The Leisure Hive Part One

The one where (almost) everything changes...

Welcome to the new season on BBC1, and there's a new look for Dr Who... Boy, is there a new look. It's a new everything! Practically everything changes between Seasons 17 and 18 apart from the two lead actors, and there's even some significant changes there. There's a lot to look at, so much to comment on and pick through, so let's get on with it.

I'm loving those new titles, and that new theme arrangement. It's so arrestingly new and fresh, so modern and clean and sci-fi, but it also feels so right, like it should always have been that way. After too many years of the same old (albeit lovely) time tunnel effect, and the same old picture of Tom Baker, it's a welcome development for the opening titles and music to get a good shake-up, to bring the programme firmly into the 1980s. It's a feast for the eyes and ears: the rainbow colours, the movement through the starfield, the developing head of the Doctor (Tom now looks correctly 46 rather than 40), the new logo and bubbly font. It's almost too much to take in all at once, like a Newness Overdose.

The guitar in the new theme makes it exciting and modern, and everything feels faster and swisher. That was exactly the impact new producer John Nathan-Turner was going for - out with the old, in with the new. It wasn't so much that he wanted to make his personal impression on the show, more that it really needed it. Doctor Who was starting to feel a bit jaded and old-fashioned by 1980, thanks in large part to the arrival of Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Suddenly, science-fiction was back in fashion, and Doctor Who had to do something to try and keep up, or at least to not look too far behind. JNT absolutely did the right thing by making sweeping changes, because Doctor Who needed to get noticed again, it needed to compete.

Sadly, it didn't seem to bear fruit in real terms, with The Leisure Hive debuting with 5.9 million viewers, struggling up against the aforementioned Buck Rogers on ITV. Things would get worse for Season 18 before they improved, but by and large it was as if JNT's changes were too little too late, and people had already moved on. They wanted handsome Gil Gerrard and his Cylons, not tired old Tom and his silly scarf, whether it was multi-coloured or full burgundy.

The Doctor's new outfit is a double-edged sword for me. On the one hand I really like it, I think it's a gorgeous, sumptuous reimagining of James Acheson's original genius which keeps the Fourth Doctor's silhouette but updates it to make him broodier, more solemn. Whether brooding and solemn is how we think of the Fourth Doctor is another question. The new costume seems far too big for Tom Baker, far too capacious, baggy and absorbing. Sometimes he looks like a walking pile of rags, and the form and shape of a man wearing those clothes is lost. It looks lovely, but I there's too much of it, and Tom's completely buried in it.

And with this new outfit, it seems the Doctor's presence is diminished. There are very few opportunities in the script for Tom to introduce character, to allow his Doctor to breathe. In the past, Tom was able to inject all sorts of quirks to his performance to bring the zany Doctor out, but here he seems muted, shielded, almost sedated. This is not the Fourth Doctor we know and love. This is a Doctor who no longer feels central in his own show. Perhaps this is an actor who no longer wants to be?

The opening shot of The Leisure Hive has come in for a lot of stick over the years, and it's obvious why. New season, new producer, new approach... and the first thing you see is a bunch of deckchairs flapping on a freezing cold beach. But the underwhelm doesn't end there. Director Lovett Bickford decides to pan v-e-r-y--s-l-o-w-l-y past no fewer than six striped beach huts and 19 empty deckchairs before settling on the sight of a snoozing Doctor in a 20th deckchair. The entire camera pan takes over 90 seconds, and while it looks good, and is very clever and everything, it's most certainly not the way to open a new season of Doctor Who. Deckchairs and beach huts. This is an exciting science-fiction/ fantasy television series for kids of all ages, not a Play for Today by Terrence Malick.

It's hard to balance my opinions on Lovett Bickford's work, because on the one hand I admire it for its auteur-like ambition and style (something sadly lacking with most Doctor Who directors of the time), but on the other, it's getting in the way of telling a good story. You've only got 25 minutes, Lovett, so don't waste 97 seconds panning across an empty beach, or showing a rather dull space shuttle docking for an entire 46 seconds. Just get on with it!

We find the Doctor, Romana and K-9 (welcome back, John Leeson) on Brighton beach, several decades too late to witness the opening of the Royal Pavilion (work on it began in 1787, but it wasn't completed until 1823). The Doctor mentions this is the second time he's missed the opening of the pavilion. The first attempt, although never explicitly stated, is thought to have been Horror of Fang Rock, while his third failed attempt was witnessed in the audio adventure Gallery of Souls. To date, I don't believe any Doctor has managed to get to see the opening of the pavilion in the right place at the right time!

Three minutes into the episode, K-9 is blown up (bye-bye, John Leeson) after he rashly trundles into the sea to retrieve Romana's beach ball. It's another mission statement moment from JNT, who was no fan of the robot dog, and already had plans to write him out. I think it was about time too, to be honest. K-9 doesn't really sit comfortably within this new look Doctor Who, he feels too old school. Too disco.

As swishy video effect after swishy video effect washes over us, we travel to the planet Argolis, which was almost completely wiped out in a terrible war with the reptilian Foamasi race. The Argolin survivors built the Leisure Hive, as the planet's surface was ravaged by radioactivity and was inhospitable, and set the Hive up as an intergalactic tourist attraction. However, Argolis is becoming rather old hat. It doesn't have the non-gravity swimming pools or sleep-reading stations of leisure planets such as Limnos 4 or Abydos, and needs a new attraction to lure tourists from Earth. Young Argolin Pangol thinks he has the answer in his Tachyon Generator.

I can't admit to understanding all the stuff about tachyonics and what the generator does. I get the idea that it creates a holographic image of what or whoever's inside, and enables the user to interact with other projected people and things within the unreality (I think?), but how it works escapes me. And to be honest, I don't much care either, so heaven knows how an eight-year-old must have felt back in 1980. Suddenly Doctor Who has gone all hard science. Douglas Adams' version of Doctor Who was always stuffed with mind-expanding ideas, but they were usually presented in a simplified, fun, straightforward way. Here, writer David Fisher (and script editor Christopher H Bidmead, who led the charge to make Doctor Who more serious) presents smart science like a school lecture (Pangol literally lectures to the onlookers). It means little of it sinks in, and as a result the whole thing is quite dry and staid.

The video effects used to demonstrate the Tachyon Generator are very swish though, and when Visitor Loman ill-advisedly steps into the machine for a demonstration, the splitting of the head and limbs from the body is nicely done, even if Loman does look a little like a wooden doll. The special effects and graphics have come on in leaps and bounds between seasons, as if JNT raided the Top of the Pops production gallery and demanded access to all of their snazzy video machines (maybe he did?). The scene where the Doctor and Romana float nonchalantly through a non-gravity squash game may look a little hokey now, but back then it was refreshingly new (and prescient: 15 years later Michael and Janet Jackson would win awards for their music video for Scream, which featured anti-gravity squash).

The Argolins themselves are one of those identikit races where everybody looks and dresses the same, but what's intriguing (and slightly amusing) about them is their crazy green coiffures, topped with little horny bits with berries attached, which comedically pop off when the Argolin is dying. It's weird, but then Doctor Who should be weird.

Designer Tom Yardley-Jones's Leisure Hive sets are claustrophobic in quite a realistic way. The corridors are no wider than they would be in real life, and have ceilings, which is a rare flourish for Doctor Who. Sadly, as a result, the sound can be a little tinny, and dialogue tends to get lost or muffled, particularly the scene where Mena arrives (which is otherwise a splendid entrance for a character, played with such poise and elegance by veteran actress Adrienne Corri).

You see how easy it is to get distracted by the visuals of this story? Fisher's plot gets swamped by the pop and fizz of Bickford's sweet-shop direction, but there's an interesting yarn buried beneath the colours and whirls. Earth businessman Brock suggests to ailing Argolin Morix that he sell the planet to their former enemies the Foamasi, who would be able to make better use of the poisoned planet surface. Morix claims that reptiles are resistant to radioactivity, and so could live quite happily on the surface of Argolis. While there is some truth in this seemingly wild claim, reptiles would probably succumb to the lasting effects of radiation over time, unless the Foamasi have their own immunity.

The Foamasi are only glimpsed throughout this episode. A scaly claw here, a blood-red eye there, a swish of a tail and a looming silhouette. Bickford is wise to only show fleeting glimpses of the Foamasi, as it successfully builds tension and expectation, and shows that the creatures are devious and circumspect, infiltrating the Leisure Hive with their clever laser bubble thing and peeking through half-open doors. Bickford directs these scenes very well by holding back and generating intrigue, and it's an added surprise that a Foamasi reveal doesn't form part of the cliffhanger.

Mena has a particular interest in a new technology developed by Earth scientist Hardin which rejuvenates cells and reverses the ageing process. A demonstration appears to show Quentin Crisp in a Queen Amidala wig being reverse-aged from a decrepit harpy into a beautiful stripling. None of what we see is witnessed by the Doctor or Romana, who arrive afterwards, but for some reason everybody acts as if they did see the experiment. Romana points out later that the experiment (which she didn't see) was a fake, and that the necklace the rejuvenated woman was wearing (which she didn't see) was different before and after the experiment (which she didn't see). Quite a blatant continuity error there.

The Doctor having entered the Tachyon Generator, a scaly claw is seen to operate some switches, which can never be a good thing. The cliffhanger sees the Doctor's wooden doll body dismembering and his screaming face rushing toward the screen as the end titles crash in. It's a genuinely unsettling image, a startling way to end the episode, with the hero being torn limb from limb. Is it a projection, or is it the real Doctor?

There's so much to take in with this one episode, it's almost overwhelming. Doctor Who itself has regenerated and feels like a totally different programme, almost like a reboot but with the same bloke as the Doctor. Everything has changed around Tom Baker (even what he's wearing), and I wonder just how adrift he was feeling. JNT succeeded in making a 17-year-old TV show feel brand new again, something it previously managed with Spearhead from Space, and would do again with the 2005 reboot. But although it all feels shiny and new, it doesn't feel very much like Doctor Who right now, not the Doctor Who we're used to. It's very serious and deep, with virtually all signs of comedy or levity completely absent.

I love the white-out explosion at the end of the new titles though. KA-BOOOOOM!

First broadcast: August 30th, 1980

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The new titles and music are a much-needed improvement to the tired time tunnel.
The Bad: Who opens a new season with 97 seconds of empty deckchairs and beach huts?
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 24

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part Two; Part Three; Part Four

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: https://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-leisure-hive.html

The Leisure Hive is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Leisure-Hive-DVD/dp/B00022VMR6