The Leisure Hive

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110 – The Leisure Hive
Doctor Who serial

After a faulty experiment, the Doctor shows his age.
Cast
Doctor Tom Baker (Fourth Doctor)
Companions John Leeson (K-9 Mk. II)
Lalla Ward (Romana II)
Production
Writer David Fisher
Director Lovett Bickford
Script editor Christopher H. Bidmead
Producer John Nathan-Turner
Executive producer(s) Barry Letts
Production code 5N
Series Season 18
Length 4 episodes, 25 mins each
Originally broadcast August 30–September 20, 1980
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by →
Shada (unbroadcast)
The Horns of Nimon (broadcast)		 Meglos

The Leisure Hive is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from August 30 to September 20, 1980.

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

The Fourth Doctor and Romana take a holiday at the Leisure Hive on the planet Argolis, which is recovering from the legacy of a nuclear war with the Foamasi. However, when things start going wrong with the Tachyon Recreation Generator, the Doctor fears that a new war might be in the offing.

[edit] Plot

The Doctor and Romana’s holiday in Brighton is brought to a sudden end when K-9 takes in sea-water and explodes. They instead venture to the Leisure Hive of Argolis, a holiday complex built by the surviving Argolin following their devastating war with the Foamasi. As ever, they arrive at a point of crisis in the year 2290. The Leisure Hive is facing bankruptcy and the Argolin’s Earth agent, Brock, arrives with his lawyer Klout, bearing an offer to buy the planet outright. Regrettably the offer is from the Foamasi, the only species that could live on the radiation-infused surface of Argolis, and so the Argolin Board will not consider it. Hit by the shock of events, the ageing Board Chairman Morix succumbs to a rapid death – the Argolin war curse of advanced cellular degradation – and in her absence his consort Mena is declared the new Chairman.

The Doctor is intrigued by the manipulation of the tachyon in the Hive’s Tachyon Regeneration Generator, which is the main tourist attraction and is able to duplicate and manipulate organic matter. He witnesses the Generator kill a human tourist after it has been sabotaged, the latest in a series of acts of wilful damage.

No sooner has Mena returned to Argolis than her own body clock begins to speed up. Her Earth scientist Hardin has been brought to Argolis to help her and her people by using time experiments to rejuvenate a people rendered sterile by the war of forty years earlier. Recognising the value of scientists, she engages the Doctor and Romana to help Hardin with his work. The time travellers know Hardin has been faking his work, but Romana also feels the experiments should have worked.

The death of Hardin’s assistant, Stimson, is pinned on the Doctor and the Time Lord is forced into the Generator as a trial of sorts. After further sabotage he emerges as an ancient old man with flowing white hair. Pangol, Mena’s son, is the most warlike and vindictive of the Argolin and interprets this as proof of guilt, ordering the Doctor and Romana to be confined. Hardin frees them to help him in his experiments.

Foamasi government agents now make themselves apparent on Argolis — and unmask Brock and Klout as doppelgangers in bodysuits. In truth they are of the West Lodge Foamasi, a criminal faction which has made the offer on Argolis and has been sabotaging the Hive to help their negotiations. The agents place them under arrest and prepare to depart.

Pangol now usurps his mother as leader of the Argolin, declaring to Brock and the Board that he is the first of the new Argolin: a product of cloning experiments conducted in the recreation generator. This, he contends, is the future of the Argolin, who will use the Generator to recreate themselves and rise up again. As a skilled tachyon engineer he starts to clone himself in the Generator, creating hundred of Pangols in battle-dress and ready for conflict. The Doctor interferes in the tachyon manipulation with three happy consequences: Pangol’s clones become unstable and disappear, and he is reduced to the age of a baby; Mena is rejuvenated and saved from death; and the Doctor himself loses the added centuries. The only cost is the Randomiser which the Doctor loses in the Generator but had been fitted in the TARDIS to prevent the Black Guardian tracking them.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Cast notes

Features a guest appearance by David Haig and Adrienne Corri. See also Celebrity appearances in Doctor Who.

[edit] Continuity

  • Every serial between The Leisure Hive and The Five Doctors is linked in some way, either directly leading from one storyline to the next, or through direct reference.
  • At the beginning of the story, on Brighton beach out of season, the Doctor grumpily states that this is the second time he has missed the opening of the Brighton Pavilion (by the best part of two centuries, it would appear). The first time was with Leela in Horror of Fang Rock (on that occasion by a few miles as well as some 80 years).
  • Although the Randomiser is removed from the TARDIS in this story, the Black Guardian does not catch up with the Doctor until he is in his fifth incarnation in Mawdryn Undead.
  • Beginning with this story, the Doctor abandoned his famous multi-colored scarf in favour of a burgundy and purple one. Also, the question mark motif made its first appearance here as a regular element of the Doctor's wardrobe for his next three incarnations as a gimmick.
  • The Doctor had been prematurely aged by the Time Destructor in The Daleks' Master Plan and would be again (by the Master) in "The Sound Of Drums/Last of the Time Lords."

[edit] Production

  • Working titles for this story included The Argolins.
  • Writer David Fisher conceived of the Foamasi as a race of organized criminals. "Foamasi" is a near-anagram of "mafioso".
  • This was the first Doctor Who story which John Nathan-Turner produced. Nathan-Turner was keen to get away from what he considered the excessive silliness of recent Doctor Who stories, and wanted to increase the series' production values, because he felt that they were poor when compared with glossy American science-fiction series. Among the changes Nathan-Turner instituted was the scaling back of K-9's appearances (the unit is out of commission for most of this serial), eventually writing the character out in Warriors' Gate. Nathan-Turner would produce Doctor Who until 1989.
  • This was also the first story to use the Quantel digital image processing system.
  • In a further attempt to update the image of the series, the original 1963 Delia Derbyshire arrangement was replaced by a more contemporary-sounding arrangement by Peter Howell, and a new, '80s-styled neon tubing logo replaced the diamond logo most associated with the Fourth Doctor. The updated title sequence is most associated with the Fifth and Sixth Doctors.
  • The alien costume used for the Foamasi was later reused in the 1981 BBC The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as the leader of the G'Gugvuntt.
  • Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, Barry Letts and Christopher H. Bidmead all protested John Nathan-Turner's decision to add question-marks to Baker's shirts, arguing that it was gimmicky. Baker in particular was unhappy with it and told Nathan-Turner that it was "annoying, absurd and ridiculous", while Bidmead later called it "a silly, quite absurd gimmick really". Bidmead, who found working with Tom Baker "difficult to say the very least", supposedly told Baker and Nathan-Turner during recording of The Leisure Hive that exclamation marks would have been more appropriate for Baker's shirts. The Seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy would later protest his question-mark adorned jumper in similar terms, but the question-mark motif would remain until the end of the classic series in 1989. Baker also disliked his new scarf, requesting that his old multi-coloured one be re-instated, but expressed gratitude to costume designer June Hudson for refusing to adhere to Nathan-Turner's demands to ditch the trademark long-scarf altogether and managing to find a compromise.
  • The show's stars took exception to many of John Nathan-Turner's other changes as well, with Tom Baker and Lalla Ward criticizing the change in theme music and opening titles. Baker also criticized the new synthesized incidental music, comparing it unfavourably with Dudley Simpson's earlier scores. Ward later complained that Nathan-Tuner had "removed all the lovely humour", while Baker said that he wanted the scripts to improve and regain some of the quality of those of the Philip Hinchcliffe era, as he felt that the quality of the scripts and storylines had declined under Graham Williams. He later said that he felt such improvements did not by and large occur, and that most of Nathan-Turner's changes were either cosmetic or misguided.
  • The episode was written as a satire of the decline of Tourism in the United Kingdom in the 1970s.
  • A new TARDIS prop is introduced in this episode which replaced the one used since The Masque of Mandragora. This prop would be used right until the end of the original series' production in 1989.

[edit] In print

Doctor Who book
Book cover
Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive
Series Target novelisations
Release number 39
Writer David Fisher
Publisher Target Books
Cover artist Andrew Skilleter
ISBN 0 426 20147 7
Release date 22 July 1982
Preceded by Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken
Followed by Doctor Who and the Visitation

A novelisation of this serial, written by David Fisher, was published by Target Books in July 1982.

[edit] Broadcast, VHS, DVD and (soundtrack) CD releases

[edit] External links

[edit] Reviews

[edit] Target novelisation

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Doctor Who season 18 serials