Brief Summary
This video summarizes Season 18 of Doctor Who, a transitional period marked by significant changes under new producer John Nathan Turner. The season aimed for a more serious tone, introducing a new theme music, a revamped Doctor's look, and complex storylines. Key points include:
- Introduction of Adric, one of the least popular companions.
- Departure of Romana and K9.
- The Master's return in "The Keeper of Traken."
- Tom Baker's departure in "Logopolis," a regeneration story involving the Master and the collapse of the universe.
Season 18 of Doctor Who, which aired from August 30, 1980, to March 21, 1981, brought significant changes under new producer John Nathan Turner (JNT). JNT aimed to modernize the show, replacing the composer with the radiophonic workshop and revamping the intro and theme music. The show shifted from sitcom-esque comedy to more serious science fiction. The Doctor's look changed to burgundy attire, and Tom Baker appeared older due to illness during the season. Barry Letts oversaw JNT to ensure stability, resulting in a season reminiscent of the Philip Hinchcliffe era but without key elements like UNIT or specific characters. Romana and K9 remained, with John Leeson continuing to voice K9.
The first story, "The Leisure Hive," is set in a failing holiday resort on a planet devastated by nuclear war. The resort aims to promote peace, but a race seeking to buy the resort complicates matters. The story involves disguises, bizarre science, and a murder investigation. Tom Baker's portrayal is notably somber, and the plot is slow-paced. Despite its flaws, the aliens are well-designed, and the Doctor spends part of the story as an old man.
"Meglos" features an alien planet, Ellaa, where the inhabitants worship a power source called the Dodecahedron. Some Talons want to study it scientifically, leading to conflict. Meglos, from the race that created the Dodecahedron, attempts to steal it by trapping the Doctor in a time loop and disguising himself as the Doctor. Jacqueline Hill, who played Barbara in the William Hartnell era, appears as a different character. The story includes subtle humor, such as a character named Bradac, an anagram of "bad actor."
In "Full Circle," the Doctor intends to take Romana home to Gallifrey but ends up in a pocket universe called E-Space. They find a crashed colony ship from the planet Pterodon, with descendants of the colonists aiming to rebuild and colonize a new planet. Native Marshmen and spiders threaten the colonists, especially during mistfall. Adric, a mathematical genius, stows away on the TARDIS, becoming a regular character. Adric is portrayed as whiny, arrogant, and unpopular.
"State of Decay" is set on an alien planet resembling Transylvania, where three vampires reside in a tower, periodically selecting victims from nearby villages. The vampires are revealed to be human astronauts pulled into E-Space by Great Vampires, an ancient alien race wiped out by the Time Lords led by Rassilon. The astronauts became lesser vampires, enslaving their crewmates' descendants. The story is both silly and significant, setting up Time Lord mythology and hinting at Rassilon's darker side. Vampire-killing bow ships introduced in this story are later referenced in the new series.
"Warriors' Gate" marks Romana's departure. The TARDIS lands in a white void with a gateway, encountering Commander Rorvik and his slaves, the Tharils. The Tharils were once intergalactic raiders who used time powers to enslave planets until robots overthrew them. Romana and K9 Mark II stay with the Tharils, as Romana is interested in their plight and reluctant to return to Gallifrey. The story is considered unmemorable, with excessive chroma key and an overly complicated plot.
In "The Keeper of Traken," the TARDIS lands on Traken, a planet where good in the air inhibits evil. A statue called the Melkur, intensely evil, is cared for by the inhabitants. The Keeper of Traken is dying, and his replacement is Tris, father of future companion Nyssa. The Melkur is revealed to be the Master's TARDIS, with the Master, mostly dead, manipulating events to take over Traken or steal the Doctor's body. Failing that, he steals Tris's body, marking a new phase for the Master. Jeffrey Beevers and Anthony Ainley are highlighted for their performances as the Master.
"Logopolis" is Tom Baker's final story. JNT wanted familiar faces to ease the transition, but offers to former companions were declined, leading to Nyssa's return. Tegan, an Australian flight attendant, becomes a companion after stumbling into the TARDIS. The Doctor seeks the Logopolitans, super mathematicians who can alter reality, to fix the TARDIS's Chameleon Circuit. The Master interferes, causing the universe to collapse. To save the universe, the Doctor and the Master must cooperate, but the Doctor falls to his death. The story is considered one of the weaker regeneration stories but is notable for featuring the Master as the primary villain. The season is praised for its interesting and imaginative stories, providing a breath of fresh air after previous years.
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Transcript
Full transcript of “A Quick Guide to Classic Who Season 18”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 [Music] know youology Treasures of History [Music] to of time all the Hand Works remain only [Music] Dre season 18 ran from the 30th of
0:45 August 1980 until the 21st of March 1981 when the season aired there were big changes the biggest since trouton left and they brought in pwe this was producer John Nathan Turner's first job as a producer he' worked his way up ranks on Doctor Who and decided to make his Mark and he made it hard he wanted to drag the show Kicking and Screaming into the 80s and so he replaced the usual composer with the radiophonic workshop a BBC inh house audio group he seriously rejigged the show's intro the first time this had happened since season 11 he flat out replaced the theme music up until now each theme had in some way built on the original version done by deia derbish jnt got Peter Howell to do a completely new one the
1:31 whole tone of the show was to change from a broad almost sitcom esque comedy to more serious somber science fiction feel and most importantly the doctor seriously changed his look beforehand his scarf was multicolored and he usually wore a mix of Browns and Grays now it's all burgundy all the time and J and T had wanted to lose the scarf Al together but thankfully that never happened Tom Baker even looked different older more tired gray hairs VIs ible this wasn't planned Tom Baker just spent most of the season on well he even lost his trademark curls and his hair had to be permed into shape as a side effect it looks like two or three years have passed between season 17 and 18 because this was jnt's first producing job the
2:17 BBC had Barry lets from the per watch over him and make sure he didn't do anything crazy like cast bunny Langford as a result season 18 plays like the best of the pway era minus unit per pwe Joe Grant Liz Shaw Bessie or Roger Delgado so to me it feels like the best of the worst of the per era still it's not all change Roman is still there for a bit and so is K9 voiced Again by John Leon who still voices him to this day the first story is the Leisure Hive aka the yellowest story since the claw of axos it begins in ardy in Brighton no doubt the doctor wanted to meet Adam adamant little did he know that Adam's already been frozen by this point and a way K9 decides to be an idiot and take a
3:03 swim K9 and from there they head to the Leisure Hive a failing holiday Resort built on a planet devastated by nuclear war a place designed to Foster peace and understanding among different races but not everyone's okay with that mission because it's going bankrupt the race who earlier blasted the planet turn up to buy the resort and things go from bad to worse there's disguises multiple different types of bizarre science going on and a murder investigation watching this story can be a real shock to the system after the last couple of Seasons Tom Baker looks like he's fighting the urge to slit his wrists it's not brilliant it's fairly tedious and it's very slow amazing for something that's only four
3:48 parts long I hate to say this but maybe I missed the comedy the last few seasons n that can't be it anyway the Leisure Hive it's not brilliant but the aliens are fabulous and the doctor spends an episode and a half as an old man next is megalos named after a guy well a space Cactus he's called megalos there's an alien planet called ellaa and they worship their power source a thing called the doah hedron but other Talons want to study it rather than rever it it's your usual science versus religion stuff they s for the doctor to decide whose approach is best and I could have saved them time and pointed out that in the classic show the doctor would always side with sence scientists anyway megalos who's from the race that created the doc cedron shortly before destroying
4:35 themselves receives the message and decides to steal it how does he manage that by locking the doctor in a time liop and disguising himself as the doctor and occasionally as the doctor as a cactus because space Cactus and after the old man makeup in the Leisure Hive I suspect they were just torturing Tom Baker once he gets away he plans on using the do decahedron to destroy planets anyway before Meg Lo can escape with it the doctor arrives and there's all sorts of shenanigans this one's notable because Jacqueline Hill who played barbar in the William har earlier appears as another character this is the only time a regulars come back as someone else now I don't want you to think this season is entirely humorless it's just that the jokes are usually much more subtle for instance in this story there's a character called
5:21 bradc which is an anagram of bad actor this story is four episodes long and overall I generally prefer it over the Leisure hive it's a little bit less dull in the next Story full circle we gain another companion adri adri is probably the single least popular companion in Doctor Who history he is Wesley Crusher before there was a Wesley Crusher and when he became the first companion to die in nearly 20 years there were celebrations when they released his last story in DVD they even added an extra scene to the special features showing how he had survived only to really die much more painfully seconds later blimy that was
6:12 lucky excellent to put this in perspective in classic who adric is about as popular as the 10th doctor is with me looks like I picked the wrong week quit sniffing blue [Music] now let's get started full circle begins with the doctor taking Romana home to galif fray the time Lord's called and they want her back and he's paying lip service to them being scary so he's taking her at last they end up in a pocket Universe they call eace and not realizing at the head for what they think is galif fr but instead find the planet alarius there's a crashed Colony ship from the planet pterodon and the descendants of the colonists are dedicated to rebuilding it so they can find a better planet to colonize their
6:58 native Marsh man and spiders outside the ship who begin to threaten the colonists when mistfall happens it's a bit like the sun going down in Pitch Black there's the Viv section of a sensient child terrible truths about the nature of the colonists themselves and worst of all adric stows away on the Tardis when the adventure is over adi's a mathematical genius he's whiny arrogant full of himself and it feels like he never changes out of his stupid looking pajama costume J&T had problems with the characters wearing clothing he preferred a distinct look that they'd keep all the time much better for merchandising this is a fine story and it's got a great twist the single biggest issue with it besides the obvious special effect stuff is that adric became a regular character still in eace we move on to
7:45 the next story State of Decay it's an alien planet that looks fairly Transylvanian and it should because three vampires live inside the local Tower they periodically send their henchmen to the villages to choose fresh victims for them now inorder order to talk about this story I really need to spoil it so sorry the vampires were human astronauts who were pulled into eace by a great vampire the great vampires were a giant alien race that the time Lords led by Rasel on who I'll talk about in a few seasons time wiped out millions of years ago they're Godzilla sized alien vampires the three lead astronauts became lesser vampires dedicated to resurrecting the great F on the planet while the other crew members and their descendants became their blood cattle and 20 generations of inbreeding
8:31 and subjugation is apparently enough to turn anyone into a Transylvanian I'm sure that's unfair I could manage it in 10 this is equal parts very silly and setting up parts of Time Lord myth that get touched on every so often he'd been mentioned before but this was one of the first inklings that rason was a bit of a bastard the vampire killing bow ships that were basically a giant stake with rockets attached that was introduced here were mentioned in Russell the davies's official description of the time war that was used in the the new Show's Bible so even the weirdest parts of the classic show keep echoing in the new the next story is the four-part Warriors gate it's Roman's last although she kept appearing in audio Adventures where she became the Lord president of the time Lords still in eace sort of the TARDIS
9:17 lands in a massive white void with a large Gateway there destroyed robots all around in a trapped ship containing commander rvac and his slaves the THL the thls were a race of Intergalactic Raiders who used their time powers to enslave other planets but another race created the robots to overthrow them and now it's the Thor who are the slaves D dun D in the end the Tardis with the doctor and adric on board returned to normal space while Romana and K9 Mark 2 stay with the THS because she's deeply interested in their plight and because she really doesn't want to go home to GFR at least her departure is a bit more believable than Leela's this story is lucky Romana and K9 leaving it it's got very little else to make it memorable
10:04 besides the massive amount of chroma key the THS look silly in a Cowardly Lion kind of way and it's needlessly over complicated and in the keeper of tracking the Tardis lands on the planet track what a stroke of luck it's a planet where I'm going to have to explain this aren't I oh track is a planet which has so much good in the air that it kills evil okay not literally but pretty much there's a power on the planet that can be used to calcify evil which is about as silly as the air killing evil there's a statue called the malur which apparently was a stone thing which kind of looks like wood but was so evil it reacted to the planet by freezing and ever since then some trait been attempting to care for it the keeper of trackon is the planet's ruler and he's dying his due replacement is
10:50 Tris father of Nissa who will shortly be a new companion tris's wife used to care for the melro as a child and now she's an ad she's still devoted so when it comes to life it gets her to do its bidding now this is one of those stories with a Twist two big twists actually but I can't keep these secrets and properly do this video so I'm sorry about this the malur is the Master's Tardis he's still mostly dead and is trying to manipulate things so he can take over track and unar an Intergalactic ampire or maybe just steal the doctor's body when that doesn't happen he steals tris's body thus beginning the master sort of kind of not being a Time Lord which lasts until he comes back in the new series I prefer this story over
11:36 warriors's gate but much like this season is the best fairly average for the show overall having said that Jeffrey beavers and Anthony anley are both brilliant as the master in Tris the keeper of track and starts a new Trilogy of Master stories which ends the fourth doctor era and Begins the fifth Anthony anley is mine and Lara's favorite master and they're a little bit unclear as to whether he's supposed to be basic basically the same Incarnation as the Delgado one the idea was that the master seen in The Deadly Assassin and the keeper of traken might have still been the Delgado Incarnation who was on his last incarnation in the per era and tried to get an extra regeneration resulting in the zombie Roger Delgado Incarnation but we don't know for sure so what might have been the Delgado Incarnation played by Jeffrey beavers
12:21 took over Tris creating the Incarnation played by Anthony anley now anley wanted to play the role more like how Delgado did swaave intelligent and ruthless but he was scripted as and told to play the part like 1930s Flash Gordon villain he played The Master until the end of the classic show and in a video game made in the 9s and only in a couple of stories did he get to play the role as he wanted most famously in survival in the McCoy era so on to the last story of the season logopolis because Tom Baker had been the doctor for so long J&T really wanted a familiar face to ease the transition into the fifth so he asked Li slayen Sarah Jane and Louise Jameson Leela to return for this story in the first few of the next season they both turned him down so what figure from the past did
13:09 the audience get to reassure them well Nissa of course from the keeper of track one story earlier not going to deny it that's a little bit of a come down from Sarah Jane anyway they have another companion to pick up tan Tegan's an Australian flight attendant after some car trouble she walks into a police box to try and get some help only to find herself inside the Tardis the doctor had parked the Tardis around a real police box to get its exact measurements so it could get a race of mathematicians to calculate something that he could use to fix the Chameleon Circuit unfortunately the master figured he'd do just that and turned his Tardis into an exact double of the police box and parked it around the police box first so the Master's Tardis is now inside the doctor's Tardis but there's also a a cursive Loop for
13:55 some reason so the doctor's Tardis is inside the Master's Tardis while the master Tardis is inside the doctor's Tardis and there's a real police box inside someone's Tardis probably like a bit in the time monster this is a mobus strip made of police boxes anyway they go to lopis because merang faed future doctor tells them to the lopin are a race of super mathematicians who have the ability to alter reality itself via the power of their equations and now I think about it maybe this line in the Twin dilemma wasn't quite as silly as I thought when I reviewed it your mathematical skill could P of event on a massive scale don't you realize that no that's still stupid anyway the master stops them from chanting their mathematics and the universe starts to collapse the universe years ago passed
14:40 the heat death point and the lopin using pure mathematics have been keeping it going take that laws of thermodynamics anyway to save what's left of the universe the master and the doctor need to work together at least until they get to a point when the master can threaten the rest of the universe with continued destruction and the doctor has to stop him but but fall to his death lopis is in my opinion the weakest regeneration story thus far and if you don't include time in the Ranny it's the weakest of the classic show but it is nice to see a regeneration story where the master is the villain where the doctor doesn't fall for a fuckload and then shrug it off only to be killed by radiation yeah I'm bitching about newu again in the end of time it was like they were trying to outdo planet of the spiders and lopolis at the same time
15:26 anyway this season did one thing very well it's interesting the stories for all their issues and many of them have a fuckl of issues are interesting and imaginative it was overall a breath of fresh air after the previous years where honestly some things had got a bit stale of course 1980s who would itself become much more stale and much quicker than the earlier years but that's for other videos join me next time for a proper introduction to my least favorite classic Who Doctor the fifth will have the last pure historical thus far and will have the first companion to die since the master plan in season 3 [Music]
