written by Christopher H. Bidmead; produced by John Nathan-Turner; directed by Peter Grimwade
Instead of aiming for spectacle (how could it with that budget?) the story nails its colours to the mast from the first scene, where the unseen Master attacks a policeman; this story is dark and ominous, where not much happens to great effect. I can't help but scratch my head a little bit over the decision to keep the Master unseen until the third episode though, since he'd already been revealed the previous week. Logically it's pointless, and while in another episode it might get by through being aesthetically valid in Logopolis's case that doesn't go so far since the story was written by the script-editor.
I'm conscious of making mountains out of molehills there though and criticising what is actually a good opening so it's fortunate that the episode promptly cuts to Tom Baker at his foreboding best. The interesting Gothic scenery for the depths of the TARDIS is a good aesthetic decision, and it all goes to helping move along an exposition scene that's really quite heavy on backstory, features some clunky writing as the cloister bell is mentioned just before it rings and features Tom Baker trying to work with Matthew Waterhouse, which in qualitative terms is possibly the most laughably one-sided partnership the TARDIS ever saw.
The next step is to introduce the new companion. She did improve with time, and by her departure in Resurrection Of The Daleks I'd rate her very highly, but Janet Fielding makes an absolutely atrocious first impression in this story. While Dolore Whitman is a hoot as her breezy Aunt Vanessa (I wrote Aunt Lavinia in my notes; good job I checked), Fielding is mannered and stagy here, with her lines forcefully thudding out of her; she sounds like she's reading from a script, not talking naturally. Her characterisation isn't up to much either: she's an air stewardess, right? So she must have an aeroplane fixation, right? Right?
Block Transfer Computations take the emphasis away from science fiction and onto fictional science: in other words it gets grouped with a relatively small number of stories such as Ghost Light and The Girl In The Fireplace that take their strongest driving force from the concept underpinning the plot, rather than the plot itself or the desires of the characters. Bidmead goes to great lengths to explain BTCs and ensures that they never become a meaningless, rhetorical pseudo-idea, but it does make this story heavy going at times and it's not the most accessible episode for new viewers. A rare light touch comes amid this density where Tom Baker takes the mickey on his last story by randomly flapping at the computer keyboard as opposed to actually typing something. Why not just use your elbows, Tom? It's not quite enough to undermine the episode's brooding atmosphere, which is a good thing as it's its strongest feature up to now, with the concept of entropy cleverly paralleled in the sense of events throughout the story building up to their inevitable conclusion.
Now, one of my favourite Doctor Who concepts ever: the Watcher. I love the mysterious and the unexplained in this show, and present me with a ghostly apparition who follows the Doctor's every move, is never heard to speak, is never really explained but seems to hold some doom-laden promise and is even never mentioned in the credits (a nice thorough touch) and I'm absolutely sold. Generally the character (if you can call it that) is well handled apart from Peter Grimwade's decision to occasionally zoom in too far and show us too much detail. The Doctor's reaction upon seeing it is superb: frightened, but also dignified and restrained. Back in the TARDIS there's now another TARDIS, and so on and so on...the idea of an infinite loop of TARDISes isn't new, but as an idea this certainly has more meat on its bones than the ludicrous (but fun if you deign to award it a pity-vote) The Time Monster.
One major flaw in the central concept of the TARDIS � something the original series never really managed to overcome � is that once it had been explained as alien to viewers there was no longer a point in companion after companion all running round questioning what was going on for an entire episode: An Unearthly Child made great use of it but it would have taken up a lot of screen time if everyone did it. So it is then that Tegan instantly accepts it and goes off to look for the �pilot�, obviously still fixated by aircraft in the face of alien technology, particularly when you consider that she doesn't yet know that it's a spacecraft. It remains quite spooky as she runs around lost, but the cliffhanger reveals too much too soon: in storytelling terms it wastes a good mystery to have the Doctor realise the Master is present when they aren't due to meet until the third episode.
And we wouldn't have that stupid flush-him-out scene, either. That's what happens when the script-editor writes an episode: if they have a daft idea: there's nobody to catch it. Just look at the new series. Thankfully the plan never comes to anything (that would be too much to bear) and the atmosphere is just about maintained with several �something's not quite right� comments inserted effectively, if rather self-consciously, into the script.
The action now moves on to the titular Logopolis. In design terms it's pitch-perfect, with the barren, empty wasteland perfectly expressing both the Logopolitans' austere lives and the episode's own starkness. It's also a brilliant concept having living minds come together to form a giant, sentient computer; especially when you add the unseen threat lurking in its circuit-board of streets. Unfortunately it's let down by the cheapness of the production, with characters actually squeaking s they move around the polystyrene sets. Actually, this is so cheap that it's one of the rare occasions that Doctor Who's budget restrictions produced something that couldn't really be overlooked. Thankfully John Fraser makes a good impression, elegantly underplaying the Monitor. Unfortunately for scenes without the Doctor Waterhouse, Fielding and the returning Sarah Sutton just don't have what it takes to carry them on their own � something that would blight the otherwise-excellent nineteenth season. There is a good cliffhanger on hand though to round off a rather quiet second episode.
Part three gets off to a slightly peculiar start, with the revealed Master doing a cheesy Evil Laugh� and the Doctor, separated from his companions, forced to advance the plot by talking to himself. There are a few plot holes lying around, such as why the Master had to involve the Doctor at all (why not just come to Logopolis on his own?), and it's a lot to ask that Nyssa shouldn't suspect anything when she meets him: Tremas has gone missing, she knows about the Master, and yet two and two just don't go together yet. On the whole Ainley is actually rather more restrained here in his first full story as the Master than he would become later.
There's also the new element of the Logopolitans working on some mysterious, secret calculation, which helps to maintain interest throughout the third episode. This turns out to be a project to open CVEs, encountered in the E-Space trilogy: this piece of minor retcon that links this trilogy to that one is a very clever tool for giving Logopolis its sense of scale:although a cheaply-made four-parter it piggybacks on other episodes in this season and next (Castrovalva and Earthshock, to be precise) in order to amplify its natural canonical importance, which is already pretty high. As the story moves towards its conclusion the ideas threaten to get out of hand with whole swathes of the universe getting wiped out. The problem with that as a concept is that it's just too excessively large to be plausible, especially since it doesn't appear to have any bearing at all on anything in any future episode, which isn't plausible either.
There's still good interplay between the Doctor and the Master as they fight to undo the entropy that threatens to wipe everything out. Unfortunately in the final scenes Ainley lets the side down by turning on the cheese again. The death of the fourth Doctor � a landmark event � is appropriately dramatic, although it doesn't seem satisfying somehow that the Master would just give up on his plan as opposed to trying to repair the broken cable. However, that's hardly the consideration of the day, as it's flashback time followed by an excellent regeneration effect and an explanation for the Watcher that only makes it more mysterious and enigmatic. How many millions of middle-fingers rose to greet Peter Davison at this point, though?
Conceptually, Logopolis is a breathtaking story. That is rarely viewed as the important issue though as the one question that gets asked of it is always the same: is it an appropriate and effective coda to the Tom Baker era? Bearing in mind the glorious Hinchcliffe years were well past by this point, on balance I think it is. It's certainly an effective coda to season 18, the best since Hinchcliffe left; it's just a shame that the odd glitch in production and writing keeps it from the top spot it deserves, and weighed up against the other episodes of the season it falls behind State Of Decay and Warrior's Gate. Not that that's an insult, mind.
Overall: ****
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