| 115[1] – Logopolis | |||||
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| Doctor Who serial | |||||
 The Doctor ponders the meaning behind the mysterious white figure. |
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| Production | |||||
| Writer | Christopher H. Bidmead | ||||
| Director | Peter Grimwade | ||||
| Script editor | Christopher H. Bidmead | ||||
| Producer | John Nathan-Turner | ||||
| Executive producer(s) | Barry Letts | ||||
| Production code | 5V | ||||
| Series | Season 18 | ||||
| Length | 4 episodes, 25 minutes each | ||||
| Originally broadcast | February 28–March 21, 1981 | ||||
| Chronology | |||||
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Logopolis is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from February 28 to March 21, 1981. It was Tom Baker's last story as the Doctor and marks the first appearance of Peter Davison in the role. This serial also marks the first appearance of Janet Fielding as new companion Tegan Jovanka, whilst Nyssa, played by Sarah Sutton and seen in previous serial The Keeper of Traken,[2] returns and also joins the Doctor as a companion.
Contents |
Plot
Warned of upcoming danger by the TARDIS' Cloister Bell, the Fourth Doctor materializes the TARDIS around a police box in order to leisurely get exacting measurements of it in order to take to the mathematicians of Logopolis in hopes they can help repair the TARDIS' broken chameleon circuit. The Doctor and Adric are unaware that the Master has already disguised his TARDIS around the police box, and become lost when trying to escape the recursive system. Tegan Jovanka, an airline stewardess on her way to Heathrow, also becomes trapped in the TARDISes when she attempts to use the police box to call for help to repair her aunt's flat tire. When the Doctor and Adric escape to open air, they discover the Master's handiwork, as he has killed Tegan's aunt and a policeman with his Tissue Compression Eliminator. The police, investigating the deaths, believe the Doctor is involved; Adric provides a distraction to allow he and the Doctor to escape back into the TARDIS. The Doctor, intending to land his TARDIS in the River Thames to flush out the Master, instead lands on a boat on the Thames, finding the Master's TARDIS has already disappeared. Outside, the Doctor spots a glowing white figure, the Watcher, who directs the Doctor to continue on to Logopolis. En route, the Doctor discovers Tegan and sadly explains her loss.
Due to the complexity of the block transfer computations that they employ, Logopolis' mathematicians perform their calculations verbally, communicating their results to Central Registers and eventually to the Monitor. The Doctor presents his new measurements for the TARDIS to the Monitor, who feeds that data into their system. However, they are unaware that the Master has preceded the Doctor's arrival on Logopolis and has killed some of the mathematicians. This causes the results obtained by the Monitor to be incorrect, and when the Doctor tries them out on the TARDIS, the machine, the Doctor inside, shrinks to half its size. The Monitor discovers the missing mathematicians and is able to help correct the results, restoring the Doctor and the TARDIS to normal. The Doctor visits the corpses to confirm the Master's involvement, but when he returns to the control room, he discovers the Master himself, in mind control of Nyssa who believes him to be The Keeper of Traken and holding the Monitor's life at stake.
The Master is intent to discover the purpose of the radio telescope—an exact replica of the Pharos Project on Earth—and the Logopolitans' mathematics, and is willing to temporarily silence the Central Registers to force the Monitor to reveal the truth. The Monitor refuses but warns that the fate of the universe is at hand should the Master interfere too much. The Master shows that he is able to use special emitters to silence the Logopolitans, making good on his threat, but when he turns off the emission, the mathematicians remain silent. The Monitor realizes that the emitters were on too long and have completely disrupted their calculations, which there were using to model Charged Vacuum Emboitments (CVEs) as a means of excising off excess entropy from this universe into others as to stave off the imminent heat death of the universe. Without their calculations to keep them open, the CVEs have collapsed and entropy has started to take over, causing the mathematicians to collapse into dust, making it impossible to restore the CVEs. The Doctor and the Master agree they must work together to save the universe, with help from the Monitor to reopen the CVEs. Adric and Nyssa, now free of the Master's control, are trapped in the Doctor's TARDIS by the Watcher, who takes them outside of space-time so they can eyewitness the destruction of a large part of the universe from the encroaching entropy, including Nyssa's home planet of Traken.
The Monitor recognizes that part of their program is still stored with the bubble memory of the computers, but before he can start it, he and the equipment start to turn to dust. The Doctor realizes the same equipment is at the Pharos Project on Earth and is capable of running the program to keep at least one CVE open, and he, the Master, and Tegan depart for Earth in the Master's TARDIS. They arrive there, shortly followed by Adric and Nyssa who were able to bring the Doctor's TARDIS back to Earth. Adric, Nyssa, and Tegan distract the guards on the Pharos Project grounds to allow the Doctor and Master into the control room and to maneuver the dish towards the CVE. They are successful in running the program, but the Master uses the opportunity to try to hold the universe at ransom, using the radio telescope to broadcast a message across the universe threatening to close the CVE if he is not paid heed. The Doctor returns to the telescope and disconnects its power cable to stop the Master's message, but the Master attempts to turn the dish in a way to dislodge the Doctor. The Doctor hangs onto the power cable as the dish turns, seeing visions of his old enemies. The Doctor loses his grip and falls several hundred feet onto the ground below the radio telescope. Meanwhile, the Master escapes in his TARDIS.
The Doctor's companions rush to the spot where he has fallen. Dying, the Doctor experiences visions of the companions that have accompanied his current form and observes, "It's the end... that the moment has been prepared for." They turn to see the Watcher approach, and as he does so he merges with the Doctor. Nyssa realises that the Watcher was the future Doctor all the time. As the companions look on, the Fourth Doctor regenerates into a new, younger body — the Fifth Doctor...
Continuity
This story continues a loose arc of three serials featuring the Master. The trilogy began with The Keeper of Traken (1981) and concludes in Castrovalva (1982). Although the Master does not appear until Part Three, his laughter can be heard in the first two episodes and Anthony Ainley is credited accordingly.
The story also concludes a long thread over the preceding season, discussing entropy. In particular, Logopolis serves as punctuation to the overarching events of the earlier "E-Space Trilogy".
The Doctor and Adric look at Romana's now deserted room in the TARDIS and talk about her rescent departure in Warrior's Gate. The Doctor eventually jetisons her room to escape the pull of the Master's TARDIS.
As pointed out in About Time 5, by Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood, this serial has arguably the largest body count of any Doctor Who story — albeit mostly off-camera, as the destruction of Logopolis apparently causes a significant portion of the entire universe to be swallowed by a wave of entropy. At the very least, the Traken Union is destroyed, which would put the death toll in the billions and making the Master a mass murderer of unprecedented proportions, albeit one caused incidentally.
Several elements of this story carry over into Castrovalva, such as the theme of recursion.
The spin-off BBC Books novel The Quantum Archangel by Craig Hinton briefly shows an alternate timeline where the destruction of Logopolis did result in the death of the universe.
This story features the Doctor's TARDIS materialising around the Master's TARDIS, thereby creating a recursive loop. A similar process occurs in The Time Monster, yet does not happen when the TARDIS materialises inside Professor Chronotis's rooms (actually his TARDIS in disguise) in the untelevised Shada.
The Master suggests that the Time Lords will not approve of the Doctor's alliance with him and will cut all ties to him, yet this is never mentioned in any of the Doctor's latter dealings with them. The DVD information text, suggests that this is Christopher Bidmead's attempt to write the Time Lords (and the series increasingly complex backstory) out of the series altogether, but it was never carried through in latter series.
The Doctor and regeneration
This story was the last story to feature Tom Baker as "the current" Doctor. Although the Fourth Doctor appeared in the 20th Anniversary special The Five Doctors, this was only in the form of footage from the uncompleted Shada. Baker would reprise his role as the Doctor on screen only in linking narration for the video' release of Shada (1992) and in the Children in Need special Dimensions in Time (1993). He currently holds the record for longest tenure (seven consecutive years) as the Doctor on-screen.
The projection of the Doctor's future incarnation (in the form of the Watcher) is similar to the future projection of his mentor K’Anpo Rinpoche (in the form of Cho-Je) in the Doctor's previous regeneration story, Planet of the Spiders. A similar Watcher is present in the Fifth Doctor's mindscape in the Winter segment of the Big Finish audio play, Circular Time.
Before the Doctor falls from the dish, the enemies that mock him are the Master (as seen in The Deadly Assassin), a Dalek (Destiny of the Daleks), the Pirate Captain (The Pirate Planet), the Cyberleader (Revenge of the Cybermen), Davros (Genesis of the Daleks), a Sontaran (The Invasion of Time), a Zygon (Terror of the Zygons) and the Black Guardian (The Armageddon Factor).
After falling, as the Doctor lies sprawled on the ground, he sees visions of all the companions that previously accompanied his fourth incarnation: Sarah Jane Smith (Terror of the Zygons), Harry Sullivan (The Sontaran Experiment), Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Invasion Of The Dinosaurs, a Third Doctor story), Leela (The Robots Of Death), K-9 (The Armageddon Factor), Romana I (The Stones of Blood) and Romana II (Full Circle).
The music from the regeneration scene was later reused for the regeneration of Rowan Atkinson's Doctor in Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death.
Production
| Episode | Broadcast date | Run time | Viewership (in millions) |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Part One" | 28 February 1981 | 24:32 | 7.1 |
| "Part Two" | 7 March 1981 | 24:03 | 7.7 |
| "Part Three" | 14 March 1981 | 24:32 | 5.8 |
| "Part Four" | 21 March 1981 | 25:10 | 6.1 |
| [3][4][5] | |||
The location scenes at the Pharos Project were filmed at a BBC receiving station in Crowsley Park, with a model standing in for the radio telescope and not the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank. The Layby seen at the start was filmed on the southbound side of the A413 Amersham Road, Denham near Gerrards Cross. The Layby is still there but the M25 now bridges the road where the scene was filmed.
Titles
The closing titles sequence was recompiled with Tom Baker's face removed from the closing credits of Episode 4, and with Peter Davison's face added for the following story, Castrovalva.
Episode 4 of this story was the last time, for the next 24 years, the lead character was listed in the credits as "Doctor Who" (thus making it the only time Peter Davison was credited as "Doctor Who" ). Beginning with the next story, Castrovalva, until the series' cancellation in 1989, the character was credited simply as "The Doctor". The 1996 television film did not have an on-screen credit for the Eighth Doctor, but listed the Seventh as the "Old Doctor". The 2005 relaunch returned the credit to "Doctor Who", and then again to "The Doctor" in "The Christmas Invasion" (at the request of David Tennant).
Also, Episode 4 was the first to credit two actors as "Doctor Who" or "The Doctor" when a regeneration scene was involved. It also happened at the end of Episode 4 of The Caves of Androzani. In both instances, Peter Davison was billed second.
Outside references
The key plot point of shunting excess entropy into another universe was previously used in Isaac Asimov's novel The Gods Themselves.
According to Christopher Bidmead, the Logopolitans employ a hexadecimal, or base-16, numerical system, a real system commonly used in computer programming. When Adric and the Monitor read strings of numbers and letters, the letters are actually the numbers between 10 and 15, expressed as single digits.
The Police Box that the Doctor materialises the TARDIS arround in Part One, is intended to be the one located at the Barnett bypass, which at the time was one of the last of police boxes in the Metropolitan Police District still in its original location, though it had ceased functioning in the seventies. It was removed in 1981.
This is the second episode where the Master goes inside a radio telescope. The first time was in Terror Of The Autons.
| Doctor Who book | |
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| Logopolis | |
| Series | Target novelisations |
| Release number | 41 |
| Writer | Christopher H. Bidmead |
| Publisher | Target Books |
| Cover artist | Andrew Skilleter |
| ISBN | 0-426-20149-3 |
| Release date | 21 October 1982 |
| Preceded by | Full Circle |
| Followed by | Doctor Who and the Sunmakers |
Broadcast and Commercial releases
The serial was repeated on BBC2 in November/December 1981, daily (Monday-Thursday) (30/11/81) to (03/12/81) at 5.40pm as part of "The Five Faces of Doctor Who". The story was released on VHS in March 1992. In January 2007, the serial was released on DVD as part of a trilogy, entitled New Beginnings, alongside The Keeper of Traken and Castrovalva. DVD commentary is provided by actors Tom Baker and Janet Fielding, with writer Christopher H. Bidmead.
In print
A novelisation of this serial, written by Christopher H. Bidmead, was published by Target Books in October 1982. In this version, Bidmead changed the events leading up to the regeneration, so the Doctor is hanging onto the cable, and gives his life while saving the universe by unplugging it.
References
- ^ From the Doctor Who Magazine series overview, in issue 407 (pp26-29). The Discontinuity Guide, which counts the unbroadcast serial Shada, lists this as story number 116. Region 1 DVD releases follow The Discontinuity Guide numbering system.
- ^ The Keeper of Traken. Writer Johnny Byrne, Director John Black, Producer John Nathan-Turner. Doctor Who. BBC. BBC1, London. 31 January 1981–21 February 1981.
- ^ Shaun Lyon et al. (2007-03-31). "Logopolis". Outpost Gallifrey. http://gallifreyone.com/episode.php?id=5v. Retrieved 2008-08-30.
- ^ "Logopolis". Doctor Who Reference Guide. http://www.drwhoguide.com/who_5v.htm. Retrieved 2008-08-30.
- ^ Sullivan, Shannon (2007-08-07). "Logopolis". A Brief History of Time Travel. http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/5v.html. Retrieved 2008-08-30.
External links
- Logopolis at bbc.co.uk
- Logopolis at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
- Logopolis at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
Reviews
- Logopolis reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
- Logopolis reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide
Target novelisation
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