Season Review
Season 18 remains a firm favourite… it’s Tom Baker’s last season and this casts a long, melancholy shadow over the whole season as there seems to be a sense of inevitability, of fate and destiny, always lurking in the stories.
This is underlined by change in the opening titles and the production crew as John Nathan Turner becomes producer for this and all of the remaining seasons of classic Who.
The changes both in front and behind the scenes give the sense of foreboding that makes the season even more enjoyable.
It’s also a season that sees the whole main cast turnover with Tom, Lalla Ward and K9 all leaving along the way. The stories themselves are pretty good quality and again try to shift the tone and feel of Who in general.
The Leisure Hive opens the season (with the new titles and theme music). Personally I think it’s an underrated story that tries to inject new ideas and blood in to the story telling and generally succeeds even if the monsters aren’t great.
Meglos is entertaining with Tom playing dual roles of Timelord and Meglos. It’s not a great story but quite entertaining and you can see the show trying out new green screen background effects. Jacqueline Hill, the original series Barbara also appears.
The E-Space trilogy kicks off with Full Circle which is comptent and quite an entertaining story. It’s a bit of a mashup of ideas and the typical who ‘peasant village’ is really dull to see again…
The next story, State of Decay, is a vampire story. Again its all down to using old middle age style sets. The story again is OK but not going to set the world on fire. The ticket as the castle is so obvious to see, even a five year old could figure it out before the cast goes.
The last E-Space story is a corker - Warriors' Gate, the junction between E-Space and N-Space. This sees the departure of Romana and also of K9 and the return of The Doctor and Adric to N-Space.
The final two stories of the season, The Keeper of Traken and Logopolis, are part of a trilogy which sees Tom Baker bow out before Peter Davison arrives next season in Castrovalva. it's a great trilogy, highly recommended.
The Collection Review
The Collection Box Set Releases: Season 18 is the third release after Seasons 12 and 19. This boxset is the second Tom Baker release.
The boxset contains 8 disks.
The boxset cover has a rather forlorn looking Tom Baker waving goodbye which is somewhat reminiscent to the stories about him being a bit shocked at finally leaving a role he had inhabited for seven years.
At this point, the inside of the boxset still has the inside image extended on to the background of the boxset. This would, after the next boxset, Season 10, stop due to production problems.
The image of the Tom Baker's Doctor that is behind the disk tray has been updated to the Season 18 face seen in the new opening titles.
Inner Booklet Cover Holder: From The Leisure Hive.
Booklet cover: From Logopolis
Console Room: Again from Logopolis.
Blu-ray Disk Narration: Tom Baker