STORY PLOTLINE

The Doctor takes Adric and a young air hostess named Tegan Jovanka, who has come aboard the TARDIS by accident, to the planet Logopolis, home of a race of mathematicians whose help he hopes to enlist in reconfiguring the outer shell of the TARDIS.

The mysterious, wraith-like Watcher brings Nyssa from Traken to join them and warns of impending danger - something that is borne out as the Master arrives and kills a number of the Logopolitans.

DVD EXTRAS

Marathon chocolate bars were still called Marathon, Margaret Thatcher ruled with an iron grip (even with Dupuytren's disease) and in playgrounds across the country "Space Dust" had taken the mouths of children by storm.

But for DOCTOR WHO fans 1981 (Season 18) marked a true change of the old guard as an (to date) unchallenged seven-year "career" for Tom Baker as the Doctor finally ended.

"My Doctor" was to die. Sure, I had watched all but one of the Jon Pertwee seasons but Baker's unique style and approach had indelibly marked a young and garrulous schoolboy. One that had been swaddled by the Fourth Doctor's bigger-on-the-inside overcoat and dimensionally challenged woollen scarf.

LOGOPOLIS was the funeral and subsequent wake for the characters demise, and even now, 26 years later, it remains one of those JFK moments; "Where were you when you...? Reviewing the story today you can appreciate the scale of the writer's concepts and imagination, and cinematic breadth attempted by the DOCTOR WHO production team. New companion introductions, an evil mastermind, complimentary location and studio filming, stunning set design, and the ultimate theeat of decay to the very structure of the universe itself.

For any NEW SERIES (Eccleston and Tennant), this is an archetypal CLASSIC SERIES story and is highly recommended.

DVD EXTRAS

1. The Studio Commentary (Tom Baker, Janet Fielding and Christopher Hamilton Bidmead [Writer]).

The commentary team is a perfect mix of cast and crew, and, of course, Baker's contribution is both insightful and wryly witty.

Bidmead: Is that your hair, Tom?
Baker: Obscene, isn't it. Lots of hair.

Bidmead (who was also the Script Editor for SEASON 18, though incoming SE, Eric Saward script edited this story) explains that he wanted to exploit the TARDIS' internal architecture, introducing new rooms theoughout Baker's final season.

Bidmead: I am quite proud of the Cloister Room.

Baker ( Thomas Stewart Baker) , now 72, is frequently reflective during the commentary demonstrating how he cares by his art and how viewers at home accept it.

Baker: But the potency of television is that it plays mostly in the domestic context. And in that way it is terribly like life. I mean people don't actually listen to each other, do they? And they often say, "What are you babbling on about now?" Then someone says, "What were you saying?" "I don't know, we've forgotten what we're saying!"

And so when we're looking at television it's not like been in the formatting of a cinema or theatre where you are contained by the convention of silence. So you are watching it more objectively. For TV you're making Tea, or making love, or doing all sorts of things. People saying, "Will you shut up, Mum, I'm watching DOCTOR WHO!"

Fielding: It's communal.

Baker: It is part of us, isn't? I only ever watch television to shout at it, or shout to my wife!

Later, Baker admitted that his personality was getting the better of him by 1981, causing friction amongst the DOCTOR WHO crew.

Baker: I think by that time I was pretty impossible.

His openness, some 25 years on, is certainly cathartic and self-optimising to a point that DOCTOR WHO fans may not heard before. Baker had almost been in denial about "obsessive power" whilst working on the programme but this objectiveness is a release and proves that Baker is not as an eccentrically mad as he sometimes portrays himself to be. Entropy has even affected Baker.

Baker: I am concerned about dying. Like Woody Allen, I don't want to be there when it happens.

He candidly and wryly talks about his relationship (and marriage) with former companion/assistant, Lalla Ward.

Baker (playfully): We were very happy for weeks.

And on his leaving DOCTOR WHO:

Baker: I was dreading it really. It was time for me to go. It was impossible to take a Note {A Note is a comment from a Director or Producer} from anybody. I was living DOCTOR WHO. I thought always they were criticising me when I thought I know what had to be done.

Fielding: You struck me about being angry.

Baker: I think it was probably true.

Fielding: And I was very frightened. Angry men frighten me as they do many women.

Baker: That's a good observation. I was angry at the thought of change.

All the commentary team were complimentary about the story's guest-star, John Fraser (The Logopolitian Monitor), however, Janet Fielding a "left-field" query regarding the sexual habits of the planet's inhabitants:

Fielding: All blokes. How do they breed?

For non-fans a commentary may seem banal, individuals discussing a programme that they had churned out decades before for which they have little or no recollection of. However, it is the inconsequential comments that make it entertaining. For example, find out why Janet Fielding says, "No shit Sherlock", and why she becomes a DOCTOR WHO anorak, why Tom Baker talks about a "a kick in the balls", and how Anthony Ainley's home telephone number appear in the story.

However, as episode four's climax is played out on screen the silence in the studio is tangible. The last moments on Baker's contribution is only punctuated with:

Bidmead: I'm in tears.

Baker just laughs.

LOGOPOLIS is, for me, as stunning the NEW SERIES' THE EMPTY CHILD and THE DOCTOR DANCES, deserving both your hard earned cash and time.