Relative Dates: 18th February 2013 - 15th March 2013
The Horror Of Fang Rock
After meeting the Sontarans several times already and hearing about their endless war with the Rutans, it's in this story that I finally got my first glimpse of one of these Rutans and they couldn't be different from the Sontarans. Strange little green jelly fish type creatures!
This story felt very much like a base under siege type story with the main action taking place in an isolated lighthouse. It makes for a very atmospheric group of episodes.
I think it was at the end of episode 2 where we get some more characters introduced to add to the growing body count as a small ship hits the rocks when the lights of the lighthouse fail.
Leela is great in this one. She is very much an action woman and it's great to see her contrasted with the hysterics of the young woman from the ship who gets a fair slap from Leela at one point if memory serves me.
Tom Baker also has some great lines. I particularly liked this one, delivered by the Doctor with a wide grin on his face as if he couldn't be more excited "Gentlemen, I have news! This lighthouse is under attack and by morning we could all be dead"
By the end of this story, literally everyone is dead except for the Doctor and Leela! Also after failing to avert her eyes from a strong flash of light sent out from the lighthouse to destroy the Rutans, Leela's eye colour is permanently changed from brown to blue. Louise Jameson who played Leela has blue eyes in real life and this was their way of being able to have her get away without wearing her brown contact lenses. It seems a bit daft as I'm not really sure how closely you would have had to have been paying attention to notice the change of eye colour anyway!
The Invisible Enemy
A strange one this one with the Doctor and Leela being duplicated then miniaturised and then injected inside the Doctor's original body in order to fight an infection. An infection which looks like a giant prawn for some reason.
More notably this story marks the first appearance of a new companion for the Doctor, it's K9, the metal dog. K9 ends up leaving with the Doctor and Leela but is absent from the next story as I think he needed some work done on him to make him more reliable or at least to move in a straight line! Also K9 is so bloody noisy. The whirring of his gears etc means that the actors seem to be fighting to make themselves heard. Many people love K9 but I'm afraid I'm not one of them.
Image of The Fendahl
I think this is quite possibly my least favourite story of the fourth Doctor era. I just cannot seem to get a grasp on it and there is one moment where the Doctor and Leela seem to leave the story for some reason to go somewhere in the TARDIS and then return later which just seems like obvious padding.
There is one very dark scene that I remember where the Doctor assists a man in his suicide by handing him a gun, muttering that he is sorry and then scarpering. I mean it is made pretty clear that the man is doomed and there is nothing the Doctor can do to help but even so it seems a bit nasty!
The Sunmakers
This was quite a fun story, taking the piss out of having to pay taxes. The Doctor lands on...well I'm not sure actually.. I think it's possibly Pluto which has had artificial suns fitted around it, hence "the sunmakers". The people on this planet are being taxed for everything and the Doctor is soon getting involved in the revolution. It's quite a good one but I can't really think of much that happens in it. I remember that the first episode includes an attempted suicide! What the hell is it with this period of the show when all the characters just want to kill themselves??
Underworld
It is from this story that the name of my blog got it's name. "The quest is the quest" is uttered many times throughout by the crew of a ship who is on an apparently endless journey to locate the remains of their civilisation. I adopted this as the title for my blog because when people would ask me why I was doing what I was doing I couldn't think of a suitable answer and the phrase, "the quest is the quest" kept popping into my head as if to say "I'm doing this because I'm doing it, and it's a simple as that" I think there was a reason at one point but it seems to have been lost in the mists of time.
The weird thing about this one is that the production team seem to have run out of money for sets and therefore all the cave scenes are performed in front a blue screen with pictures projected in the background. It's a little disconcerting. Blue screen wasn't new to the series and was used substantially in the third Doctor era but it was always broken up with some real sets too so to have it on screen here for long stretches of time gets a bit waring after a while.
The Invasion Of Time
And so season 15 comes to a close with another 6 part story and a return to Gallifrey. For the first couple of episodes the Doctor is not himself at all. He appears to have formed an evil alliance with a group of unknown aliens in order to take control of Gallifrey by being made president. Out of all the Doctors I think this works best with the fourth Doctor. Tom Baker could be scarier than some of the monsters when he wanted to be. His treatment of Leela is awful as she is banished to the wastelands. Therefore it comes a relief later in the story, after sealing himself and Borusa in a lead lined room when you see him relax and say "at last, we can talk" and the audience can think "oh thank God, it was just an act!"
As part four comes to a close and the aliens have been defeated we are led to believe that this is the end of the story until out of nowhere a group of Sontarans turns up and we have two more episodes of running around. Quite a lot of the action for these two episodes takes place in the TARDIS itself. An old hospital was used as the hallways and rooms of the TARDIS and I'm afraid to say that it's very unconvincing but it's cool that they at least attempted something like this. And we do get to see Leela taking a dip in the fabled TARDIS swimming pool at least!
Speaking of Leela, this is the story when she leaves the Doctor and its disappointing to note that she has one of the worst departures of any companion. I think the producer was hoping to convince Louise Jameson to remain in the show for one more season and as such not much thought was given into how she was going to be written out. As such when Louise stuck to her decision a terrible plot was tagged on to the end of this story where she falls in love with one of the Time Lords who she must have spoken about two words to throughout this whole story! Utter crap.
As well as saying goodbye to Leela, the Doctor also leaves K9 on Gallifrey to watch over her. However as the final episode ends we see the Doctor push a large box into the TARDIS console room with the works "K9 mk II" on them. Where the hell he got this second model of K9 is anyones guess!!
Season 15 was complete. With 26 seasons in total in the classic run of the series I was well on the way! Come back soon for my blog entry for The Ribos Operation. This was the first story in season 16 which saw the Doctor and Romana in their quest to locate the six segments to the key to time. I actually started writing my blog again from the second story of this season, The Pirate Planet so therefore I will finally be up to date!
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