By Roy Mathur, on 2021-11-23, at 20:21:47--20:45:51, for Captain Roy's Rocket Radio Show, Listen
It's just one hiatus after another. You'd have thought a regular schedule achievable after so many years. Oh well.
Improbably, given the prevalence of pandemic mask wearing and hand washing, I also have a cold. Thanks, mostly-likely, to my plague-carrying father, whose retirement hobby seems to be cultivating exciting strains of rhinovirus.
On the subject of the pandemic, please continue to wash hands, wear masks, and get your vaccines if you want to listen to this show. I'm sick to the back teeth of whiny, entitled, anti-vaxxer nut-cases. Wear your mask, wash your hands, and take your god damn medicine, puny humans.
58 years ago to the day, the first ever episode of Doctor Who was broadcast by the BBC in the UK. The first episode, An Unearthly Child, aired on Saturday the 23rd November at 17:00--1800. (Covered in pod 33 (2014)). I told you I've been doing this a long time.
Fourth Doctor: Tom Baker
Companion(s): Romana: Mary Tamm, K9: John Leeson
Director: Michael Hayes
Writer: David Fisher (Also: The Androids of Tara (1978), The Creature from the Pit (1979), City of Death (1979), The Leisure Hive (1980)
Producer: Graham Williams
Location: Additional on location filming at Leeds Castle in Kent.
Broadcast: Story 101/serial 4 of season 16, 4 x 25 minute episodes, 25 November--16 December 1978, following The Stones of Blood covered in pod 411.
Bugger all.
The Doctor is says he needs a break from the quest of reassembling the Key to Time assigned to him by the White Guardian, and so plays chess with K9. Romana uses the locator want to program the TARDIS and they arrive on Tara. Romana changes her outfit and they exit the TARDIS. However, the Doctor stubbornly refuses to help and instead goes fishing.
Romana, feeling like she's being followed, walks through the woods, and finds a statue of a warrior standing atop a defeated dragon. The wand reveals the dragon's head to be the fourth piece of the crystal Key to Time and she retrieves it, only to be immediately attacked by an ape creature. She injures her ankle, but is rescued by a warrior, who is astonished by her appearance, confiscates the crystal, and forcibly takes her back to his castle.
The lord (Grendel of Gracht) thinks Romana is an android copy of his prisoner, Princess Strella. His roboticist, Madame Lamia, discovers Romana is organic, just before carrying out Grendel's order to disassemble Romana, head first. Romana is instead locked in the dungeon.
The Doctor is taken prisoner by another noble, Prince Reynart, who hires him to fix his android copy. It is part of a plan by which Reynart will grab the throne away from his rival, the villainous Grendel. However, in a daring scheme, Grendel drugs them and captures Reynart. The Doctor awakes and prepares a plan to use the android Reynart as a stand-in at the coronation.
Much plotting and counter-plotting ensure, at one point K9 saves the Doctor from an android copy of Romana made by Lamia, and then later helps the Doctor break into the castle. The Doctor defeats Grendel in duel with electric swords. The Doctor offered riches and land as a reward for his help. Strella and Reynart are finally re-united. Romana reminds the Doctor of K9, who the Doctor finds stranded in a drifting boat, having previously expressed confidence in boat handling.
I enjoyed the Doctor's rather cavalier attitude, when he decides to bunking off so casually, in the middle of a cosmically significant quest, for a holiday.
Mary Tamm plays Romana, an aristo; Princess Strella, and an android copy of Romana. Luckily, they all behave and look the same, so no extra acting chops were required, though probably a lot of extra filming and costume changes.
I was impressed that Grendel of Gracht (Peter Jeffrey) could so easily lift and carry Romana, but I swear I heard him groan when he arrived at the horse, with her in his arms. You may remember his face from Doctor Who: The Macra Terror (1976), covered in pod 80 (2015).
There was on location filming at Leeds Castle in Kent; a beautiful place that I have visited many, many times, as I used to live quite near.
Regarding Michael Hayes's geek credentials, in a 2014 obituary by his son Patrick Hayes, printed in The Guardian, he writes that his father directed, "14 episodes of Doctor Who (with Tom Baker, 1978-79)", including the City of Death (1979), and produced Fred Hoyle's science fiction drama A for Andromeda in 1961; Julie Christie's first major role. Yes, it's on the watchlist.