Logopolis Part Three

The one where the Master accidentally rots the Universe...

Somewhere, a Logopolitan has got his sums wrong, resulting in the TARDIS reducing in size with the Doctor trapped inside. "The honour of Logopolis is at stake!" whittles Monitor. Yes, just imagine: people laughing at Logopolis because it got one of its sums wrong! I do like the way Peter Grimwade directs the TARDIS interior scenes though, with a muzzy look to the lens as if it's smeared with Vaseline. It reflects the fact the dimensions are compacting (it also makes it look like the Doctor's back on Vortis!).

The Logopolitans (who don't speak or smile, but do carry) transport the miniaturised TARDIS through the streets to the central registry. It's every Doctor Who fan's dream to have a mini TARDIS like this, in the corner of the bedroom or the bottom of the garden! Now most of us have a model police box on our bookshelves, but a model this size is even more exciting. It's almost possible it's the real thing, as we see here and in Flatline over 30 years later.

Two minutes in to part 3 is when we get our first proper glimpse of the new-look Master, sitting in an alcove in his new Evil Black Outfit, with his Evil Black Goatee and Evil Black Gloves. Anthony Ainley looks the part, the embodiment of evil (infinite evil?), like he's walked straight out of a 1930s Flash Gordon serial. And to add to the corn, he comes out with a James Bond-style pun when he says of the Doctor: "At last I've cut you down to size!"

The race is on to identify the source of the miscalculation that damaged the TARDIS's dimensions. Adric is understandably concerned, working with Monitor to double check the registries and sub-routines for errors, while Tegan and Nyssa stare at the police box helplessly. These two newcomers seem mightily concerned about the Doctor's welfare considering they barely know him (particularly Tegan), and are being written as fully-fledged companion figures by Christopher H Bidmead before they've really earned it. Nyssa was just a character from the last story, while Tegan is just a character who's stumbled into this one. Neither of them should feel like proper companions yet, but they're being presented as just that.

Monitor's explanation of block transfer computation actually works for me. Block transfer computation has to be done by the Logopolitans themselves (in their heads, and on abacuses) because the calculations alter physical matter itself, so could never be done by a computer. They use the computer (a copy of the Pharos Project) to record and store, but the actual running of the programme, so to speak, is done by the mathematicians of Logopolis. Why aren't the Logopolitans themselves altered by their maths? Not sure, maybe they are able to control what the maths affects, whereas the computer wouldn't? Maybe? I think?! Whatever, you'd expect the Logopolitans to be able to come up with something better than the obviously painted backdrop that you see beyond the door as Monitor and Adric pass through.

I do like Tegan's preoccupation with what she believes is a Logopolitan sweatshop, with people slavishly sitting at their computers working out sums, never speaking or smiling. But as Monitor explains, they are driven by mathematical necessity, not individual need. The people of Logopolis are not individuals as such, they are part of a greater whole, like capacitors and resistors on a circuit board. The campaign begins here for Logopolitan rights!

Meanwhile, the Master's going round killing Logopolitans, reducing them to little dollies on the ground. The unfortunate thing about this habit he has is we never see how he does it, just the fact that he can. We have yet to see his fabled Tissue Compression Eliminator, which is what he uses to miniaturise people, so how he's doing this is poorly explained. The way the viewers are expected to understand this is even more surprising when you realise the Master's only used the TCE twice before (Terror of the Autons and The Deadly Assassin), so it's not as if it's been a prominent part of the Master's character before now.

Nevertheless, Adric recognises miniaturised corpses as "the mark of the Master", which he can't possibly know as he's never seen any before. The Doctor may well have told him about the policeman and Vanessa, but off-camera.

Nyssa's reunion with her "father" the Master is nicely done, especially by Ainley, whose performance as the Master in this episode is understated, and not the panto-esque uber-villain he would become. Here, he demonstrates the subtlety of performance he showed as Tremas, speaking softly to entice Nyssa, and this also adds to the character's menace. When bad guys speak softly and with confidence, you know they're something to be wary of (exactly how Roger Delgado played it). But when Ainley's Master turns into a ranting moustache-twirler in later appearances, he just becomes a bit silly. However, here his considered performance works nicely. The Master wants Nyssa to help him uncover the secret at the heart of Logopolis. What could it be?

The way poor Tegan finds out about her auntie's death is spectacularly badly handled, by everyone. Bidmead writes the scene with a grudge, like he just needs to get it out of the way; Tom Baker and Janet Fielding struggle to find any truth in the moment due to the almost total absence of material in the script; and Grimwade allows it all to whither away by having Tegan move off-camera sobbing. Alone and unconsoled, Baker gently pushes her away so he can move on to the next line. "I'm so sorry, Tegan. I'm so sorry," does not cut the mustard. By the next scene Tegan is pretty much over her loss (although I do like how Fielding spits her words at the Master when she vows not to help him), but the truth of what's happened is not addressed properly at all. The story moves on, and so too must the characters, but that's not what real life is like. There's no attempt to be like real life at all.

Some might say Doctor Who was always like this, that the programme is less about the soap and more about the opera. It's a family sci-fi show, not Ibsen. But when similarly devastating life events have been addressed in Doctor Who before, they have been handled with more sensitivity and creativity than here. Remember the emotionally charged departures of Susan, Ian and Barbara, Victoria, Jamie and Zoe, Jo and Sarah? Remember that beautiful scene in The Tomb of the Cybermen where the Doctor and Victoria talk about family and loss? Or the big fall-outs the First Doctor had with his companions, like Barbara in Inside the Spaceship or Steven in The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve? Past production teams acknowledged human emotion appropriately, but didn't get bogged down in it (as would happen in the new series), so why can't the loss of a loved one be treated with the right measure of respect and truth in Logopolis?

The same applies when Nyssa finds out the Master is not her father at all, but that the Master has taken her father's body and murdered Tremas. She takes that on board pretty easily too, despite the rather cursory and cold way the Doctor tells her. The Doctor at this point is surrounded by young people in mourning: Tegan's lost her aunt, Nyssa her father, and Adric his brother. So much loss, so much potential to make this a thing, but no. The story continues, and so too must the characters.

Rant over. "I'm going to stop him if it's the last thing I do," the Doctor says of the Master, which instantly tells you that it is going to be the last thing he does! The Doctor knows that his end is nigh, because the Watcher is here. Whatever the Watcher is, it's not good (notice how the Watcher's changed clothes since he was outdoors in parts 1 and 2?). This spectral figure wanders around the fringes of the story like an M R James reject. I'm looking forward to finding out what the truth of him is.

Towards the end of the episode things start to spiral out of control as the Master gradually realises he's messed up big-time. It's traditional that the Master's ill-considered machinations backfire on him (remember Season 8?), but this is something else entirely. The Master manages to "switch off" Logopolis, which he thinks is very clever and all-powerful, but it's actually the worst thing he could have done. For Logopolis is the keystone of the Universe, which "long ago passed the point of total collapse". The Logopolitans' block transfer computations have been keeping the entire Universe going all this time, as entropy threatens to eat away at it.

The clever bit of this is that the Logopolitans created voids, gaps in the Universe, to allow the entropy to spread elsewhere while a more permanent solution could be found. These gaps are the Charged Vacuum Emboitments (CVEs) of the E-Space trilogy, wrapping Season 18 up with a perfect little theme: entropy, decay and the end of all things. Very clever, Mr Bidmead. And for once, it works!

However, everybody seems very calm and level-headed about the Universe ending as they traipse through the crumbling streets waiting for the Master's penny to fully drop. In the end it seems the only way to save the Universe is for the two Time Lords to team up (echoes of the Pertwee era again). There are protestations from the Doctor's youthful entourage, but our hero's having none of it, and proceeds to tear down his companions with a painfully honest appraisal: "Nyssa, you contacted me and begged me to help you find your father," - Did she? That's news to me - "Tegan, it's your own curiosity got you into this," - hardly fair as she was simply trying to get her puncture fixed - "and Adric, a stowaway."

"I've never chosen my own company."

The Doctor bundles the kids into the TARDIS, and it's nice that one special moment is reserved for Adric - the "proper" companion here - when he gives the boy that 'chin-up' fist bump and says "Battle stations," a phrase they used earlier in the story. A little moment between them, particular to them, the Fourth Doctor and Adric. I shall miss these two together.

The cliffhanger has the Master and the Doctor shaking hands, much to the Doctor's obvious disgust, as they agree to work together to save the Universe. It's ironic, and rather fitting, that the Fourth Doctor's final cliffhanger shows him sealing his own fate, by shaking hands with his mortal enemy. There's no going back now. Just one last hope...

First broadcast: March 14th, 1981

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The big revelation that the Universe is only being held together by Logopolis, and that the CVEs from earlier in the season are all a part of this.
The Bad: The way grief is being handled is unforgivable. In some ways I wish they hadn't bothered trying to deal with the issue at all.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

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

NEXT TIME: Part Four (it's the end, but the moment has been prepared for)...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; 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/2014/09/logopolis.html

Logopolis is available on BBC DVD as part of the New Beginnings box set. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Beginnings-Logopolis-Castrovalva/dp/B000LE1HLQ/