"Jaws was never my scene and I don't like Star Wars" - Doctor Who Season 15 Retrospective

In 1977, Doctor Who was riding high, thanks to Tom Baker's electrifying take on the Time Lord and coming off the back of three of the most highly regarded seasons in the show's history. But between September 1977 and March 1978, the show would face several challenges to this status quo - not least the UK release of a little film called Star Wars...

Lee Binding's artwork for the Season 15 Blu-ray release.

Doctor Who's fifteenth season, broadcast between the 3rd of September 1977 and the 11th of March 1978, was an incredibly transitional season in more ways than one. By that point, Tom Baker had been the Doctor for nearly three years and had taken the show back to the heights of pop culture in a way it hadn't achieved since the highs of Dalekmania in 1965. The show had built on the groundwork laid by Jon Pertwee, Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks, and, thanks not just to Baker, but producer Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes, the show had enjoyed three seasons of unparalleled, consistent quality, with many stories that fans now consider some of the greatest television ever produced. The show's ratings had skyrocketed, merchandise sales were going through the roof, and the BBC was finally on the verge of selling the show to the American PSB networks, a lucrative market that soon-to-be BBC Enterprises were looking to enter. It was a golden period for the show, and the popular pairing of Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith seemed indestructible. Even the threat of Gerry Anderson's glossy sci-fi action-adventure series Space 1999, which had worried BBC schedulers so much they pulled forward the broadcast of Doctor Who's thirteenth season from winter to autumn 1975, hadn't done anything to dent the show's fortunes. However, as "The Talons of Weng-Chiang", the final serial of Doctor Who's fourteenth season, faded from TV screens, the show faced a considerable challenge. It had started with Sladen's decision to leave the previous year: the inseparable pairing of the Doctor and Sarah had been separated, and the show had been struggling to devise a suitable replacement, finally introducing the savage Leela, played by Louise Jameson, as the next companion. Then, Mary Whitehouse, of the National Viewers and Listeners Association, had objected so strongly to the cliffhanger of episode 3 of "The Deadly Assassin" that the BBC director-general ordered the master tape of the episode to be edited for future transmission. Around the same time, the Head of Serials, Bill Slater, decided to replace Hinchcliffe with a newly-promoted BBC staff producer called Graham Williams, who had a clear directive to tone down the violence and horror of recent seasons. Robert Holmes also decided that he, too, would leave, but would stay for the early part of the season, to ease the transition between production teams, and to give Williams and Graeme MacDonald (who had replaced Slater as head of serials) time to find a replacement. And then, during the five-month gap between Seasons 14 and 15, a film was released in the United States that would change the landscape of science fiction, blockbuster cinema and popular culture forever...

That film - Star Wars.

Tom Baker (Doctor Who), Louise Jameson (Leela) and the K9 prop, pictured at a BBC photocall to promote Season 15.

Of course, much has been written about how seismic the release of "A New Hope", the first instalment of the Star Wars franchise, was on the world. Let's say that, by the time the film was being screened in cinemas in the UK in December 1977 and January 1978, the anticipation was immense. Word had come from across the pond that this was like nothing ever seen before - indeed, a disco remix of the Star Wars theme by Meco peaked at no. 7 on the UK Official Charts in the summer, before the film was even released in the UK. It was apparent, then, that this was going to be a bit hit, and British production companies currently engaged in science fiction projects were either looking to cash in or were seriously worried that their home-grown efforts would appear dated by comparison. While the BBC had successfully seen off Space 1999 (of which its second and final season had just finished airing), Star Wars was something completely different. It was on a different scale and seemed to capture the attention of people who had never before expressed any interest in robots, lasers or space films. Indeed, Williams, Read and Baker have all expressed in interviews how shocked they were at the impressive effects of Star Wars when they went to an advanced screening of the movie in London in September 1977, just as Doctor Who's fifteenth season was getting underway. It would become one of the biggest film franchises of all time, and, even at that early stage, there was a feeling that this would be BIG.

So, a new producer, a new script editor, an edict to steer away from violence and horror, a different companion - one who themselves would be leaving at the end of the series, and a big mega sci-fi giant on the horizon, one that threatened to make Doctor Who obsolete and dated. Added to that an escalating budget crisis, as the UK went through hyperinflation and money became tighter than at any point in the show's history (more on that later), and you have the perfect storm. The resulting six serials, therefore, form a fascinating window into a show that, while publicly at least, was still riding high as part of a untouchable Saturday night line-up, was privately going through an identity crisis, facing up to numerous production issues and was having to try to find a niche amidst both big budget competition from cinemas and a show on the same network threatening to undercut its success. With strikes, the Inland Revenue, lack of studio space, technical problems, and a new co-star who was about to capture the hearts and minds of children everywhere (and infuriate adult Doctor Who fans), Season 15 would be one of the most diverse, variable and ambitious seasons in the show's history to that point, and it would help prepare the series for the next few years, where it would be in direct competition with Hollywood itself.

Tom Baker (Doctor Who) and Colin Douglas (Reuben), in a picture taken on the set of "Horror of Fang Rock".

The first story, "Horror of Fang Rock", shows little evidence of the vast changes coming later in the season, feeling like another story in the same mould as the Hinchcliffe/Holmes formula that proved so successful during the previous three seasons. In fact, many fans like to sneakily add it onto that era, so steeped in the tropes that the producer and script editor imbued Doctor Who with. Initially, this slot was meant to be filled by a story that would have felt even more like a part of the previous season than this: "The Vampire Mutation" was designed as Doctor Who's take on "Dracula", until the announcement of a prestigious and expensive BBC classics adaptation of the novel due at Christmas 1977 staked that idea. (Doctor Who fans will, of course, know that this story rose from the grave as "State of Decay" in 1980.) Dicks agreed to supply another script at last minute, and took as his inspiration the Wilfred Wilson Gibson poem "Flannan Isle" in setting his story in a lighthouse at the turn of the twentieth century. "Horror of Fang Rock", therefore, fits into a tradition of the use of the lighthouse as a liminal setting stretching back to Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse", and has continued right through to "The Lighthouse" from 2019. It's also part of Doctor Who's own so-called 'base-under-siege' tradition, stretching back to William Hartnell's final serial, "The Tenth Planet", from 1966, and which had recently been revived in the previous season's "The Robots of Death". (Of course, the tradition itself stretches back to 1950s B-movies, with films like "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" and "The Thing from Another World" being leading examples of the genre.) The tight lighthouse corridors and sets give the setting a close, intimate feel, in a way many of these 'base-under-siege' stories have never had before. Most of them play on shadows and things lurking in dark corners: think the creepy scenes of Ralph, one of the moonbase's crew, being preyed upon by a Cyberman in episode one of 1967's "The Moonbase". (And so memorably adapted in the serial's 1974 novelisation "Doctor Who and the Cybermen".) "Horror of Fang Rock" eschews that for a level of claustrophobia never before seen in the show's history, and really only seen since in the 2008 episode "Midnight". This story features only five major studio sets (with the bunk room only really appearing for a few short scenes in the latter two episodes), with the rocky landscape outside the lighthouse moodily filmed at Ealing Studios, giving another example of liminality playing into the story. These are tightly packed - possibly a side effect of this story being filmed at Pebble Mill Studio A at the BBC's Pebble Mill facility in Birmingham, in the only instance of a Doctor Who serial made between 1963 and 1989 being filmed in studios outside London. The actors are close - there's little distance even when characters are visibly trying not to speak to one another, with only the lamp room and balcony offering much room to escape from each other, if not the situation. (Perhaps it would have done, had Lord Palmerdale not been killed on it.) In fact, it's in the lamp room where all the discoveries are made, so perhaps there's some metaphor there regarding light being shed on the dark mysteries below. Broadly speaking, though, "Horror of Fang Rock" is the kind of story that could have been commissioned under the previous administration, and its high body count does little to offset this impression.

Tom Baker (Doctor Who), in a picture taken on the set of "The Invisible Enemy".

While the second serial, "The Invisible Enemy", the first of two contributions from Bob Baker and Dave Martin this season, might initially look like it has been influenced by Star Wars, delve a little deeper, and you'll find its inspiration lies in a much older vein of science and adventure fiction. Baker and Martin were inspired by the 1966 film "Fantastic Voyage" in the concept, but the execution also owes a little to the works of literary luminaries like Jules Verne. It's a broad, Saturday-afternoon matinee type of serial, in the vein of "Dan Dare" or "Flash Gordon" - if either featured a robot dog. Yes, while "The Invisible Enemy" is possibly one of the most ambitious Doctor Who stories since Richard Martin attempted to realise a battle between giant ants and giant butterflies in 1965's "The Web Planet", this serial is famous mainly for the introduction of K9 - a character who divided the show's nascent fandom at the time, and who still divides them today. While K9 was wholly the creation of Baker and Martin, their invention acted as a definitive marker of the new direction that Graham Williams had been mandated to go in. He was designed to appeal directly to children, and the kind of comedy he could provide would go some considerable way to fulfilling the mandate of his superiors. But, for some Doctor Who fans, they found, and, in some cases still find, K9 a de-legitimising of the show as a serious piece of drama, and an infantilisation of what they see as a show for all ages, as well as a plot contrivance that gives the Doctor a get-out-of-jail-free card. But surely the inclusion of K9 only affects the plot and tone if the writers let it? And surely the inclusion of K9 ticks the boxes of the principal audience for Doctor Who? (Yes, it is a 'family' programme, in that it is, at its best, a show that appeals to the broadest possible demographic, but, principally, it is designed to appeal to children, and was created as such.) So, in that regard, K9 is a great innovation and helps to mark this new version of the show as different from the previous era's Gothic horror-flavoured tone and style. In addition, K9 was one of the vanguards of the late 70s obsession with science fiction robots. Spearheaded by C-3PO and R2-D2, these slightly sassy, humorous additions became a primary requirement for both films and TV, and, soon, Blake's 7, The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century, Battlestar Galactica and Flash Gordon all featured comedy robots providing both exposition and a joke for the audience members who's usually find science-fiction a major turn off. This story wasn't afraid to splash the cash (something that would become a major problem later in the year), and it shows in the model work, which, considering that Star Wars was, as we've mentioned, just on the horizon, is hugely impressive. Sadly, however, the money wasn't enough to help the Nucleus, which, yes, looks like a giant prawn. Like most classic Doctor Who, the ambition was there, but it didn't quite come together in the execution, and the pressure of trying to get the show made means some compromises were made... The trip into the Doctor's mind is another good example, though the original idea for these sequences (to be set on location in settings like labyrinthine cloisters) probably wouldn't have worked within the story's internal logic. While "Horror of Fang Rock" wouldn't have looked out of place had this season been produced by Philip Hinchcliffe, "The Invisible Enemy" is a very different beast, and starts, gradually, to pull Doctor Who away from dark, atmospheric horror and towards bright, bold and ambitious science-fantasy.

Tom Baker (Doctor Who) poses with one of the Fendahleen props during production of "Image of the Fendahl".

By the time the third story of the season, "Image of the Fendahl", began airing, the shadow of Star Wars was starting to loom large over Doctor Who. As such, it makes it rather apt that this is the show's final genuine stab at Gothic horror, along the lines laid down by Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes. Writer Chris Boucher, who had provided Leela's debut serial "The Face of Evil", and, at last minute the following serial "The Robots of Death" the previous season, had proved he was capable of writing strong Doctor Who, and, as such, his third serial became Holmes' final commission as script editor before he handed over the job to his successor Anthony Read. Boucher's main inspiration when writing "Image of the Fendahl" wasn't so much the classic literature which had been hallmarks of the previous two seasons (and, indeed, the first two serials of this season), but was the work of contemporary science-fiction/horror screenwriter Nigel Kneale, especially the 1967 film "Quatermass and the Pit", as well as "The Stone Tape" and some of Kneale's other productions. In many respects, then, while "Image of the Fendahl" has all the hallmarks of both a Gothic Doctor Who serial and a piece of Gothic fiction in it's own right (if we look at 'the Gothic' as it's own sub-genre of storytelling, and ignoring any absurd connotations Doctor Who fans might put on the term), it also draws it's inspiration from the post-Gothic literature of the 20th century, with it's slightly more colder reliance on science and technology to conjure up the spirits of the dead and the ghouls of the past. In many ways, this serial acts almost as a Doctor Who dry run for the BBC's later horror series The Omega Factor, which also starred Louise Jameson in a leading role and was also attacked by Mary Whitehouse for being too horrific (She described one episode as 'thoroughly evil and wicked', so, by comparison, her condemnation of Doctor Who was relatively mild!) The Doctor and Leela are, at times, almost incidental characters to the guest cast, especially the Priory scientists who have made an impossible discovery that could shatter the theory of evolution, and in the character of Martha Tyler (Russell T Davies clearly liked this one), who, once again, is one of several Doctor Who characters to fit into the stock trope of 'knowledgeable old crone' - a notable luminary of that group being Miss Hawthorne from "The Daemons". In many respects, "Image of the Fendahl" shares a lot of similarities with the 1971 serial: both feature ancient powers being conjured up through ritual and ceremony; an 'old matron'-type character who's belief in the supernatural has some bearing on the resolution of the plot, if not completely born out in full belief; and an alien force having an influence on humanity's development, whether it be through direct interference like Azal and the rest of the Daemons, or a subliminal and malign influence like the Fendahl. Both bookend Doctor Who's mid-70s Gothic obsession with current takes on the genre: folk horror in the case of the former, and a modern, technological horror in the case of the latter. Sure, the terror might come from an aeons-old skull, and there's a pentagram on the floor of a crypt. But the power of the Fendahl is unleashed through a quasi-scientific experiment brought about by a deranged scientist with dreams of power and scientific achievement. Both Fendelman and the serial's principal human villain, Stael, come from opposite ends of the same spectrum: Stael is after power and dominion, Fendelman is looking for scientific glory and a hubris that, like Prometheus, is rewarded with damnation by the gods. Both suffer an character journey that has a hint of a Shakespearean tragedy, but both, in a traditionally Doctor Who-y way, get a chance to enjoy a kind of redemption - Fendelman through the revelation of the Fendahl's true purpose, and Stael with an act of self-sacrifice in an effort to even the odds for our heroes. Like many classic Doctor Who serials, "Image of the Fendahl" is a metatextual script that works on multiple levels and acts as a capstone to the Gothic horror stories of the previous era. However, there is more to it than just being a lesser clone of the Hinchcliffe years - because, in this, you can see the show starting to form a new identity, one that would allow it to stand out in an increasingly fragmented sci-fi landscape...

But more on that later.

Roy Macready (Cordo) and Tom Baker (Doctor Who), pictured on location during the recording of "The Sun Makers".

The following story to be broadcast, "The Sun Makers", was Robert Holmes' final contribution to the show as its script editor. While "Image of the Fendahl" was made after this serial (and was Holmes' final official credit in the script editor role), "The Sun Makers" was broadcast fourth, and, with it being a serial that, from beginning to end, is stamped with Holmes' intent, the themes he wanted to tackle and the type of story he wanted to tell, feels like the writer let loose in a way he wouldn't be again until 1984's "The Caves of Androzani". This story was also the first one to go into production after Star Wars had been released in the United States. At this point, the changes Graham Williams had introduced started to become apparent, and the direction and tone of the show began to alter fundamentally. Considering Holmes' enduring association with the show's so-called 'Gothic period', it's perhaps surprising that a serial so broadly comedic, otherworldly and unatmospheric would be indicative of Holmes as a writer. However, "The Sun Makers" is one of the most layered and rich Doctor Who stories, with multiple readings and influences coming together that not only celebrate the legacy of the show's most revered scribe, even today, but also point to the influences that were starting to bear down on Doctor Who, and to where the show would go in the future. Obviously, the thing that everyone mentions when talking about this story is the tax element - basically referring to the fact that Holmes wrote it as a satire of 1970s Britain's colossal tax burden, thanks to the policies of Labour Chancellor Denis Healey. And, indeed, Holmes was heavily influenced during the writing of the scripts to include a series of in-jokes and thinly-veiled allusions to this state of affairs, as well as to play up the idea of aliens using taxation to keep humans in a form of economic slavery. However, the age-old fable that this was the starting point of this serial is a bit of a fallacy. Its roots actually lay in transposing colonial Britain's attitude to its colonies into a science-fiction narrative - something that was still fairly current, due to Britain coming to terms with its decline as an economic, military and colonial power. By 1977, Britain no longer had a empire: the vast majority of the country's former colonies had seceded from imperial control during the late 1950s and early 1960s (except for a handful of dependencies like the Falkland Islands and Hong Kong), and the country was struggling to find a place in this new atomic and technical age. Even its industrial past was starting to slip from view. While the country was yet to go through the dramatic changes that the premiership of Prime Minister Margret Thatcher would bring, particularly around the ending of the country's mining and the privatisation of many public industries, there was a sense of a country in terminal decline, being forced to find a new identity in the face of substantial socio-economic changes and being forced to confront a colonial past that had some very, very ugly chapters. "The Sun Makers" might merely be four episodes of a BBC science-fiction serial drama, designed to go out on Saturday night between Basil Brush and the Generation Game, but, by virtue of Holmes' incredibly skilful writing, it holds up a mirror to the Britain of 1977: people being taxed by a state that has allowed bureaucrats to use economic force to gain complete control over the human race. Those at the top have access to a life of luxury and imported trinkets, while the menial workers exist only to pay taxes and are drugged to stop them from questioning the status quo. So pronounced is the illusion to the world described by German philosopher Karl Marx that the Doctor misquotes his Communist Manifesto at one point.

Mandrell: "And what have we got to lose?" The Doctor: "Only your claims."

Doctor Who has always had a relationship to this seminal text of political theory, stretching right the way back to the second-ever serial, 1963-4's "The Daleks", where the Doctor and his friends actively encourage the Thals to stand up against the oppressive, fascist Daleks. (In many respects, the exact opposite world perspective of Marx and Friedrich Engels.) But "The Sun Makers" is, in its quiet way, the most revolutionary Doctor Who story in the show's sixty-year history. And, when I say revolutionary, I don't mean in the sense of something like "Heaven Sent" or "Blink" or "73 Yards", where it is mould-breaking for the show. No, I mean in that political sense that Marx and Engels wrote about in the 1800s: it's the story that could be used as the legitimate founding text for a stream of political thought. One in which the working class is encouraged to organise against an oppressive regime that takes their labour and capital through exorbitant taxation. And also features a robot dog - which, as far as I'm concerned, makes it better than The Communist Manifesto for that point alone. At this point in the series, humour becomes the dominant component of the series - not just the satirical humour of Holmes' script, but a general increase of the show's humour quotient. Much of this is supplied through the K9, as mentioned earlier, a lot more comes from Tom Baker, who leans into the idea of the Doctor defusing situations through comedy. He makes jokes with the Collector in episode 4, humouring him while he explains the supposed 'difficulties' of running Pluto. However, Baker consistently reinforces the evil of what the Company has done - his sudden turn from humouring the Collector to railing against him means it never tips too far into parody, instead offering dynamic and pacey scenes where the tone masterfully flips at the right moment. It contrasts with the BBC's other take on similar subject matter, which started airing in January of the following year - Blake's 7.

The principal cast of the first series of Blake's 7. From left to right: Michael Keating (Villa), Jan Chappell (Cally), Gareth Thomas (Blake), Sally Knyvette (Jenna), Paul Darrow (Avon) and David Jackson (Gan).

While Doctor Who's fifteenth season had been entering production, Dalek creator Terry Nation had been pitching the BBC an idea for another TV show. Following on from three series of his hit show Survivors, the BBC was keen on another hit from the writer, and he pitched to them the idea of "The Dirty Dozen" in space. Added in veiled allusions to the USSR, Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and a spaceship to rival Star Trek's USS Enterprise, and it was a potent mix that, as British companies were looking to cash in on the now mainstream fad of Star Wars, would be a sure-fire hit. While it would share a lot of the same production team as Doctor Who, (not just Nation as lead writer, but Chris Boucher would be script editor, former Who director David Maloney would be producer, the first series would see Michael E Briant, Pennant Roberts and Douglas Camfield all direct episodes, and the show would share a lot of set, costume and visual effects designers) the show was targeted at a slightly older audience than the good Doctor's adventures generally were, and it would air mid-week in 50 minute singular instalments, rather than Who's traditional Saturday evening slot, and its 25-minute serial format. Had the BBC had the mindset of commercial enterprise television, it could have pitted the two against each other and seen which would come out on top. However, it seems like those on the sixth floor viewed both Blake's 7 and Doctor Who with the same dismissive attitude that prevented both from being serious competition to Star Wars or even Star Trek, at least in terms of resources and budget. Blake's 7 actually managed to have less money than Doctor Who: designed, from a scheduling perspective, to replace the police procedural Dixon of Dock Green, it also inherited its budget. Which, being a police show, was much less than a science fiction show needed. So, while Blake's 7 wouldn't be a direct competitor in the same way as Star Wars, Doctor Who did need to chart its own identity away from the dystopian science-fiction of its channel stablemate. "The Sun Makers" does share a lot of similarities with Blake's 7 in terms of plot and themes, (not to mention cast and crew: Pennant Roberts directed both this and episodes of Blake's 7's first series, and Michael Keating, who here plays the rebel Goudry, would later play Villa Restel in all 52 episodes of Blake's 7) but approaches these things entirely differently. By this point, producer Graham Williams was quietly reinventing the show in a more subtle way than the lavish model sequences or the greater emphasis on humour. He was emphasising the show's identity - that of its Britishness. The story of Doctor Who is the story of the United Kingdom, and Williams' greatest strength as a producer was identifying this and making it a core component of the show going forward. He recognised that, if Doctor Who was going to compete with the likes of Star Wars, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and even televisual output like Blake's 7, it would need to offer something those franchises didn't, or couldn't. So, the show offered a greater degree of humour, of pastiche, of satire, and of coding the show to the British identity that played well not just with a home audience, but with the American audience that the show was in the process of courting and cultivating at this time. In the irreverent and witty Fourth Doctor, we saw a hero who wasn't afraid of using humour to deflect fear or tension, while still maintaining the high stakes and moral issues the series was used to dealing with. As such, it was with "The Sun Makers" that, although Robert Holmes was using it as his swan song, the groundwork was being laid, by both him and Graham Williams, for where Doctor Who would go over the next few years, and setting in stone the show's fundamentally British identity - something that it still relies on today.

Tom Baker (Doctor Who) and Alan Lake (Herrick), pictured on the set of "Underworld".

By contrast, "Underworld" feels like it is trying to capture some of the enormous market opened up by Star Wars, and is, in several areas, perhaps the Graham Williams era's closest attempt to ape the science fiction smash. The first story to be commissioned by new script editor Anthony Read, and the second story this season to be written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, this was once again another serial that plumbed classic literature for inspiration. However, this time Baker and Martin were going back much further than classic poetry and Gothic fiction - they would be going back to Greek myths. Famously, "Underworld" is a sci-fi transposing of the legend of Jason and the Argonauts, from Apollonius' "Argonautica" - much like how Star Wars transposes the narrative of traditional fairy tales into science fiction settings. Like the writers' earlier "Invisible Enemy", the action is drawn on a vast canvas, and the serial has some huge visual spectacle and big set-pieces to capture the audience's attention. However, the immense ambitions the production team had for the serial were, of course, trumped by the serial's complete lack of budget, even beyond the usual Doctor Who limitations. As I mentioned when writing about "The Sun Makers" above, hyperinflation was a big problem in 1977. The cost of everything in the UK went up and up, and television production was no different. The budgets for Doctor Who serials were set months in advance - generally before the series started production in April, and so, by the time "Underworld" began production in October, the money that had been set aside for "Underworld" was simply insufficient for the plans that had been put in place. In order to compete with Star Wars, Williams had planned for two giant sets - the R1C spaceship (which could be redressed as the P7E) and the caves (which would have been designed in such a way that they could be adjusted and altered to look different, depending on the scene), however, by the time pre-production began, the budget expectations had tripled, and "Underworld" would now go substantially over budget in its current form. So, an ambitious plan was drawn up - the spaceship sets would continue to be built, while the caves would instead be built as models, and the actors would be filmed on blue backdrops, with the Colour Separation Overlay (CSO, sometimes referred to Croma Key) being used the meld the two together - functioning as a precursor of modern-day greenscreen. The process was commonly used in Doctor Who at the time, but generally only for effects shots, with occasional use for sets that might only be visible in one or two scenes, and it would be prohibitively expensive to do so. However, the scale of its use here was unprecedented, and there were many concerns that it would be beyond the capabilities of the technology to do so convincingly. And, well, they were right. The cave scenes are pretty static and lifeless, not helped by the actors often struggling to hide their irritation with having to wait around for hours on end to film a few minutes of material, and then be told 'no, sorry, we'll have to go again, the camera's in the wrong place'. It results in a fractured production that feels disjointed and doesn't quite bring the ideas in the script to life as well as it could. Sure, the opening model effects are hugely impressive, and give the serial the sense of scale they were looking for. However, stretching the technology of CSO far beyond what it was able to do in late 1977 meant that this never really carried through to the serial's later episodes. It's important to remember that this was the first serial to be screened after Star Wars' release, and it must have been quite disconcerting for viewers to have been to see the huge technical achievement that Star Wars was, and then come home to watch Doctor Who attempt to do something similar on less than a tenth of the budget. In some respects, "Underworld" showed that Doctor Who could, if pushed to it, ape Star Wars. But perhaps it was also a good indicator that it probably shouldn't - not if it compromised the programme's already stretched budget beyond breaking point.

Tom Baker (Doctor Who) and John Arnatt (Chancellor Borusa), pictured on the set of "The Invasion of Time".

If "Underworld" had a troubled production, "The Invasion of Time" would take this phrase to another level. Written as close to last-minute as it gets by Williams and Read under stock BBC pseudonym David Agnew, after a script by David Weir was deemed entirely unusable, the story was bedevilled by strikes, the budgetary problems that had afflicted "Underworld" and Williams's desperate efforts to convince Louise Jameson to stay for another year. As such, it ended up being incredibly rushed, and, like with "Underworld", it's hard to argue that its limitations don't show on screen. There are attempts to once again ape the success of Star Wars' visual style - namely in the opening scene with the Vardan spaceship, with its approach over the top of the camera being lifted pretty directly from the opening of "A New Hope". However, unlike with "Underworld", which thematically shares quite a lot with Star Wars, "The Invasion of Time" charts its own course, possibly using the most humour in a single Doctor Who serial up to this point. Like "The Sun Makers", it uses the Doctor's inherent quirkiness in a setting to highlight his disregard for authority, even when he himself is the authority. This story attempts to pull two brave tricks - one by having the Doctor become president of Gallifrey, and the second by having the Doctor turn out to be the villain of the piece. It's a dangerous step, in a show like Doctor Who, to try and turn the hero that children root for into a villain, and it's thanks to the masterful performance of Tom Baker that it doesn't make it look like the Doctor is relishing this newfound role. We know that the Doctor doesn't want to have to be evil - but it's the only way he can convince the Vardans (a superb creation, and a shame both the realisation lets them down, and that they get upstaged in the last two episodes) to trust him and allow him to help them. In some respects, this serial lays the groundwork for the series finales the modern series enjoys: the threat is high-stakes, and both the Doctor and Leela are pushed towards the brink. In that respect, then, this is where the comedy falls down, as the stakes the story is working with don't really warrant the comedy treatment. It ends up pushing and pulling in two different directions, and never really decides where it wants to fall. Is it a broad comedy? Or a dramatic high-stakes epic? The final two episodes increase this feeling even more, with what could have been one of the most interesting explorations of the TARDIS interior. Instead, we get little more than a run-around, with returning monsters the Sontarans treated as little more than an invading race, rather than anything unique. It does make an interesting counterpoint to bookend the season with a Rutan story first and then a Sontaran one. Had this story not been so hurried into production, more could have been made of that fact. The rushed nature of the production means the TARDIS interior had to be, disconcertingly, represented by a hospital, due to strike action stifling recording at BBC Television Centre in the run-up to Christmas 1977. This would become a common thread for the next two seasons as well, with, infamously, Williams' final serial as producer, "Shada", being cancelled altogether by industrial action. The lack of budget was evident, the strike action forced creative workarounds that didn't quite work, and, added to that, Graham Williams' desperate attempts to keep Louise Jameson on the show meant Leela was given a rushed and hurried exit that she didn't deserve. Honestly, Leela wasn't the companion to be married off to some random bloke she'd only just met, was she? For goodness ' sake, Leela had more chemistry with Rodan than with Andred! But it all comes down to a huge lack of time to develop an appropriate script that lets "Invasion of Time" down. In fact, when developing the following season, Graeme MacDonald, Head of Serials, actually instructed Williams to lessen the humour present in serials like this one, as it was felt to be verging close to parody. And, in some respects, "The Invasion of Time" does feel a bit like a parody of Doctor Who - as if the threat of Star Wars meant that Doctor Who had to accentuate its qualities so that people didn't get it confused against the backdrop of the sci-fi boom that was taking place. Looking at "The Invasion of Time" now, with the hindsight of time, it seems like the product of a show unsure of its own identity, something, which, in some respects, was true. But Doctor Who was always at its best when it had a soft touch regarding its own self, and was confident in its own abilities and identity. "The Invasion of Time" perhaps shows the concern that Star Wars brought best, and were fortunate that the show didn't let this concern dwell on it for too long. Had it done so, the show might not have survived into the 1980s.

Tom Baker (Doctor Who), Louise Jameson (Leela) and the K9 prop in a promotional picture for the fifteenth season.

Season 15, then, is an incredibly transitional season that pushes Doctor Who away from its Gothic past into a bigger and bolder style that places the focus squarely on humour and action/adventure. In a changing media landscape, Doctor Who had to evolve to compete not just with Star Wars, but with Blake's 7, Battlestar Galactica and other science-fiction shows that were now breaking into the mainstream. By transitioning away from science-fiction appropriation of classic literature to more socially relevant satire with a sci-fi twist, Doctor Who was positioning itself as being able to use the British tradition of humour to hold up a mirror to the world that it was in, as well as using that British identity to distinguish itself from the fast-paced, action heavy science-fiction on the other side of the Atlantic. In the process, producer Graham Williams' subtle changes to the mixture of formats that Doctor Who sits in ensured that the show could weather out these potential challengers to it. And, despite the years of turbulence that was to follow, Williams' approach to Doctor Who would be the same one that Russell T Davies would triumphantly bring back to screens in 2005, and continues to do so today. Not bad for a series launched in direct competition with the biggest science-fiction film franchise in the world, eh?

P.S. I wanted to add something to this post after watching Chris Chapman's brilliant documentary on the Season 15 Blu-ray set dedicated to Graham Williams, "Darkness and Light". I found it a shocking watch, not just for the ending, but also because of how much it enhanced my understanding of the viewpoint of a Doctor Who producer who, in recent years, has become, perhaps, a little misunderstood, and, dare I say, forgotten between two considerable figures in the show's history, Philip Hinchcliffe and John Nathan-Turner, and during a period dominated by turbulence, both between himself and Tom Baker, and by external factors such as budget and dictates from BBC management about the tone and content of the show. Williams' era, perhaps, isn't thought of as highly as others, but his is one of boundless creativity, of attempting to stretch the show's meagre budget as far as possible, and of continual innovation. Indeed, it's hard to say that any story in the Williams era is like any other, and, for the most part, whether you believe they are a success or not, each story attempts something new and different. One thing that came across in the documentary was a sense that Graham never quite reached the success he was looking for, both personally and critically. However, merely by virtue of producing one of the UK's greatest exports in the last 100 years, he has achieved a sense of immortality, and his three years at the helm remain a really strong period for the show, despite some of the challenges it faced. Hopefully this documentary and more material around this period of the show will help to increase the profile, reputation and discussion of a TV producer who threw himself into every project he worked on, and helped to spearhead television's transformation from film's lesser cousin to a viable and valid art form in its own right.

Doctor Who Season 15 can be purchased on Blu-ray or streamed on BBC iPlayer (UK only) or Britbox (rest of the world).

This post is dedicated to Graham Williams, the 8th producer of Doctor Who, 1945-1990.