Several of the Doctor's greatest enemies are plotting his downfall. An enemy agent is on board the TARDIS. And, on Gallifrey, a shadowy figure is manipulating the present and past of the Doctor to restart an ancient, deadly game.
In 1983, Doctor Who turned twenty years old. As a decade earlier, it was decided to celebrate the anniversary with a big story which would reunite all the extant versions of the Doctor along with multiple companions and enemies. Unlike Season 10, which led with the big special, Season 20 would end with it, and each story of the season would feature a returning enemy as part of the celebrations.
This was a better idea in practice than reality. Once again, the show was stymied by industrial action and the final story, a big Dalek epic, had to be abandoned, fortuitously before any filming had started this time. That story was finally remounted the following season as Resurrection of the Daleks. The decisions on which enemies to feature was also a bit odd. The Cybermen had only just had a big outing in Earthshock, so it was decided to include them in the special and not in their own, dedicated story. The decision to bring back Omega from The Three Doctors, made sense even if he was a one-off villain from ten years earlier, but his place in the mythology of the Time Lords was notable and it was a nice call-back to the previous special. Snakedance being a direct sequel to the previous season's Kinda, one of the most popular stories of that year, also made sense from a recency point of view. And bringing back the Master was also a no-brainer, despite his appearances becoming so common they were verging on overuse. But the decision to focus most of the anniversary season posed by the threat of the Black Guardian was an odd one: the Black Guardian had appeared for less than five minutes three years earlier, and the average viewer wouldn't have a clue who he was. It was a solid concept in itself, just an odd one to pursue given the absence of, say, the Sontarans, Ice Warriors or Daleks (however inadvertently in the latter case).
The season begins with Arc of Infinity, in which the Time Lord genius engineer Omega, trapped in an antimatter universe for a vast span of time, once again attempts to escape. This time his machinations revolve around possessing the Doctor, who thwarted his return last time, and manipulating events on Gallifrey to his design via a mystery agent. Omega has managed to gain a foothold in this universe via - somewhat randomly - a basement in Amsterdam, where, in (probably) the biggest single coincidence in Doctor Who history, the Doctor's former companion Tegan is visiting.
The resulting story is entertaining nonsense. The Doctor plays detective on Gallifrey, hunting down Omega's agent whilst being hindered by officious security officer Maxil, played with amusing irony by future Sixth Doctor Colin Baker. The boisterous and funny Baker made such an impression on the cast and crew that he was invited to a crewmember's wedding, where he charmed producer John Nathan-Turner so much that he became frontrunner to succeed Davison. Unfortunately, Maxil is a bit of a one-note character, despite Baker's obvious screen presence. A second storyline follows Tegan looking into events on Earth, which shows her displaying investigative skills she gained on her prior adventures, but she gets a bit sidetracked once she reunites with the Doctor and Nyssa. This is also a great story for Sarah Sutton, as Nyssa fits right in on Gallifrey, immediately charming a Time Lord technician into working for her and helping exonerate the Doctor, and making an impassioned plea to the Time Lord High Council about the nobility of the Doctor's adventures.
The location filming in Amsterdam is also very nice, though even selective camera angles and quick cuts can't quite disguise the number of confused Dutch people at seeing a guy covered in Rice Krispies and green slime running through their city. But I supposed if you did see that in reality you'd stand and gawp, so it's not too out of place. Overall the story is cheesy fun, maybe a bit underwhelming in its execution with some very perfunctory wrap-up (Tegan rejoining the TARDIS crew, or showing annoyance for being left behind at the end of last season, is swept under the rug).
Snakedance revisits the events of Kinda, this time with the Doctor and company travelling to the Mara's homeworld where, perhaps inevitably, it targets Tegan for possession once again. Kinda was an exercise in bizarre surreality and pulled it off, but Snakedance is written and played much straighter, to its detriment. Without the sub-Lynchian tone of Kinda, the story ends up feeling rather standard, but well-executed. It is helped by a solid guest performance in a very early role by Martin Clunes, who would become a British comedy superstar in the 1990s and 2000s, with most of the rest of the cast putting in good performances. The worldbuilding is quite good and Janet Fielding puts in one of her best performances as Tegan struggling against the Mara. Along with Arc, the story exemplifies the strengths of a three-person TARDIS crew, allowing them to take part in more of the action without overwhelming the story with too many characters. It shows that it would be insanity to return to having four characters in the TARDIS.
Mawdryn Undead, obviously, returns the show to having four characters in the TARDIS (long-suffering sigh). The new addition is Mark Strickson as Turlough, a student at a boarding school who is recruited by the evil Black Guardian (a magisterial Valentine Dyall) to destroy the Doctor by infiltrating the TARDIS as his new companion. A retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is working at the school as a maths teacher, which is a bit odd (from the POV of the Brigadier having no previous affinity for maths or indeed being remotely old enough to retire), though it makes more sense when you know the role was originally intended for a returning Ian Chesterton, one of the First Doctor's original companions, but had to be changed due to actor William Russell's availability. The story kicks into gear when it turns out that it's unfolding in two distinct timelines, in 1977 and 1983, with the two times connected by a mysterious alien spacecraft. The story builds up very nicely and Nicholas Courtney, returning for the first time since Season 13's Terror of the Zygons, gives a splendid performance as usual. Classic Doctor Who rarely dealt into the mechanics of time travel within the plot of a single story (Day of the Daleks is another notable exception) and this story is welcome for doing so, and doing so intelligently. It's only really let down by the bonkers subplot of Mawdryn (David Collings) impersonating the Doctor, badly, and Strickson's somewhat variable performance as Turlough (which becomes a recurring problem).
Terminus continues the mini-arc with Turlough now embedded in the TARDIS as the Black Guardian's agent, a potentially fascinating idea the show proceeds to do nothing with. The story itself takes place on a space hospital in the distant future where the terminally ill are treated (badly), but the hospital's location at the centre of the universe threatens to destroy all of creation (and may have been responsible for the Big Bang, one of Doctor Who's barmier notions). It's again a pretty standard story with the requisite running around corridors, with many of the more fascinating implications, such as the morality of treating the terminal ill and so forth, under-explored. The story does try to do more with Nyssa, who perfunctorily departs at the end of the story for no apparent reason, which at least helps reduce the TARDIS crew again, but Turlough for Nyssa is a poor trade. Strickson continues his unpredictable performance as Turlough, being convincingly manipulative in some scenes but hammily over-acts in others. It feels like somewhere between Waterhouse's inert Adric and Strickson's over-excitable Turlough, we've got the makings of one interesting companion. As it stands, the story is a bit forgettable, regrettably so considering it comes from Stephen Gallagher, one of the most striking British TV writers of the 1980s and 1990s who has previously given us the lyrically bizarre Warriors' Gate.
The trilogy rounds off with Enlightenment, in which the Doctor and his companions are drawn into a battle between the Black and White Guardians involving the enigmatic Eternals and their desire for entertainment. The visual imagery of a great space race between tall sailing ships is excellent and the guest cast is outstanding, with Lynda Baron, Keith Barron and Chis Brown all doing great work. The showdown between the Guardians is a bit underwhelming, and you never think for a second that Turlough is going to finally betray the Doctor, but it's mostly entertaining stuff, with some interesting subtexts in the relationship between Tegan and the parasitical Marriner, a relationship which is disturbing but Tegan can also manipulate it for her own ends. Fortunately, Turlough is a lot less histrionic after this point as well.
Limply hanging on to the end of the season is The King's Demons, which sees the TARDIS crew arrive in 1215 England and become embroiled in what appear to be political machinations revolving around King John and Magna Carta. The potential suspense here is undercut by the Master, with Anthony Ainley not only chewing the scenery but fully digesting it "in disguise" as the French Gilles Estram. Estram is so blatantly Ainley that you wonder if it is was deliberate, but the cliffhanger revolving around the "shock" of Estram being revealed suggests otherwise. The short length of the story (just two episodes) keeps things ticking along and there's some nice performances, particularly the splendid Gerald Flood as King John, as well as stalwarts of British acting Frank Windsor and Isla Blair. It all feels a bit slight though, and the addition of the robotic Kamelion to the TARDIS crew only to not appear again until his final appearance (due to problems getting the robot prop to work) verges on the pointless.
Then, of course, we have The Five Doctors. Nobody in their right mind is ever going to call The Five Doctors a highlight of drama, tension and fine acting, but what it is, is supreme entertainment. This a romp, which returning Doctor Who veteran Terrance Dicks fully, 100% understands. The goal is to get five Doctors, five companions and as many classic villains as possible into a 90 minute TV movie and have it all make sense, and Dicks achieves that. He even finds time for five more companion cameos, the return of the High Council of Time Lords and a revisit of UNIT Headquarters from The Three Doctors (as a nod to the previous anniversary special, which he script edited).
His job is made easier because Tom Baker declined to return, so only appears in stock footage from the incomplete story Shada, along with Lalla Ward's Romana. This allows the story to focus on the first three Doctors, with Richard Hurndall doing an absolutely outstanding job standing in for William Hartnell (who had sadly passed away in 1975). Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee are as absolutely splendid as you would expect, and it's always a pleasure to see Elisabeth Sladen and Nicholas Courtney return as Sarah Jane Smith and the Brigadier. It's particularly nice to see Carole Ann Ford back as the Doctor's granddaughter Susan, her first appearance in nineteen years (since her departure in Season 2's The Dalek Invasion of Earth) and her last appearance for another forty-two years (until Modern Who's Series 14, where she only appears fleetingly in visions), although Susan spends most of the back half of the story not doing much in the TARDIS.
An undervalued aspect of the story is Anthony Ainley's turn as the Master. Having just turned in his hammiest performance in the role to date in The King's Demons, he gives possibly his finest genuine, dramatic performance here. The conceit is that the Master is for once not masterminding the evil plot, and is instead sent by the Time Lords into the Death Zone on Gallifrey to rescue the Doctor. Fairly obviously, the Doctor doesn't believe for a nanosecond that he's genuine, and the various Doctors varyingly humiliate, ignore and disparage him to the point that when he inevitable snaps and decides to turn on the Doctor, you can half-sympathise with him. Ainley's indignant frustration is outrageously entertaining.
You also can't fault the production values, which are pretty strong by 1980s Doctor Who standards, with the Raston Warrior Robot's massacre of the Cybermen being a particularly outstanding sequence. There's a lot of great set design, one of the show's best musical scores, and the production team take advantage of the budget to deliver an urgently-needed revamp of the TARDIS set and main console, which starts to look even vaguely futuristic (BBC Micro monitors excepted).
The story is even available in three different versions: the original 1983 cut, the 1995 re-edit with longer scenes and (mostly poorly) redone vfx, and the 2023 "special edition" which restores scenes to the 1983 cut and tries to subtly improve the vfx rather than completely redo them. Some of the results in the latter are quite spectacular which, alongside the HD rescans of the location film footage and the well-done upscales of the studio footage, provides us with a more definitive version of the story.
The Five Doctors - one of Russell T. Davies' favourite stories - is not high art but it is great entertainment, the closest Classic Who ever gets to a stout-and-Walkers episode (the UK equivalent of beer-and-pretzels).
Season 20 as a whole (***½) is perhaps a tad underwhelming, but there are no terribly unwatchable stories here, and the ideas in Arc of Infinity, Snakedance, Mawdryn Undead and Enlightenment are excellent, even if the execution can be variable. The Five Doctors really elevates the rest of the season, and is great fun.
The season is available on DVD and Blu-Ray (with some very high-quality extras and documentaries), as well as streaming on BBC iPlayer in the UK and various services overseas.
- 20.1 - 20.4: Arc of Infinity (***½)
- 20.5 - 20.8: Snakedance (***½)
- 20.9 - 20.12: Mawdryn Undead (****)
- 20.13 - 20.16: Terminus (***)
- 20.17 - 20.20: Enlightenment (***½)
- 20.21 - 20.22: The King's Demons (***)
- Anniversary Special: The Five Doctors (*****)
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