The Doctor and his companion Romana are on the run from the evil Black Guardian, using a randomiser to make them impossible to track through space and time. Their journeys will take them both to Earth and new, alien worlds.
Season 17 of Doctor Who was arguably the show's most troubled since its start. The show was near the apex of its success - Season 17 features several of the highest ratings in the show's history - but was also chronically hit by economic woes, with rampant inflation demolishing the show's budget, or at least its buying power. Creatively, the show had a unique problem: new script editor Douglas Adams had just penned a science fiction radio series, The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which had blown up unexpectedly big and seen him commissioned to write a second radio series, a novelisation, a TV show, a possible movie version and, a year or two down the line, even a video game. Adams did his best not to let this distract him from the day job, but it resulted in him shouldering a very heavy workload.
The season also featured continued clashes between star Tom Baker and the creative team. Baker had a low opinion of "boring" scripts and would tend to adlib or even rewrite scripts on the fly. Adams, who was a huge fan of Baker's humour and got on well with him, was inclined to indulge this tendency, to the irritation of other writers and directors (Baker, notably, was more restrained in meddling with Adams's own scripts). The season's production was also afflicted by strikes, and Baker's romantic relationship with his costar Lalla Ward which could be sparky.
Things kick off with Destiny of the Daleks, in which the Doctor and Romana travel to Skaro, homeworld of the Daleks, and get caught up in a war between the Movellans and the Daleks, who are trying to rescue their creator Davros, despite his apparent extermination in Season 12's Genesis of the Daleks. The first episode is pretty good, high in tension and atmosphere, but drops off a cliff quickly. David Gooderson is fairly inert as Davros, a sharp drop-off from the magisterial Michael Wisher in Genesis, and the conflict between the Daleks and Movellans (who look like members of a pop band) is underwhelming in the extreme. The Dalek models, some of which are over sixteen years old by this point, are also looking decidedly ropey. There's some nice location filming and a couple of interesting plot reversals, but it's a rather underwhelming story (if not as bad as its rep) and a disappointing bowing-out moment for Terry Nation, arguably Who's most important writer.
Fortunately, things immediately reverse with City of Death. Co-written by Douglas Adams, Graham Williams and David Fisher, City of Death is sometimes cited as Doctor Who's greatest single story, which is probably pushing it a bit. But it is definitely up there. The script is almost unrelentingly witty, the actual location filming in Paris really gives the show a filmic quality it has never had before (and rarely will again, at least in the Classic era), and Julian Glover gives one of the all-time great Doctor Who villain performances as Scaroth, last of the Jagaroth. Even the model shots are high in quality. Endlessly quotable ("what a delightful butler, he's so violent,"), well-paced and with a cast all on maximum form, City of Death is easily the season highlight, if not the highlight of the last three seasons (and maybe the next three as well).
The Creature from the Pit is an interesting story, mainly for its outstanding cast, particularly Myra Frances as Lady Adrasta who gets the assignment and performs with total conviction (Eileen Way is also excellent). The story has a very nice twist which almost subverts your expectations of what a Doctor Who story is about, whilst also being quintessential Doctor Who, but I feel the twist is really propping up the whole story. Without it, the plot is quite thin, so it doesn't reward rewatches as much. The visual effects, especially of the titular creature, are also a bit weak (and unnecessarily phallic). A solid story but not one you're going to revisit a lot.
Nightmare of Eden has a pretty strong premise, with two ships that ram into one another in a hyperspace accident. The Doctor helps them out, only to discover a whole ton of weird alien lifeforms are on the ship as well. Some interesting ideas in the story (if a bit of influence from Carnival of Monsters) and some strong guest performances - David Daker delivering his second memorable guest turn after his role as Irongron in The Time Warrior - help enliven a story that doesn't quite have the legs for four episodes, along with the Mandrels being the cuddliest and least-threatening Doctor Who monster, possibly of all time.
The Horns of Nimon, for many years, was decried as the worst Classic Doctor Who story of them all, which is debatable. It's definitely not the show at its best, with a plot that borrows more than a bit from Greek mythology and the titular Nimon being rather underwhelming in appearance. The serial is more infamous for Graham Crowden's ludicrous performance as Soldeed, which is 150% pure turbopanto. If you're in the mood for the hammiest performance in Doctor Who history, the story can be very entertaining; if not, it's a bit of a dire slog.
Shada, the final story of the season, has acquired a hushed, legendary reputation in Doctor Who circles by dint of 50% of it not existing. The story was fully written and filming had begun, with extensive location shooting in Cambridge mostly completed and a studio session also finished, when an electrician's strike halted shooting in its tracks. Attempts to remount the story for the following season failed, leaving the story incomplete. After various attempts to remount the story, including an audio version featuring Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor, and a video release with Tom Baker narrating the missing material, the BBC finally paid for animation to fill in the gaps, with the original voice cast returning to complete the script. Although the quality of the animation is...variable, this is the best solution for ensuring the story is completed in accordance with Douglas Adams' original intentions.
Once you get over the jarring shifts from live action to animation and back again, the story ends up being quite interesting. As an Adams script, it's inevitably witty and enjoyable. The guest cast is excellent, particularly Christopher Neame (whom some fans of this parish might recognise from his turn on Babylon 5's And the Sky Full of Stars fourteen years later), Denis Carey, Daniel Hill, Victoria Burgoyne and Gerald Campion. The plotting is a bit questionable in places - the Doctor convincing a computer that he's dead so should ignore orders to kill him is a joke drawn out for too long - and the pacing is definitely sluggish, with Adams not being best-represented in the six-part format. But still, it's a very solid story and a shame it was never finished to the original plan.
Season 17 (***½) is not as poor as its rep suggests. City of Death aside, these aren't the strongest scripts in Doctor Who history, but Tom Baker and Lalla Ward are on good form, and even where the scripts aren't the best, there's still some solid ideas being explored. It could be better, and the season is clearly compromised by budget issues in some places, but it ends up being firmly watchable.
The season is available on DVD and Blu-Ray, as well as streaming on BBC iPlayer in the UK and various services overseas.
- 17.1 - 17.4: Destiny of the Daleks (***)
- 17.5 - 17.8: City of Death (*****)
- 17.9 - 17.12: The Creature from the Pit (***½)
- 17.13 - 17.16: Nightmare of Eden (***)
- 17.17 - 17.20: The Horns of Nimon (**)
- 17.21 - 17.26: Shada (***½)
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