Logopolis

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115[1] –Logopolis
Doctor Who serial
The Doctor ponders the meaning behind the mysterious white figure.
Cast
Doctor	Tom Baker (Fourth Doctor) Peter Davison (Fifth Doctor)
Companions	Matthew Waterhouse (Adric) Sarah Sutton (Nyssa) Janet Fielding (Tegan Jovanka)
Guest stars
Anthony Ainley — The Master Dolore Whiteman — Aunt Vanessa John Fraser — The Monitor Tom Georgeson — Detective Inspector Christopher Hurst — Security Guard Adrian Gibbs - The Watcher
Production
Writer	Christopher H. Bidmead
Director	Peter Grimwade
Script editor	Christopher H. Bidmead
Producer	John Nathan-Turner
Executive producer(s)	Barry Letts
Production code	5V
Series	Season 18
Length	4 episodes, 25 minutes each
Originally broadcast	February 28–March 21, 1981
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by → The Keeper of Traken Castrovalva

Logopolis is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from February 28 to March 21, 1981. It was Tom Baker's last story as the Doctor and marks the first appearance of Peter Davison in the role. This serial also marks the first appearance of Janet Fielding as new companion Tegan Jovanka, whilst Nyssa, played by Sarah Sutton and seen in previous serial The Keeper of Traken,^[2] returns and also joins the Doctor as a companion.

Contents 1 Plot 1.1 Synopsis 1.2 Continuity 1.2.1 The Doctor and regeneration 2 Production 2.1 Titles 2.2 Outside references 2.3 Errors 3 Broadcast and Commercial releases 3.1 In print 4 References 5 External links 5.1 Reviews 5.2 Target novelisation

[edit] Plot

[edit] Synopsis

The plot summary in this article is too long or detailed compared to the rest of the content. Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot. (September 2008)

The Fourth Doctor is pacing around in the TARDIS Cloister Room, pondering concepts of decay and entropy following their previous adventure. As he and Adric prepare to leave, the large bell in the centre of the room begins to ring. This worries the Doctor, as the sound of the Cloister Bell is a sign of impending "wild catastrophe and sudden calls to man the battle stations."

He decides it's time to repair the TARDIS's chameleon circuit, which has frozen it into the shape of a police box. In order to do this, he intends to materialise the TARDIS around a real police box so he can obtain its precise measurements without attracting attention. Then he will have the inhabitants of the planet Logopolis produce a mathematical calculation — a block transfer computation — to reset the circuit. However, the "police box" he materialises around is actually the TARDIS of the Master, who has survived their encounter on the planet Traken. When the Doctor materialises around the Master's TARDIS, a recursive loop of TARDISes within TARDISes is formed.

Meanwhile, an airline stewardess, Tegan Jovanka, is being driven to the airport by her Aunt Vanessa. After their car breaks down, Tegan decides to go to the "police box" for help, but finds herself lost in the TARDIS instead. Inside the recursive loop of police boxes, the Doctor insists on leading the way and Adric waiting for an all-clear. When he finally finds himself outside, the Doctor meets a number of policemen, who have found the shrunken, dead bodies of Tegan's aunt and another policeman.

The police think the Doctor has something to do with it, but Adric creates a distraction, and allows the Doctor to escape. In the distance, a mysterious white-clad stranger watches the proceedings. Realising that the shrunken bodies are the trademark of the Master, the Doctor decides to materialise the TARDIS underwater, to literally flush him out. The Doctor misses the River Thames, however, and lands on a boat instead. The mysterious stranger appears on a bridge above them, and beckons to the Doctor, telling him to go to Logopolis.

As the TARDIS arrives at Logopolis, Tegan finds her way to the control room, somewhat annoyed. She asks to know where her aunt is, and the Doctor, realising that she was the dead woman in the car, skirts the question. Once they exit the TARDIS, the Doctor asks the Logopolitan leader, the Monitor, for his help. The Logopolitans are able to model reality by pure mathematics — whatever they calculate can take physical form. However, block transfer computations cannot be calculated by machines, so to perform them, the Logopolitans do not use computers. Instead, they use a large physical array of Logopolitans, each muttering a line of calculations out loud and passing them on to the next.

However, unknown to the group, the Master has arrived on Logopolis, and has killed several Logopolitans, which disrupts the calculations for the TARDIS. When the Logopolitans produce the required computation and the Doctor attempts to enter it into the TARDIS, it instead shrinks the TARDIS to half its normal size and causes strange effects inside the ship.

The Logopolitans try to stabilise the TARDIS using sonic projectors to project a stasis field while the Monitor and Adric attempt to uncover the fault. Meanwhile, Nyssa has been brought from Traken by the Watcher, the mysterious white figure the Doctor spoke with. She is searching for her father, Tremas. The Monitor and Adric work through the city and discover the shrunken bodies of three Logopolitans. Correcting the error this has caused, they bring the new computation to the TARDIS. Tegan holds the notes up to the TARDIS so the Doctor is able to read them through the scanner and correct the fault. The Doctor emerges from the now restored TARDIS, and admits to Tegan that her aunt is dead. Meanwhile, Nyssa finds the Master, whom she believes to be her father as he is inhabiting Tremas's body. The Master gives her a bracelet, which is actually a device which will allow him to control her actions.

The Master attaches a device to the sonic projectors and sets up a counterwave that brings silence to the Central Registry, preventing the Registers from making their calculations. He then goes to the Registry's control room (a replica of the Pharos Project on Earth, a radio telescope tasked to seek out signs of extraterrestrial life), and demands that the Monitor tell him what the true purpose of Logopolis is. The Doctor arrives with Adric and Nyssa, and Adric deactivates the Master's device, only for the Master to have Nyssa attempt to throttle him, using the bracelet he previously gave her to control her motor responses. Tegan restores the device, and the Master repeats his demand. The Monitor warns the Master that bringing Logopolis to a halt will cause universal disaster, but the Master replies that it is only a temporary effect, which he attempts to demonstrate by deactivating the suppression device.

However, the silence persists and the calculations do not resume. They go outside, and find all the Logopolitans dead, crumbling to dust, and the city itself collapsing. The Master thinks this is some sort of trick and tries to have Nyssa strangle the Monitor, but the control device ceases to function. He tries to increase the device's power, but this causes it to fall apart as local decay increases. The Monitor explains the situation: the universe had long ago passed the point of heat death. To stave off final collapse, the Logopolitans had been modelling a number of temporary Charged Vacuum Emboitments, like the one through which the TARDIS had been previously transported into E-Space. The excess entropy generated by the universe had been passing through the CVEs to other universes. However, The Master's interference has caused the CVEs to close and the universe is now dying at last. Realising that he has no other option, the Doctor orders his companions into the TARDIS, and agrees that he and the Master must work together if they are to prevent the universe's destruction.

As soon as the Doctor and Master walk away from the TARDIS, Tegan sneaks out and follows the Doctor, Master and Monitor back to the Logopolis control room. In the meantime, the Watcher takes the TARDIS, carrying Adric and Nyssa, out of spacetime. The Monitor reveals that they had been completing a program to make the CVEs permanent, and prepares to use it on one of the surviving CVEs, but entropy takes hold of him and he disintegrates before their eyes. The Doctor dismantles the computer and realises the program is stored in bubble memory that they can use with the real Pharos Project. The Doctor, Master and Tegan escape from Logopolis in the Master's TARDIS.

Adric and Nyssa watch helplessly in the Doctor's TARDIS as a portion of the universe is wiped out by encroaching entropy — including Traken. On Earth, the two Time Lords reconfigure the Logopolitan program and feed it into the Project's computers, but the Master points out that the transmitter is pointed away from the last surviving CVE. After speaking with the Watcher, Adric brings the Doctor's TARDIS to Earth as the Doctor and the Master run on foot to realign the dish. The Doctor's companions distract the Project's security guards, enabling the two Time Lords get to the dish's control room, hooking up a light speed overdrive from the Master's TARDIS to ensure the signal gets to the CVE in time. Upon transmission of the program, the CVE begins stabilising.

The Master's co-operation with the Doctor has been a ploy, however. Holding the Doctor at gunpoint with his Tissue Compression Eliminator, he transmits a message to the peoples of the universe, saying that if they do not acknowledge his rule, he will send a signal to close the CVE and restart the collapse. The Doctor climbs onto the radio telescope's gantry to disconnect the power cable, and the Master attempts to prevent him by tilting the dish 90 degrees. The Doctor succeeds in disconnecting the cable, but falls off the gantry. As he hangs on to the disconnected cable, visions of old enemies mock him. Losing his grip, the Doctor plummets to the ground. The Master enters his own TARDIS and it dematerialises.

The Doctor's companions run to the spot where he has fallen. Dying, the Doctor experiences visions of the companions that have accompanied his current form and observes, "It's the end... but the moment has been prepared for." They turn to see the Watcher approach, and as he does so he merges with the Doctor. Nyssa realises that the Watcher was the future Doctor all the time. As the companions look on, the Fourth Doctor regenerates into a new, younger body — the Fifth Doctor...

[edit] Continuity

This story continues a loose arc of three serials featuring the Master. The trilogy began with The Keeper of Traken (1981) and concludes in Castrovalva (1982). Although the Master does not appear until Part Three, his laughter can be heard in the first two episodes and Anthony Ainley is credited accordingly.

The story also concludes a long thread over the preceding season, discussing entropy. In particular, Logopolis serves as punctuation to the overarching events of the earlier "E-Space Trilogy".

As pointed out in About Time 5, by Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood, this serial has arguably the largest body count of any Doctor Who story — albeit mostly off-camera, as the destruction of Logopolis apparently causes a significant portion of the entire universe to be swallowed by a wave of entropy. At the very least, the Traken Union is destroyed, which would put the death toll in the billions and making the Master a mass murderer of unprecedented proportions, albeit one caused incidentally.

The spin-off BBC Books novel The Quantum Archangel by Craig Hinton briefly shows an alternate timeline where the destruction of Logopolis did result in the death of the universe.

This story features the Doctor's TARDIS materialising around the Master's TARDIS, thereby creating a recursive loop. A similar process occurs in The Time Monster, yet does not happen when the TARDIS materialises inside Professor Chronotis's rooms (actually his TARDIS in disguise) in the untelevised Shada.

[edit] The Doctor and regeneration

This story was the last story to feature Tom Baker as "the current" Doctor. Although the Fourth Doctor appeared in the 20th Anniversary special The Five Doctors, this was only in the form of footage from the uncompleted Shada. Baker would reprise his role as the Doctor only in the Children in Need special Dimensions in Time (1993). He currently holds the record for longest tenure (seven years) as the Doctor on-screen.

The projection of the Doctor's future incarnation (in the form of the Watcher) is similar to the future projection of his mentor K’Anpo Rinpoche (in the form of Cho-Je) in the Doctor's previous regeneration story, Planet of the Spiders.

Before the Doctor falls from the dish, the enemies that mock him are the Master (as seen in The Deadly Assassin), a Dalek (Destiny of the Daleks), the Pirate Captain (The Pirate Planet), the Cyberleader (Revenge of the Cybermen), Davros (Genesis of the Daleks), a Sontaran (The Invasion of Time), a Zygon (Terror of the Zygons) and the Black Guardian (The Armageddon Factor).

After falling, as the Doctor lies sprawled on the ground, he sees visions of all the companions that previously accompanied his fourth incarnation: Sarah Jane Smith (Terror of the Zygons), Harry Sullivan (The Sontaran Experiment), Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Invasion Of The Dinosaurs, a Third Doctor story), Leela (The Robots Of Death), K-9 (The Armageddon Factor), Romana I (The Stones of Blood) and Romana II (Full Circle).

The music from the regeneration scene was later reused for the regeneration of Rowan Atkinson's Doctor in Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death.

[edit] Production

Serial details by episode:

Episode	Broadcast date	Run time	Viewership (in millions)
"Part One"	28 February 1981	24:32	7.1
"Part Two"	7 March 1981	24:03	7.7
"Part Three"	14 March 1981	24:32	5.8
"Part Four"	21 March 1981	25:10	6.1
[3][4][5]

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 at Jodrell BankThe Layby seen at the start was filmed on the southbound side of the A413 Amersham Road, Derham near Gerrards Cross. The Layby is still there but the M25 now bridges the road where the scene was filmed.

[edit] 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' 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 as the "Old Doctor". The 2005 relaunch returned the credit to "Doctor Who", and then again to "The Doctor" in "The Christmas Invasion" (at the request of David Tennant).

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. In both instances, Peter Davison was billed second.

[edit] Outside references

The key plot point of shunting excess entropy into another universe was previously used in Isaac Asimov's novel The Gods Themselves.

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

[edit] Errors

When the Master puts the bracelet on Nyssa, one of the gems falls off.

Doctor Who book
Logopolis
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	41
Writer	Christopher H. Bidmead
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Andrew Skilleter
ISBN	0-426-20149-3
Release date	21 October 1982
Preceded by	Full Circle
Followed by	Doctor Who and the Sunmakers

[edit] Broadcast and Commercial releases

The serial was repeated on BBC2 in November/December 1981, daily (Monday-Thursday) (30/11/81) to (03/12/81) at 5.40pm as part of "The Five Faces of Doctor Who". 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. DVD commentary is provided by actors Tom Baker and Janet Fielding, with writer Christopher H. Bidmead.

[edit] In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by Christopher H. Bidmead, was published by Target Books in October 1982. In this version, Bidmead changed the events leading up to the regeneration, so the Doctor is hanging onto the cable, and gives his life while saving the universe by unplugging it.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Logopolis at bbc.co.uk
• Logopolis at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
• Logopolis at the Doctor Who Reference Guide

[edit] Reviews

• Logopolis reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• Logopolis reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide

[edit] Target novelisation

• Logopolis (novelisation) reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide
• On Target — Logopolis

v • d • e Doctor Who season 18 serials The Leisure Hive • Meglos • The E-Space Trilogy (Full Circle • State of Decay • Warriors' Gate) • The Keeper of Traken • Logopolis

v • d • e Doctor Who: The Master television stories Third Doctor Terror of the Autons • The Mind of Evil • The Claws of Axos • Colony in Space • The Dæmons • The Sea Devils • The Time Monster • Frontier in Space Fourth Doctor The Deadly Assassin • The Keeper of Traken • Logopolis Fifth Doctor Castrovalva • Time-Flight • The King's Demons • The Five Doctors • Planet of Fire Sixth Doctor The Mark of the Rani • The Trial of a Time Lord: The Ultimate Foe Seventh Doctor Survival Eighth Doctor Doctor Who Tenth Doctor "Utopia" / "The Sound of Drums" / "Last of the Time Lords" Minor appearances The Caves of Androzani See also The Curse of Fatal Death • Destiny of the Doctors • Scream of the Shalka • Mister Saxon

v • d • e Doctor Who: Regeneration stories First Doctor The Tenth Planet Second Doctor The Power of the Daleks • The War Games Third Doctor Spearhead from Space • Planet of the Spiders/Interference: Book Two (novel; alternate) Fourth Doctor Robot • Logopolis Fifth Doctor Castrovalva • The Caves of Androzani Sixth Doctor The Twin Dilemma • Spiral Scratch (novel) Seventh Doctor Time and the Rani Eighth Doctor Doctor Who Ninth Doctor "The Parting of the Ways" Tenth Doctor "Doctor Who: Children in Need" • "The Christmas Invasion" • "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End" Other characters Planet of the Spiders • Underworld • Destiny of the Daleks • Mawdryn Undead • First Frontier (novel) • The Shadows of Avalon (novel) • "Utopia" See also The Curse of Fatal Death • Valeyard