Editor’s Note: Logopolis is the second of three Doctor Who adventures included in the New Beginnings box set, the other two being The Keeper of Traken and Castrovalva.

Logopolis, Tom Baker’s final adventure in the role of the Doctor, marked a major turning point for the series. After seven seasons playing the Doctor, Baker wasn’t just the most popular actor to play the roll; he was the only Doctor to an entire generation of young fans. But Baker had been unhappy with the direction the show was headed in since John Nathan-Turner took over as producer. Nathan-Turner eliminated the Doctor’s robotic dog K-9, revamped Baker’s costume, had the theme music rewritten and began to include more pop culture references in the dialogue. All that was left to complete the transformation was to remove curmudgeonly Baker and replace him with a fresh face.

Logopolis continues the story arc established in The Keeper of Traken. The Master has stolen a new body and is once again on the Doctor’s trail. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Adric (Mathew Waterhouse) have decided to fix the TARDIS’s chameleon circuit, which should make the time machine blend into any environment. The TARDIS has been stuck in the shape of a blue police box for as long as anyone can remember and the Doctor believes that errors in the measurements of the box are responsible for the malfunction. He and Adric set out to find an actual police box to measure and use as a template for resetting the circuit. When they arrive on Earth, the Doctor accidentally materializes his TARDIS around the Master’s, causing a recursive series of TARDISs within TARDISs. As if this wasn’t problem enough, the Doctor encounters a mysterious figure who watches his every move from a distance, and the TARDISs “cloister bells”(an early warning system indicating approaching catastrophe) begin to ring. While all of this is going on, a hapless airline stewardess named Tegan (Janet Fielding) stumbles into the TARDIS and gets lost in its vast interior.

After taking the measurements, the Doctor and Adric head to Logopolis. This distant planet’s inhabitants are a living computer designed to interpret complex “block transfer calculations.” The Doctor hopes that the Logopolitans can help him reprogram the chameleon circuit, but when they try, something goes terribly wrong. Some of the citizens have been murdered and critical parts of the calculations have gone wrong. If the only consequence were that the Doctor’s chameleon circuit couldn’t be fixed the story might become a simple murder mystery, but the leader of Logopolis reveals that block transfer calculations are far more complex than that. The universe, he explains, has passed the point of collapse due to the effects of entropy. It should have disintegrated into nothingness long ago, but the Logopolitans staved off the final collapse by using their calculations to open what they call Charged Vacuum Embointments (CVEs) and pass excess entropy through them to other universes. Translation: breaking Logopolis causes the universe itself to fall apart.

We know that this is Tom Baker’s last adventure so it’s clear from the start that something goes terribly wrong for the Doctor along the way.

Logopolis is a complex story. We have the pending destruction of the universe, interference from the Master, the addition of two new companions into the Doctor’s retinue and the death and regeneration of the Doctor himself. As convoluted as it seems, the story hangs together well. The pseudo-science of block transfer calculations and CVEs seem to make perfect sense within the context of the adventure, to the credit of writer Christopher H. Bidmead's crisp, forceful dialogue. The acting in Logopolis is also a cut above the Doctor Who average. Everyone seems to be putting in 110% because they know this is Baker’s last trip in the blue box. Baker himself projects a very satisfying sense of melancholy, uncertainty and even fear, qualities that are antithetical to the Doctor’s nominal persona.

The culmination – Baker’s regeneration into Davison – is actually a little anti-climactic in the reviewing, though it must have been exciting when the show was first broadcast in 1981. After all, fans had to wait for months to find out what Davison’s Doctor would be all about.

Video Presentation
Logopolis was produced with a mix of in-studio video and location film sources. As is the case with many Doctor Who adventures, the original film was lost long ago. As a result, the Doctor Who Restoration Team has had to digitize their second-generation video and then go through it frame by frame to grade it and remove thousands of instances of dirt and other flaws by hand. Logopolis had a number of serious problems with the video elements when it was broadcast in 1981, including some rough cuts and some scratches that were introduced in the editing process. These have all been repaired, resulting in a video element that’s far better than the original.Audio

Presentation
As with the video, the audio tracks for Logopolis had issues from the outset. The scenes inside the TARDIS suffered from a good deal of background noise, and the use of primitive radio microphones introduced the sound of clothing rubbing against the mic in some scenes. Additionally, some of the TARDIS dialogue was re-recorded and dubbed in due to the high level of background noise on the original audio recordings, but the dialogue didn’t match the lip movements as well as it should. As if those problems weren’t enough, there were also some bad cuts that caused words to be clipped off and one segment of dialogue that didn’t match the sound effects (Adric notices that the cloister bells have stopped ringing even though they can still be heard.) The Restoration Team addressed all these issues and more in order to produce an audio track that is significantly cleaner, clearer and more accurate than the original.

Extras
Logopolis is filled with great extras, including:

Audio Commentary with actors Tom Baker and Janet Fielding and writer Christopher H. Bidmead.  – This is one of the more entertaining and fun commentaries on a Doctor Who release. Tom Baker can be a little inconsistent when it comes to these recording sessions. Sometimes he’s into it, other times he’s not. In this case, he seems to have had a great time chatting about his final adventure as the Doctor. Janet Fielding is equally engaging, relating a number of interesting behind the scenes anecdotes. Rounding out the track is Christopher H. Bidmead, who chimes in with some fascinating comments on the differences between his original script and the show that actually made it to the screen.

Feaurette: A New Body at Last  (50 minutes) – The BBC has set a high standard for the documentary content they include with these releases. This featurette is no exception. The extensive program examines the final days of Tom Baker’s involvement with Doctor Who, and features interview footage from all the main players in the cast and crew. Tom Baker, who was reticent to talk about the show for many years, is surprisingly candid, relating how his creative differences with producer John Nathan-Turner caused him to become disillusioned with the show. He pulls no punches, even when it comes to evaluating his own difficult attitude and behavior as the season drew to an end.

Nationwide – Period Interviews with Tom Baker and Peter Davison (8 minutes) – The changing of the guard at Doctor Who was big news in England, and Tom Baker and Peter Davison made the obligatory rounds of the TV talk shows to promote the switch. These two brief interviews are interesting for the contrast between the two actor’s attitudes and moods.

Pebble Mill at One – Interview with Peter Davison (12 minutes) – This is a more extensive interview with Davison. The topics cover both his new job as The Doctor and his role as Tristan on the highly popular series All Creatures Great and Small. Davison relates his enthusiasm for Doctor Who and reveals that Patrick Troughton was “his Doctor” when Davison was a child.

BBC News Reports – A Collection of Period News Stories on Tom Baker’s Marriage, the Departure of Baker and the Arrival of Davison. – This short collection of clips focuses on evening news reports about the departure of Tom Baker.

Music Only Option – As the name implies, this is an option to watch the episodes with out dialogue and sound effects.

Popup Production Notes – It’s kind of amazing how much trivia can be packed into these subtitle tracks. Any serious fan is going to want to read them all.

Trailers and Continuity Announcements – Proving that they’re determined to include every scrap of relevant material on each Doctor Who release, these are the BBC intros and outros for each of the four episodes in Logopolis. Some of these are dated to the point that they’re amusing in their own right.

Photo Gallery – This collection of publicity stills and behind the scenes photographs is a pre-packaged video presentation with accompanying sound track made up of excerpts from Logopolis’ incidental music. Personally, I prefer photo galleries that allow the viewer to step through the images at their own pace using the remote control, but if the choice is between this presentation and nothing, I’ll take what’s on this disc.

DVD-ROM Features – If you’re old enough to remember reading the Doctor Who Annual back when these shows were new, you’ll get a big kick out of the PDF files on this disc. You also get PDFs of the Radio Times listings for each episode and some additional BBC publicity materials. It’s a nice touch that really rounds out the extra content.