Logopolis (Story #115, 1981)
Viewed 03 Jun 2013

Doctor/Companion: Four, Adric, Nyssa, Tegan Jovanka
Stars: Tom Baker, Matthew Waterhouse, Sarah Sutton, Janet Fielding
Preceding Story: The Keeper of Traken (Four, Adric, Nyssa)
Succeeding Story: Castrovalva (Five, Adric, Nyssa, Tegan)

It seems to me that by the time Logopolis rolled around, Tom Baker was more than ready to leave his role as the Doctor. He just seemed tired, pensive, and like he simply wasn’t having very much fun any more. Luckily, it fits well with the story, and doesn’t translate into any sort of loss of quality.

G is immediately intrigued by the way the police box and (Master’s) TARDIS merge, and in on alert when Tegan and Auntie Vanessa pull up next to it with their flat. “Ooh dear. And they’re by the box.” Then when the Doctor’s TARDIS turns them all into dimensionally transcendental matryoshka dolls, she catches onto the danger right away. “This is serious. It’s like he’s ingested poison by materializing that guy in there.” She proceeds to make an analogy with holding mirrors up to each other to make an infinite regression, well before the possibility is mentioned on screen. G’s all over it.

The Watcher has her fooled, though. She reads it as all first-time viewers are meant to: a slightly creepy threat. I can’t help but think of it as the precursor to Ten’s departure, though in this case it’s only the Doctor, rather than the whole audience as well, who anticipates what’s to come. We both enjoy this particular conceit, though. When the Doctor tells Adric that “nothing like this has ever happened before,” G declares that “that’s the fun part.”

She’s enjoying the character interactions, too. She’s still loving Adric (that will make things interesting in another couple of sessions), and can’t help giggle (nor can I) at the looks the Doctor and Adric give each other when Tegan finally stumbles back into the control room.

Once we’ve made it to Logopolis, G is fascinated with the Logopolitans, each in their little hidey-holes. She calls them cloisters, and then wonders if there’s a connection with the Cloister Bell (sadly, I must disabuse her of this notion). We finally see the Master himself, gloating. And then, “uh oh! When the music gets like that, you know someone is going to come in and gum up the works.” Sure enough, the first Logopolitan falls to the terror of the Tissue Compression Eliminator (never so named here, by the way – they just kind of assume the audience will figure out what sort of nasty business the Master is up to, and leave labels out of it).

Then the Doctor tries to skip out on his Companions, saying, “I hate farewells.” True that! Somethings never change, even after thirty years on screen…

But now the Doctor’s in a pickle (or at least an abnormally dimensioned TARDIS). Tegan stands around trying to pass along information to the Doctor and the others go off in search of the Master. As the Watcher walks past in the background, G hops in her seat and shouts, “behind you!” at Adric and Nyssa. I can’t blame her; I’ve wanted to smack Companions upside the head with obvious information before, too.

So far the story’s hung together pretty well – as well as any Who story ever does – but I’ve got to cringe when they start talking about opening up the closed system to defeat the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I mean, it could be worse, but writer Christopher Bidmead’s starting to stick his foot in it a bit. At least he tried to tie it in with the CVEs that got the TARDIS in and out of E-Space earlier in the series; I tip my hat to him there.

Finally, the roundabout path takes the Doctor, the Master, and Tegan back to Earth. Adric and Nyssa get to see her homeworld destroyed (G does her timey-wimey best to come up with a way for it still to be saved) before rejoining them. As is always the case, though, the Master’s plan is a bit rubbish. G gets to the heart of the problem: “If he destroys them, he destroys himself!” Oddly, he doesn’t seem to care. Lucky for the universe, the Doctor thwarts him anyway, before falling to his doom.

It’s the end. But the moment has been prepared for. G watches in fascination as the Watcher merges with the Doctor and he regenerates into “Paul Simon!”

There’s no doubt how G felt about Logopolis. She told me three separate times that “this is a good one.” It really was a great way for a well-loved Doctor to make his exit. She was a bit melancholy at the end, of course: “It made me sad to see him go.” And all the Matt Smith fans said, “Amen!”

Verdict: Thumbs up

Looking ahead: Castrovalva