Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 580: Logopolis, Episode Four
Dear diary,
In some ways, it seems almost inconceivable that Tom Baker can have left Doctor Who. He’s been striding his way through time and space for seven seasons, and yet suddenly, as this episode ends, there’s some youthful-looking man laying around, swamped by the over-sized clothes of the Doctor.
I think any story would have a tough job to write out the man whom really does embody the programme. Unfortunately, for me, Logopolis has fallen even shorter than you might expect it to. Let’s start with some positives, though. For a start, this is my favourite episode of the story. Bringing it back down to Earth again really does help, and even though the Pharos Project control room is the same set that we’ve been seeing for a few episodes now, there’s something about seeing a regular person in there, instead of a man in robes with ‘sic fi’ hair, which just makes it so much more relatable.
This is also the signs of our three companion team starting to really gel with each other. Nyssa and Adric had plenty of time during The Keeper of Traken to bond, and it’s great to see how well they work together here, too. Tegan launching herself in to the fray is rather brilliant, too. While I’m still not entirely convinced that she’s been given a proper character yet, there’s some basic elements in here that are starting to feel believable - she helps the Doctor not simply because, as she puts it, he’s her ‘ticket out’ of the situation, but because she can see that he’s a good man, and needs someone at this point in his life.
I’ve made a fair few notes about things to mention today - largely about the companions as mentioned above (though I’ve also made note to say how brilliant Sarah Sutton is when she watched her home world destroyed. ‘I can’t see Traken...’ is wonderfully understated, and it’s played beautifully), or about the special effects. There’s some good ones on display here - the Monitor’s death, for example - and some less-effective ones... is that a cardboard cut out of Anthony Ainley watching as the Doctor starts to lose his footing on the telescope?
But all that seems largely irrelevant, because what we’re really here to see is the death of the Fourth Doctor. I’ve never been able to make up my mind about this. Is it perfectly small-scale, allowing the Doctor to go out in such a simple way (albeit having saved the entire universe!), or is it just too simple for this longest-lived of all Doctors? To be honest, I’m still not sure if I know the answer to that one. Having sat through so many Tom Baker episodes, it still doesn’t quite compute that this could have been it. I think, for now, I’m siding with the idea that it was a bit of a naff way to go.
It’s not helped, of course, by the fact that Logopolis just hasn’t worked for me in general. Can you imagine this story without the regeneration at the end? If it were to finish with the Master simply getting away (chuckling, I’d imagine), and the Doctor heading off to the TARDIS two companions heavier, I think it would be thought of as one of the weaker Doctor Who stories of all time. It’s not faired too poorly as it is, coming in at number 62 in the recent Doctor Who Magazine poll - significantly higher than I think I’d have placed it... This feels like a let down to me as the end of Season Eighteen, let alone as the end of Tom Baker’s Doctor.
Ah well, you can’t win them all.
(The traditional 'Doctor Overview' post will be coming up tomorrow, along with a side-step to catch up with Sarah jane and K9...)
(Aside-steptomorrow,tocatchupwithSarahJaneandK9,andalsolookbackontheFourthDoctyor\'sera...)
