Day 268 — September 25th 2021
The Leisure Hive Parts One and Two
The Leisure Hive — Part One
I wasn’t much a fan of Destiny of the Daleks at the start of last season. It came out with a below average score, and left be feeling a bit bored. That said, at least they’d decided to open the season with the attention-grabbing headline of the Daleks coming back, while this episode launches the new run of adventures with an exciting 90-second panoramic view of Brighton beach.
Don’t get me wrong, I really love the gag of panning across the various tents on the beach to end up with the TARDIS at the end of the run. It’s a great idea.
But I’m not sure it needed to be quite so slow. I knew it was coming, and I was still checking my watch as it played out — I dread to think what kids watching in 1980 must have thought!
Sadly it feels like that opening is preparing you for the rest of the episode, because this is one of the most tedious episodes of Doctor Who we’ve had in a long time. Lovett Bickford receives his first and last directing credit on the series with this one, and it’s not hard to see why he may have been considered an ill-fit for the series. There’s so many instances of long, lingering shots which feel as though their only purpose is to grind the pace to a halt.
Twice we get a shot of a rocket landing on Argolis, and on both occasions it’s demonstrated with the same incredibly drawn-out footage shot from an angle which feels daring… but it’s very difficult to work out what you’re looking at. Perhaps that’s why they linger on it for so long, so you have time to figure it out?
And then there’s the sequence in which a Fomasi cuts its way into the base, during which we’re treated to another 90 seconds (broken into two chunks this time) where the camera is simply pointing at a plain wall. In some areas you can see them adding in the circular line to demonstrate the creature cutting its way in, but it’s hardly an exciting incident.
The story isn’t helped by the fact that the script is so wordy and dull, either. I’m usually a big fan of David Fisher’s writing for the series, but I think here you can sense the hand of new script editor Christopher Bidmead a little too strongly. There’s a part of the episode which spends several minutes explaining the process of Tachionics to an apparently eager crowd, and I honestly thought about switching off and coming back to finish watching later. ‘For the next hour and a half, we will examine the wave equations that define the creation of solid tachyonic images…’ drones Pangol, and it certainly felt like that’s how long the sequence was going to go on for.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the Graham Williams era, and people often talk about Season Eighteen as getting the show back on track again after the frivolity of the Douglas Adams stuff, but I have to say it’s not a great start for me.
3/10
The Leisure Hive — Part Two
I’ve heard it said that the change between Seasons Seventeen and Eighteen (effectively between the 70s and the 80s) is just as stark as the transition from Season Six to Seven a decade earlier. Watching the first episode I wasn’t so sure, but I’m wondering now if that’s because I’ve seen it all before? This episode feels like 1980s Doctor Who. There’s elements in here which remind me of stories as varied as The Mysterious Planet and The Caves of Androzani, and the music sounds totally different to what’s come before, but it feels familiar all the same. Were any of my readers watching the series when this originally went out, and if so did it feel like as much of a change as it’s often reported to have been?
The thing which stands out for me the most is that the humour is completely different. When watching I made a note that there’s the perfect set up for a joke when Mina asks Doctor Who about his experience. I originally wrote this blog noting that it would have had a funny response in Season Seventeen while it’s simply brushed aside here. But then I went back to the script so I could quote it correctly here, and realised that it is a joke;
Mina: ‘Wait. Have you ever experimented with time?’
Doctor Who: ‘Well, yes, but in a purely academic way of no interest to anyone.’
It’s quite possibly my fault that I totally missed the punchline while watching, but then it’s possibly also a result of everything else that’s happening here. This story is taking itself far more seriously than the show has in a long time, so it’s no wonder that moments of levity like this feel brushed aside.
Something else which is a stark difference with this story is the introduction of a brand new title sequence. Now this I don’t have to ask about — I can tell that it’s a huge departure from what’s come before. The first three sequences were all variations on a theme, different approaches to the weird and wonderful howlround effect. The last two have been similar tunnel effects, with the latter of the pair becoming iconic in its own right having been seen at the start of every episode for six whole seasons.
The titles making their debut in this story are so clearly inspired by the post-Star Wars world of science fiction. We’ve done away with trying to be mysterious and weird and have moved more firmly towards trying to be spacey. Even the new logo — formed entirely of an outline — is reminiscent of the Star Wars branding. I’ll confess that I really like the logo. There’s something oddly iconic about it which looks like it’s dated and yet has come through the other side towards being timeless again. About twelve years ago they used it for a whole raft of Doctor Who merchandise as part of a new branding guide, and I thought it looked fab.
As for the rest of the title sequence… well, I think I’ll like it more when it gets overhauled for Peter Davison in a couple of weeks. It’s let down here by a truly terrible choice of photo for Tom Baker, who looks like he’s been caught off-the-cuff as he leaves the BBC bar. Actually, that could be exactly what happened. Add to that the hideous brown tones which radiate from the image and I think it looks awful, especially following arguably the programme’s most iconic sequence.
I’m afraid this second episode hasn’t done a lot for me again, and it’s another 3/10.
