''Logopolis'' is the seventh and final serial of the 18th season of the British

science fiction television Science fiction first appeared in television programming in the late 1930s, during what is called the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Special effects and other production techniques allow creators to present a living visual image of an imaginary ...

series '' Doctor Who'', which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on

BBC1 BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, ...

from 28 February to 21 March 1981. It was

Tom Baker Thomas Stewart Baker (born 20 January 1934) is an English actor and writer. He is well known for his portrayal of the fourth incarnation of the Doctor in the science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'' from 1974 to 1981.Scott, Danny. (1 ...

's last story as the

Fourth Doctor The Fourth Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the BBC science fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. He is portrayed by Tom Baker. Within the series' narrative, the Doctor is a centuries-old alien Time Lord from the ...

and marks the first appearance of Peter Davison as the

Fifth Doctor The Fifth Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the BBC science fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. He is portrayed by Peter Davison. Within the series' narrative, the Doctor is a centuries-old alien Time Lord from ...

and Janet Fielding as new companion Tegan Jovanka. The serial is set on the planets

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

and Logopolis. In the serial, the Doctor, a time traveller from the planet Gallifrey, forms a temporary truce with his arch-enemy the Master (

Anthony Ainley Anthony Ainley (20 August 1932 – 3 May 2004) was an English actor. He was the fourth actor to portray the Master in ''Doctor Who''. Early life Ainley was born in Stanmore, Middlesex, the son of the actor Henry Ainley, on 20 August 1932, al ...

) to stop the unravelling of the universe which the Master had started by accident. The serial was the last Doctor Who story aired on Saturday nights for 2 years. When Peter Davison took over as the Fifth Doctor from January 1982, the BBC moved Doctor Who from Saturday nights to a new weekday prime time slot, airing two episodes per week.

Plot

Alerted to impending trouble by the

TARDIS The TARDIS (; acronym for "Time And Relative Dimension In Space") is a fictional hybrid of the time machine and spacecraft that appears in the British science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'' and its various spin-offs. Its exterior a ...

's Cloister Bell, the

decides to stay out of trouble, and instead repair the TARDIS's broken chameleon circuit by materialising around a real

police box A police box is a public telephone kiosk or callbox for the use of members of the police, or for members of the public to contact the police. It was used in the United Kingdom throughout the 20th century from the early 1920s. Unlike an ordinar ...

on Earth and recording its exact dimensions with

Adric Adric is a fictional character played by Matthew Waterhouse in the long-running British science fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. He was a young native of the planet Alzarius, which exists in the parallel universe of E-Space. A compan ...

's help. With those, he can give the mathematicians of the planet Logopolis the right block-transfer computations to repair the circuit. The Master learns of the Doctor's plan, and materialises his TARDIS around the police box first, causing a recursion loop with the Doctor's. The Doctor eventually breaks his TARDIS out of the loop, but when they step outside, he sees a figure in white, the Watcher, telling him to go to Logopolis immediately. En route, they find they have gained a passenger, Tegan Jovanka, an airline stewardess who entered the Police box seeking help for a broken-down car. At Logopolis, everything seems normal as the Doctor provides the Monitor, the lead mathematician, his measurements to give to the others and perform their verbal calculations. They soon discover that the Master had arrived first, with several of the mathematicians killed by his tissue-compression eliminator. The Master's TARDIS materialises, and he and Nyssa, under his hypnotic control, seize the control center and use a device to silence the other mathematicians, demanding the Monitor to explain the purpose of a radio telescope on the planet. The Monitor begs for the Master to stop the silencing device. The Master does so, but to the Monitor's horror, the mathematicians remain silent, and they find the planet starting to turn to dust. The Monitor quickly explains that their calculations were used to power Charged Vacuum Emboitments (CVEs) which were used to funnel off excess

entropy Entropy is a scientific concept, as well as a measurable physical property, that is most commonly associated with a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. The term and the concept are used in diverse fields, from classical thermodynam ...

from this universe to prevent its approaching heat death; without the CVEs, entropy is taking over. The Monitor urges the Doctor to use their program to open a CVE, before he disintegrates. The Doctor and Master agree to work together and, after releasing Nyssa, bring Tegan with them to the Master's TARDIS and depart for Earth. Adric and Nyssa try to follow in the Doctor's TARDIS, but initially end up far outside the universe, and watch as entropy obliterates the sector of space with Nyssa's home planet, Traken. However, they fix the controls to track and follow the Master's TARDIS to Earth. On Earth, the Doctor and Master use the radio telescope of the Pharos Project – from which the Logopolitans modelled theirs – to send the CVE program, while the Doctor's companions help to waylay the project's guards. However, the Master locks the Doctor out of the control room, and broadcasts a message across space, effectively blackmailing the rest of the universe to submit to him before he activates the program. The Doctor climbs out onto the telescope to stop the broadcast and reinitiate the CVE, ending the Master's threat; the Master quickly flees and escapes in his TARDIS. The Doctor falls off the telescope a great height, as Adric, Nyssa, and Tegan gather around him. The Doctor has visions of his past companions and enemies. His three companions see the Watcher appear, and the Doctor explains that "It's the end... but the moment has been prepared for." The Watcher touches and merges with the Doctor, causing him to regenerate into the

Production

The location scenes at the Pharos Project were filmed at a BBC receiving station in Crowsley Park, with a model standing in for the radio telescope, and not the

Lovell Telescope The Lovell Telescope is a radio telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory, near Goostrey, Cheshire in the north-west of England. When construction was finished in 1957, the telescope was the largest steerable dish radio telescope in the world at ...

at the

Jodrell Bank Observatory Jodrell Bank Observatory () in Cheshire, England, hosts a number of radio telescopes as part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. The observatory was established in 1945 by Bernard Lovell, a radio astro ...

. The

lay-by A rest area is a public facility located next to a large thoroughfare such as a motorway, expressway, or highway, at which drivers and passengers can rest, eat, or refuel without exiting onto secondary roads. Other names include motorway serv ...

seen at the start was filmed on the southbound side of the A413 Amersham Road, Denham near

Gerrards Cross Gerrards Cross is a town and civil parish in south Buckinghamshire, England, separated from the London Borough of Hillingdon at Harefield by Denham, south of Chalfont St Peter and north bordering villages of Fulmer, Hedgerley, Iver Heath and ...

. The lay-by is still there but the M25 now bridges the road where the scene was filmed.

Titles

The closing titles sequence was recompiled with Tom Baker's face removed from the closing credits of Episode 4, and with Peter Davison's face added for the following story, '' Castrovalva''. Episode 4 of this story was the last time, for the next 24 years, the lead character was listed in the credits as "Doctor Who" (thus making it the only time Peter Davison was credited as "Doctor Who"). Beginning with the next story, ''Castrovalva'', until the series's cancellation in 1989, the character was credited simply as "The Doctor". The 1996 television film did not have an on-screen credit for the Eighth Doctor, but listed the

Seventh Seventh is the ordinal form of the number seven. Seventh may refer to: * Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution * A fraction (mathematics), , equal to one of seven equal parts Film and television *"The Seventh", a second-season e ...

as the "Old Doctor". The 2005 relaunch returned the credit to "Doctor Who", and then again to "The Doctor" in "

The Christmas Invasion "The Christmas Invasion" is a 60-minute special episode of the British science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'', which was first broadcast on BBC One on 25 December 2005. This episode features the first full-episode appearance of David Te ...

" (at the request of

David Tennant David John Tennant (''né'' McDonald; born 18 April 1971) is a Scottish actor. He rose to fame for his role as the tenth incarnation of the Doctor (2005–2010 and 2013) in the BBC science-fiction TV show ''Doctor Who'', reprising the rol ...

). Also, Episode 4 was the first to credit two actors as "Doctor Who" or "The Doctor" when a regeneration scene was involved. It also happened at the end of Episode 4 of '' The Caves of Androzani'' (1984). In both instances, Peter Davison was billed second.

Outside references

According to Christopher Bidmead, the Logopolitans employ a hexadecimal, or base-16, numerical system, a real system commonly used in computer programming. When Adric and the Monitor read strings of numbers and letters, the letters are actually the numbers between 10 and 15, expressed as single digits. The

around which the Doctor materialises the TARDIS in Part One was intended to be that located at the Barnet bypass, being at the time one of the last police boxes in the Metropolitan Police District still in its original location, though it had ceased functioning in the 1970s.

Broadcast and reception

''Logopolis'' was repeated on BBC2 in November/December 1981, as part of "The Five Faces of Doctor Who". Stripped across four consecutive evenings from Monday to Thursday 9–12 November 1981, with viewing figures of 4.4, 4.6, 4.6 and 4.5 million respectively.

Paul Cornell Paul Douglas Cornell (born 18 July 1967) is a British writer best known for his work in television drama as well as ''Doctor Who'' fiction, and as the creator of one of the Doctor's spin-off companions, Bernice Summerfield. As well as ''Docto ...

, Martin Day, and

Keith Topping Keith Andrew Topping (born 26 October 1963 in Walker, Tyneside) is an author, journalist and broadcaster. He is most well known for his work relating to the BBC Television series ''Doctor Who'' and for writing numerous official and unofficial g ...

wrote of the serial in The Discontinuity Guide (1995), deeming it "a magnificent farewell." Patrick Mulkern of '' Radio Times'' awarded the episode four stars out of five. Much praise was given to Baker's performance, writing, "He's brooding, sparky and never for a second looks ready to give up." In ''The Greatest Show in the Galaxy: The Discerning Fan's Guide to Doctor Who'', Marc Schuster and Tom Powers deemed the episode "melancholy yet fascinating." In ''Doctor Who: The Episode Guide,'' Marc Campbell awarded the episode a 10 out of 10, praising it for "its weighty subject matter and the enormous scale of its threat." Conversely, Andrew Blair of ''

Den of Geek ''Den of Geek'' is a US and UK-based website covering entertainment with a focus on pop culture. The website also issues a bi-annual magazine. History ''Den of Geek'' was founded in 2007 by Simon Brew in London. In 2012, DoG Tech LLC licensed ...

'' felt the episode lacked pathos and regarded it as " a missed opportunity." Charlie Jane Anders called it "A moody, dark saga about computational engineering, that never quite gels as a story and has a nonsensical ending."

Commercial releases

In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by

Christopher H. Bidmead Christopher Hamilton Bidmead (born 18 January 1941) is a British writer and journalist. Bidmead trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA), later playing several roles on stage, television and radio. By the early 1970s h ...

, was published by

Target Books Target Books was a British publishing imprint, established in 1973 by Universal-Tandem Publishing Co Ltd, a paperback publishing company. The imprint was established as a children's imprint to complement the adult Tandem imprint, and became wel ...

in October 1982. An unabridged reading of the novelisation by Bidmead was released by BBC Audiobooks in February 2010, with a completely new cover.

Home media

The story was released on VHS in March 1992. In January 2007, the serial was released on DVD as part of a trilogy, entitled ''New Beginnings'', alongside ''The Keeper of Traken'' and ''Castrovalva''. ''Logopolis'' was also released as part of the

Doctor Who DVD Files This is a list of ''Doctor Who'' serials and episodes that have been released on DVD and Blu-ray. DVD Release Most ''Doctor Who'' DVDs have been released first in the United Kingdom with Region 2, and released later in Australia and Ne ...

(issue 46) in October 2010. On 18 March 2019, Season 18 was re-released on Blu-ray, and given a new CGI option, including newly filmed shots filmed on location at

Theatrical release

Fathom Events, in conjunction with the BBC, broadcast ''Logopolis'' to select cinemas in the United States on 13 March 2019, ahead of the planned Blu-ray release of Season 18 on 19 March 2019. The broadcast included additional interview footage with Baker, Fielding, and Sutton.

References

External links

Target novelisation

* {{Regeneration stories Fourth Doctor serials The Master (Doctor Who) television stories 1981 British television episodes Doctor Who serials novelised by Christopher H. Bidmead Doctor Who stories set on Earth Fifth Doctor serials Fiction set in 1981