantly cheaper, by borrowing the scenery.

136. The subject of his ingenuity was the gantry foot, where the Doctor's regeneration takes place.

137. The co-ordinates were scripted to include part of Anthony Ainley's telephone number,

138. on the reasoning that it would make the digits easier for the actor to remember.

139. At the end of the episode, you'll see the Doctor's death and rebirth on a set that was put together

140. out of elements left over from the television version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

141. There are also two large girders that belonged to the permanent set for Top of the Pops.

142. This was a logistical nightmare, because Top of the Pops was recorded the day before the Doctor Who studio session.

143. The girders were removed from the Top of the Pops studio at the end of the Wednesday evening,

144. stripped of their Perspex panels at high speed, and set overnight in the Doctor Who studio for Thursday and Friday.

145. Afterwards they were refurbished and the Perspex panels replaced, at a little more leisure.

146. But not much, because they had to be ready for the next Top of the Pops recording the following Wednesday, 14 February.

147. "Alien intelligences!" The Master was scripted to say as he comes out. "I'll show them the quality of alien intelligence."

148. The refused handshake was business worked out in rehearsal,

149. referring back to the end of the last episode.

150. "We'd better leave this until the new equilibrium is established," says the Doctor in the script.

151. Barry Letts saw a problem with the ending of the serial.

152. "As the Monitor established that the program had to be run constantly to work,

153. "it looks as if we'd better cancel next season. And any other plans."

154. The Master's weapon was an especially fragile prop, and needed careful handling.

155. Barry Letts pointed out another weakness in the plot here.

156. Will the peoples of the universe hear the Master's message in time and, if they do, how will they be able to respond?

157. Given the speed that radio waves travel, it would take millions of years!

158. Letts proposed that Logopolitan technology, and the Master's, must operate either by warping space or moving outside it.

159. In the script, he plugs in the device he used to silence Logopolis in the last episode.

160. "Don't make any plans, Doctor," says the Master in the script. "Your future ends here."

161. The background, inserted electronically, is a still photograph supplied by the firm Aviation Associates.

162. Watch out for another still photograph in the background of the next shot.

163. It's a motionless Master!

164. There was a real sense of occasion at the BBC concerning Tom Baker's exit after seven years as Doctor Who.

165. The BBC's sales division, BBC Enterprises, hosted a party on 30 January to thank Tom for all he had done.

166. In the script, it is more obvious that Tegan, Adric, and Nyssa are under arrest as they watch events above them.

167. The BBC duty office logged some enthusiastic phone calls that weekend. ("Brilliantly done."Fantastic programme.")

168. The senior management later praised the transformation sequence and Tom Baker's long contribution to the series.

169. Shaun Sutton, the retiring Head of Drama, wistfully hoped that, when very old, he too might get the chance to play Doctor Who.

170. The upcoming sequences, in which the Doctor sees foes and friends talking to him, were late additions.

171. They were John Nathan-Turner's idea, on the analogy of a dying man seeing his past life flashing before his eyes.

172. The clips come from (pay attention, this is going to be fast):

173. 'The Deadly Assassin' (the Master),

174. 'Destiny of the Daleks',

175. 'The Pirate Planet' (the Captain),

176. 'Revenge of the Cybermen',

177. 'Genesis of the Daleks' (Davros),

178. 'The Invasion of Time' (a Sontaran),

179. 'Terror of the Zygons',

180. and 'The Armageddon Factor' (the Black Guardian).

181. Tom Baker was asked to scream as he fell, but he adamantly refused.

182. This is an electronic simulation added in post-production at the producer's request.

183. The Master's ionic column only goes two-thirds of the way round: It's hollow at the back so that the actor can "go inside".

184. The transformation sequence occupied a whole hour's recording time.

185. This shot alone took eleven minutes to set up, and four takes to get right.

186. "You don't have this trouble on the wireless," said Tom, before feigning sleep.

187. And, again at high speed, the clips come from.

188. 'Terror of the Zygons' (Sarah Jane),

189. 'The Sontaran Experiment' (Harry),

190. 'Invasion of the Dinosaurs' (the Brigadier),

191. 'The Robots of Death' (Leela),

192. 'The Armageddon Factor' (K9),

193. 'The Stones of Blood' (first Romana),

194. and 'Full Circle' (second Romana).

195. "I don't think the British public's interested in looking up my nose," said Tom, asking for a change of camera angle.

196. While he was waiting, Tom passed the time chatting with Sarah Sutton about beer, and with Matthew Waterhouse about ballet.

197. As scripted, Nyssa's next line had rather a different emphasis.

198. "So he was the Doctor all the time."

199. Though he'd been formally released by the time this was recorded,

200. Tom Baker stuck around in the studio to watch Peter Davison assume the mantle of the Doctor.

201. Note the elimination of the old Doctor's face from this episode's closing credits.

202. Also seen in this episode were:

203. Robin Squire (Pharos Technician)

204. Richard Bonehill, Keith Guest (Security Guards)

205. Simon Ramirez, Steve Whyment (Security Guards)

206. Production text commentary by Martin Wiggins