Times are changing.......Here we go club members. Try to bare with me.
Season 17 I'll be honest here. Most of season 17 isn't that great and if strikes helped City of Death then later in the season they would hurt the show, big time. The final story of season 17 was to be the now infamous serial of Shada. The end of season 17 would never even be finished. The many behind the scenes difficulties (strikes, budget cuts and having to work with Tom Baker
) during this season meant that after 3 seasons Graham Williams left as producer opening the door for some fresh blood....
Season 18The great season of regeneration. A new decade. An all new production. All new titles and music. A new look for the Doctor. And soon to be an all new cast. John-Nathan Turner took over as producer, in came writer Christopher H. Bidmead as script editor and Barry Letts would return to the show as Executive Producer to help guide the new team for one more season. JNT had worked on the show from as early as 1968 as a floor assistant and gradually worked his way up the ranks. With CHB they wanted to return the show back to basics and focus on more scientific focused stories again as well as have the stories join together as they had done in the early days of the show. Its because of this it makes it such a difficult task to share something from this period with you. Which I'm gutted about because it means skipping my own personal fav story.
Over the course of the season Romana and K-9 would leave to be replaced gradually by 3 new faces and after 7 seasons as the Doctor Tom Baker would step down. He had played the "I might leave card" before but the new team felt it really was time for a new face. But before we do that what of the events of this season?
Season 18 is largely based on the theme of entropy and decay. It rather wonderfully weaves its way into the 4th Doctors swansong, foreshadowing the end of his time. I don't want to spoil much but the Doctor, Romana and K-9 go to Brighton beach, fight a living shape shifting cactus thingy, get stuck in another universe and meet vampires. In this other universe (known as E-Space) they would meet Adric who stows away when the Doctor, Romana and K-9 Mark leave his home of Alzarius after the death of his brother (Adric wears his rope belt to remember him). A young genius his star-shaped badge is for mathematical excellence.
Before escaping E-Space and returning to their own universe Romana decides to stay behind to help out a race of talking lion people. She takes K-9 with her. The Doctor and Adric soon meet up with Nyssa, a sweet kind young noble woman/aristocrat of the planet Traken. (Note I once called one of my Animal Crossing villages Traken) She has a privileged and highly educated upbringing (specialising in bioelectronics) and as such possesses a high level of technical knowledge.
On a trip back to Earth they soon accidentally pick up another fresh face. That of Tegan Jovanka, an Australian air stewardess from 1981 who unwittingly gets caught up in events of the demise of the 4th Doctor, on her way to her first day at work no less. Tegan is a rather stubborn blunt no nonsense woman.
But of course there was to be one more new face. JNT had made the bold choice to cast the 5th Doctor as a much younger man and gave the role to Peter Davison. Fresh from sticking his arms up cows arseholes. A brief glimpse of the regeneration so as not to spoil anything-
If you want to see this period then track down the E-Space Trilogy and New Beginnings box sets. So with that the new TARDIS team was assembled. Ready to tackle the dangers that Season 19 had to offer. Think about that for a sec. Nearly 20 years after the gloomy black and white junk yard of An Unearthly Child Doctor Who was still going......
However it wasnt an easy start for the Doctor. He struggled to recover from his regeneration (possibly because the show had lost its tradition Sat tea time slot and was now being shown bi-weekly on a Monday and Tues) and if wasnt for his companions he may never have survived.
So here we are and with the show's 20th anniversary on the horizon the Doctor and co find a very different type of danger. Its just a shame Nyssa has a headache.
Story 21-
KindaThe TARDIS arrives on the jungle world Deva Loka, here is the home of a race of seemingly primitive people and an expedition of humans who are surveying the planet for colonisation. But something else is hiding in the places of the inside. Something ancient and evil. Madness is just a sleep away.
Originally Broadcast- 1 February–9 February 1982
Written by- Christopher Bailey