Like so many generations of fans, my road into Doctor Who fandom was paved with Target novelisations. During the 1990s there were almost no repeats on terrestrial TV, the videos were often expensive or hard to obtain, and the idea of the whole “Whoniverse” on iPlayer was a madman’s dream. Those little affordable novelisations, though, were a constant companion. I read as many as I could find, which is why, for a long time, Logopolis was my favourite final story for any Doctor. Christopher H Bidmead’s novelisation of his own screenplay was almost too dense for me to understand, but wasn’t that part of the thrill? A crisis more complex and more apocalyptic than anything the Doctor had faced before, knitting together present-day Earth, an alien colony of mathematicians and the fate of Nyssa’s home planet, it saw the Fourth Doctor haunted by intimations of mortality from the very first page.
Some Target novelisations were simple, pacy recaps of the action on screen, but Bidmead took an unusual fondness in getting inside the characters’ heads. As I finally sat down to watch the TV version, I understood why: it’s because he can’t dramatise it through action. The reintroduction of Nyssa is a case in point. For the plot to work, she needs to be taken from Traken to Logopolis, where she will be coerced into trying to kill Adric. In the script, she is taken from Traken by the Watcher, a character whose purpose seems to be little more than filling in plot holes until the very last scene. There, she meets the Master, who puts a bracelet on her arm that allows him to control her mind and use her to attack Adric.
This is an awful lot of fudge, particularly when you consider the Master has also travelled from Traken, and he is appearing in the body of Nyssa’s father – if he wanted to make her obey him, he’s got a massive advantage there that the script completely ignores. Did Bidmead never consider knitting these plot strands together? Did he not realise the story would be more dramatic if Nyssa was psychologically manipulated by a man she thought was her own parent? The bracelet is a particularly frustrating contrivance: not only is it a gadget that appears to have been invented solely for this scene, it also sees Bidmead – whose loudly trumpeted mission as writer and script editor was to reintroduce hard science into Doctor Who – resting a crucial plot beat on a piece of magic jewellery. Similarly, the titular Logopolis, a city of robed, bearded men who chant numbers in order to control universal entropy, bears more resemblance to Kabbalistic mysticism than anything in A Brief History of Time.
The virtues of Logopolis might not be exactly what Bidmead wanted, but they are virtues nonetheless.
Admittedly as influences go, fairy-tales and Kabbalah are more interesting than what Bidmead actually set out to write. The virtues of Logopolis might not be exactly what Bidmead wanted, but they are virtues nonetheless. The air of crushed despair that emanates from the story originates more from Tom Baker’s visible exhaustion in the role than any emotional arc in the script, but it still makes the Doctor’s imminent regeneration feel palpable and disturbing. It is well-directed by Peter Grimwade, who remains underrated as one of the most fascinating creative forces in this era of Doctor Who. Too muscular for Bidmead’s drily intellectual vision for the show, but too queer and playful to fit with Bidmead’s successor Eric Saward’s hyper-macho sensibility, he spent the whole Davison era being a useful counterweight to the script editor.
And this early ’80s era needs it, because it’s probably my least favourite of classic Who. The Colin Baker years are easy to criticise, but they are at least trying bold, original, weird, colourful things, even if they keep backfiring. The Davison-era creative team that’s already more-or-less assembled here have a clear idea of what they shouldn’t be doing, but their ideas for a new way forward are muddled and half-thought-through. The surfeit of new companions, most of which join the TARDIS crew here, were part of a conscious push from producer John Nathan-Turner to make the show more of an ensemble series in the vein of soap operas. Nathan-Turner also famously forbade any hint of romance in the show. Both of these are workable, valid ideas, but they cancel each other out. How many completely platonic soap operas have you ever seen?
Logopolis pretty much works. The valedictory atmosphere brings some of the hammier members of the cast, specifically Matthew Waterhouse and Anthony Ainley, into line, and even at his lowest ebb Baker’s strength of personality is enough to tie it together. A regeneration story is, at least, an appropriate vessel for Bidmead’s vision of Doctor Who as a show that is not much fun. But what happens when this sensibility is let loose on what should be an opportunity to rejuvenate the show? We’re about to find out.
Next: Castrovalva (1982)
