Logopolis

Logopolis is the seventh and final serial of the 18th season in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 28 February to 21 March 1981. It was Tom Baker's last story as the Fourth Doctor and marks the first appearance of Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor. This serial also marks the first appearance of Janet Fielding as new companion Tegan Jovanka, whilst Nyssa, played by Sarah Sutton and seen in previous serial The Keeper of Traken,^[2] returns and also joins the Doctor as a companion.

Plot

Aware of impending trouble by the TARDIS's Cloister Bell, the Doctor decide to stay out of trouble, and instead repair the TARDIS' broken chameleon circuit by materialising around a real police box on Earth and record its exact dimensions with Adric's help. With those, he can give the mathematicians of the planet Logopolis the right block-transfer calculations to repair the circuit. The Master learns of the Doctor's plan, and materialises his TARDIS around the police box first, causing a recursion loop with the Doctor's. The Doctor eventually breaks his TARDIS out of the loop, but when they step outside, he sees a figure in white, the Watcher, telling him to go to Logopolis immediately. En route, they find they have gained a passenger, Tegan Jovanka, an airline stewardess that was seeking help for a broken-down car.

At Logopolis, everything seems normal as the Doctor provides the Monitor, the lead mathematician, his measurements to give to the others and perform their verbal calculations. They soon discover that the Master had arrived first, with several of the mathematicians killed by his tissue-compression eliminator. The Master's TARDIS materialises, and he and Nyssa, under his hypnotic control, seize the control center and uses a device to silence the other mathematicians, demanding the Monitor to explain the purpose of a radio telescope on the planet. The Monitor begs for the Master to stop the silencing device. The Master does so, but to the Monitor's horror, the mathematicians remain silent, and they find the planet starting to turn to dust. The Monitor quickly explains that their calculations were used to power Charged Vacuum Emboitments (CVEs) which were used to funnel off excess entropy from this universe to prevent its approaching heat death; without the CVEs, entropy is taking over. The Monitor urges the Doctor to use their program to open a CVE, before he disintegrates. The Doctor and Master agree to work together and, after releasing Nyssa, bring Tegan with them to the Master's TARDIS and depart for Earth. Adric and Nyssa try to follow in the Doctor's TARDIS, but initially end up far outside the universe, and watch as entropy obliterates the sector of space with Nyssa's home planet Traken. However, they fix the controls to track and follow the Master's TARDIS to Earth.

The Fourth Doctor regenerates into the Fifth Doctor.

On Earth, the Doctor and Master use the radio telescope of the Pharos Project - from which the Logopolians modeled theirs after - to send the CVE program, while the Doctor's companions help to waylay the project's guards. However, the Master locks the Doctor out of the control room, and broadcasts a message across space, effectively blackmailing the rest of the universe to submit to him before he activates the program. The Doctor climbs out onto the telescope to stop the broadcast and reinitiate the CVE, ending the Master's threat; the Master quickly flees and escapes in his TARDIS. The Doctor falls off the telescope a great distance, as Adric, Nyssa, and Tegan gather around him. The Doctor has visions of his past companions and enemies. His three companions see the Watcher appear, and the Doctor explains that "It's the end... but the moment has been prepared for." The Watcher touches and merges with the Doctor, causing him to regenerate into a younger form.

Continuity

This story continues a loose arc of three serials featuring the Master. The trilogy began with The Keeper of Traken (1981) and concludes in Castrovalva (1982). Although the Master does not appear until Part Three, his laughter can be heard in the first two episodes and Anthony Ainley is credited accordingly. The story also concludes a long thread over the preceding season, discussing entropy. In particular, Logopolis serves as punctuation to the overarching events of the earlier "E-Space Trilogy". Several elements of this story carry over into Castrovalva, such as the theme of recursion.

The Doctor and Adric look at Romana's now deserted room in the TARDIS and talk about her recent departure in Warriors' Gate. The Doctor eventually jettisons her room^[3] to escape the pull of the Master's TARDIS. Before the Doctor falls from the dish, the enemies that mock him are the Master (as seen in The Deadly Assassin), a Dalek (Destiny of the Daleks), the Pirate Captain (The Pirate Planet), the Cyberleader (Revenge of the Cybermen), Davros (Genesis of the Daleks), a Sontaran (The Invasion of Time), a Zygon (Terror of the Zygons) and the Black Guardian (The Armageddon Factor). After falling, as the Doctor lies sprawled on the ground, he sees visions of all the companions that previously accompanied his fourth incarnation: Sarah Jane Smith (Terror of the Zygons), Harry Sullivan (The Sontaran Experiment), Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Invasion of the Dinosaurs, a Third Doctor story), Leela (The Robots of Death), K-9 (The Armageddon Factor), Romana I (The Stones of Blood) and Romana II (Full Circle).

As pointed out in About Time 5, by Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood, this serial has arguably the largest number of deaths of any Doctor Who story—albeit mostly off-camera, as the destruction of Logopolis apparently causes a significant portion of the entire universe to be swallowed by a wave of entropy. At the very least, the Traken Union is destroyed, which would put the death toll in the billions and make the Master a mass murderer of unprecedented proportions.

The spin-off BBC Books novel The Quantum Archangel by Craig Hinton briefly shows an alternate timeline where the destruction of Logopolis did result in the death of the universe. The Doctor Who Unbound audio play He Jests at Scars... depicts a timeline in which the Valeyard attempts to undo the events of this story by destroying Logopolis before the Fourth Doctor visited it.

This story features the Doctor's TARDIS materialising around the Master's TARDIS,^[4] something which occurred once before in The Time Monster. The Master suggests that the Time Lords will not approve of the Doctor's alliance with him and will cut all ties to him, yet this is never mentioned in any of the Doctor's later dealings with them. The DVD information text suggests that this is Christopher Bidmead's attempt to write the Time Lords (and the series's increasingly complex backstory) out of the series altogether, but it was never carried through in later series.

The projection of the Doctor's future incarnation (in the form of the Watcher) is similar to the future projection of his mentor K’anpo Rinpoche (in the form of Cho-Je) in the Doctor's previous regeneration story, Planet of the Spiders. A similar Watcher is present in the Fifth Doctor's mindscape in the Winter segment of the Big Finish audio play, Circular Time.

Production

The location scenes at the Pharos Project were filmed at a BBC receiving station in Crowsley Park, with a model standing in for the radio telescope and not the Lovell Telescope at the Jodrell Bank Observatory. The lay-by seen at the start was filmed on the southbound side of the A413 Amersham Road, Denham near Gerrards Cross. The lay-by is still there but the M25 now bridges the road where the scene was filmed.

Titles

The closing titles sequence was recompiled with Tom Baker's face removed from the closing credits of Episode 4, and with Peter Davison's face added for the following story, Castrovalva. Episode 4 of this story was the last time, for the next 24 years, the lead character was listed in the credits as "Doctor Who" (thus making it the only time Peter Davison was credited as "Doctor Who"). Beginning with the next story, Castrovalva, until the series's cancellation in 1989, the character was credited simply as "The Doctor". The 1996 television film did not have an on-screen credit for the Eighth Doctor, but listed the Seventh as the "Old Doctor". The 2005 relaunch returned the credit to "Doctor Who", and then again to "The Doctor" in "The Christmas Invasion" (at the request of David Tennant). Also, Episode 4 was the first to credit two actors as "Doctor Who" or "The Doctor" when a regeneration scene was involved. It also happened at the end of Episode 4 of The Caves of Androzani. In both instances, Peter Davison was billed second.

Outside references

According to Christopher Bidmead, the Logopolitans employ a hexadecimal, or base-16, numerical system, a real system commonly used in computer programming. When Adric and the Monitor read strings of numbers and letters, the letters are actually the numbers between 10 and 15, expressed as single digits.

The police box that the Doctor materialises the TARDIS around in Part One was intended to be the one located at the Barnet bypass, which at the time was one of the last police boxes in the Metropolitan Police District still in its original location, though it had ceased functioning in the 1970s.

Broadcast

Logopolis was repeated on BBC2 in November/December 1981, as part of "The Five Faces of Doctor Who". Stripped across four consecutive evenings from Monday to Thursday 9–12 November 1981, with viewing figures of 4.4, 4.6, 4.6 and 4.5 million respectively.^[6]

Commercial releases

In print

Logopolis

Author	Christopher H. Bidmead
Cover artist	Andrew Skilleter
Series	Doctor Who book: Target novelisations
Release number	41
Publisher	Target Books
Publication date	21 October 1982
ISBN	0-426-20149-3

A novelisation of this serial, written by Christopher H. Bidmead, was published by Target Books in October 1982. An unabridged reading of the novelisation by Bidmead was released by BBC Audiobooks in February 2010, with a completely new cover.

Home media

The story was released on VHS in March 1992. In January 2007, the serial was released on DVD as part of a trilogy, entitled New Beginnings, alongside The Keeper of Traken and Castrovalva. Logopolis was also released as part of the Doctor Who DVD Files (issue 46) in October 2010.

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Fourth Doctor

• Logopolis at BBC Online
• Logopolis at Doctor Who: A Brief History of Time (Travel)
• Logopolis at the Doctor Who Reference Guide

Reviews

• Logopolis reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• Logopolis reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide

Target novelisation

• Logopolis (novelisation) reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide
• Doctor Who - Logopolis title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• On Target — Logopolis