DOCTOR WHO: SEASON-BY-SEASON - SEASON EIGHTEEN

Several years ago, Doctor Who Magazine created a very special edition of their publication. When the show produced its 200th story, they did an issue called The Mighty 200. A huge survey was taken where the fans ranked, in order of preference, all two hundred existing stories of Doctor Who. Once the survey was tabulated, the magazine published the results. 

One of the more interesting observations made by the people who put the data together was that Caves Androzani was considered the fan favorite. Whereas Twin Dilemma came in at the very bottom. The editor in charge of the whole project pointed out how the survey really highlights just how unusual of a show Doctor Who is. The most popular story is immediately followed by the least-liked. I have to admit, that is pretty damned weird! At the very least, it shows just how quirky we Who Fans are.     

In my own personal tastes, I do not consider Caves to be the best Who story ever. Nor do I think Twin Dilemma is the worst. If you have followed this blog even somewhat-avidly, you'd know those titles would go, respectively, to The Deadly Assassin (or, quite possibly, Power of the Doctor - I'm still thinking it over!) and The Creature from the Pit. 

There is, however, a similar phenomenon that occurs with me if I start ranking the seasons of Doctor Who in my order of preference. 

In my oh-so-humble opinion, the absolute worst season of Doctor Who is followed by its very best.  

WHY I LOVE SEASON EIGHTEEN

Rather than try to be some articulate Fancy Pants, I'm just going to enumerate some things that make Season Eighteen so wonderful: 

1. Christopher H. Damn Bidmead 

When it comes to all the different beautiful things in this season, he is Numero Uno. Who would have thought Doctor Who would ever work as "hard sci-fi"? Christopher H. Bidmead did! And he made it work damn well. 

Much of what makes it so successful in this format is the fact that Bidmead still remembers to maintain a certain level of fantasy to the proceedings. The Tharils, for instance, ride the Time Winds. Just what the Hell is a Time Wind, though?! No one knows for sure, of course. But it makes them sound both scientific and magical at the same time. He is always blending these sort of images together seamlessly.. Remembering that, up until this season, Doctor Who has been much more like science fantasy than science fiction. You can't totally throw the baby out with the bathwater. 

At the same time, though, it is great fun to see Doctor Who being so slick and technical. I know I crap on Star Trek way more than I ought to in this blog (I can't help it, though, it's just so bad!), but this is the season that seems the most like Trek. But it's like Bidmead distilled everything good that exists in the rival franchise and brought it into Who. But, at the same time, left out all the stuff that could have dragged the show down into the clunky, poorly-executed drivel that Star Trek, so often, is! 

Basically, Bidmead's vision for Doctor Who was brilliant! 

2. Getting Tom Baker Under Control

"They've totally stifled Tom Baker!" - is one of the most common complaints I hear about this season. In many ways, I can't really argue with that opinion. But I would add that Baker needed some serious stifling. 

If you read my last review, you'll have seen that I thought Season Seventeen was a pretty big disaster. The largest contributor to its failure, for me, was the fact that Tom Baker's humor did not appear to be getting restrained in any way throughout most of the stories. He, literally, made the show feel like it had become a parody of itself. 

If Baker wanted to leave Doctor Who with some degree of dignity, he needed to be reigned in. Particularly as we moved toward the actual regeneration. The man did play the role for seven seasons and he deserved the very solemn send-off that he got in Logopolis. But he would not have been able to achieve that if he'd been allowed to keep goofing off so much like he had been throughout Season Seventeen. It would have felt too out-of-place to suddenly turn that serious only in his last few episodes. The whole vibe of the season works so much better with a Fourth Doctor who seems to have mellowed. Almost as if he knows what's coming and is accepting his fate calmly. 

It should also be pointed out that, as usual, fan reaction has exaggerated things. The complaints almost seem to indicate that Baker is not allowed to crack a single joke or make one silly face throughout the entire run. The fact of the matter is: he still has a bit of fun here and there. The comedy was reduced but not eliminated. To suddenly make the Fourth Doctor completely serious all the time would have also been too weird. Personally, I think a very nice balance was struck, here. The Doctor became more serious as he neared his end but still remembered to have a bit of a sense of humor about it all. 

3. It All Just Looks so Much Better

While I have already heaped some high praise on Bidmead, some Mad Respect should also go to John Nathan-Turner, too. During the Graham Williams Era, BBC News Shows were actually doing segments on just how terribly cheap Doctor Who was looking. JNT came along and, somehow, upped the budget. Or used the budget more cleverly. Whatever the case, Doctor Who starts looking way better than it did. 

By North American TV Production standards, of course, it was still looking a bit cheap. But it, at least, became a lot less embarrassing to watch with friends who were used to television that was being made in the US. There is a much slicker vibe going on from Season 18, onwards. Some of it looks a bit dated, now, of course. The aesthetics are "very 80s". But that's not, necessarily, a bad thing. Just look at the way Ace actually thanks Kate for the comment on her jacket during Power of the Doctor!  

4. Awesome Directors 

In a few years' time, Graham Harper will direct stories like The Caves of Androzani and Revelation of the Daleks. Fans will go on endlessly about the beauty of his work. And he will deserve every ounce of praise that he receives. He's one of the most brilliant directors to ever grace the show. 

As much as I love Harper, however, I do feel there are two directors from Season Eighteen that deserve just as much attention and never get it. Lovett Bickford begins the whole season with an absolutely amazing cinematic style that truly asserts the show's new identity. After years of boring old three-camera shooting, we get all sorts of peculiar angles we've never seen before in studio filming. I particularly love it when Stimson starts rummaging through Klout's closet and gets murdered. A scene we've seen done several dozen times on the show (supporting cast character discovers something horrible but is killed before they can tell anyone else about it) becomes visually delightful. All thanks to Bickford's brilliant directorial touch

Paul Joyce from Warrior's Gate is the other awesome director that never gets the accolades he deserves. In fact, his directing style was so far ahead of its time that he actually butted heads with BBC Executives and was even fired for a short period of time because he refused to engage in the techniques they were insisting he employ. Many of his shots are genuinely breath-taking. While other directors seemed to struggle within the limits that video in the 80s imposed upon them, Joyce embraces the whole technology and gets it to produce some legitimately iconic imagery. 

While these two truly stand out, all the directors in the season really step up to the plate and do their best to give us something that feels a lot more "art-house" than we've been getting in the past. Look at some of the moody shots Grimwade creates in Logopolis as the Master slaughters the Logopolitans with his tissue compressor. I love the way the camera focuses in on a set piece as we hear the blast of energy from the Time Lord's weapon. Things then pull back and we see doll-sized victims in the aftermath. A great way to execute the sequence. 

The directing, along with everything else in Season Eighteen, is just so wonderfully distinctive. 

"CHANGE, MY DEAR. AND IT SEEMS NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON!" 

If you read my Review of Season Fifteen (and, if you didn't but want to, here's the link: https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2023/03/doctor-who-season-by-season-review-of_18.html), I take a moment to discuss how a new Producer and/or Showrunner inserts themselves into a long-running program. I note that Graham Williams did it very subtly. He still had certain stories made at the beginning that kept a similar tone to what his predecessor had been doing. Slowly but surely, as his seasons progressed, he re-made the show into the image he wanted it to be in.

JNT takes the exact opposite tact. He lets us know very succinctly that this is a new era of Doctor Who. Had it not been for the re-assuring presence of Tom Baker and Lalla Ward, we might almost wonder if this was a totally new show! 

Change hits us hard in the face right from the very first second.  A new title sequence and theme song greet us as Leisure Hive begins. For quite some time, we had been getting that "birth canal" effect (as a friend of mine once described it!). It was time for a change. 

The electronic music used in the opening definitely lets us know we're in the 80s, now! But it also represents another major change. That heavy synth carried on throughout the rest of the episode does, too. The days of more organic-sounding incidental music are over. Which I was quite fine with. I know a lot of fans adored the work of Dudley Simpson. I quite liked it too. But I am equally happy with the composers we get in this era. They did some brilliant work. The best "March of the Cybermen" song, for instance, comes from this period (although the Chibnall-era one is also a lot of fun!). 

Even that opening shot in Leisure Hive signposts that we are getting a very different version of Doctor Who. I can't think of any other time before this when the show has done such a slow, stylish pan across location scenery. It should have actually driven my ADHD up a wall! But Bickford actually keeps it quite visually interesting. And I do like how it eventually leads us to a snoring Fourth Doctor napping on the beach. The moment almost seems to say: "Things may look very different - but, don't worry, it's still Doctor Who!"

Aside from a plot structure that feels very odd for a Doctor Who Story, most of the changes we see in Leisure Hive are cosmetic. More significant alterations only occur later in the season. 

"CHANGES AREN'T PERMANENT - BUT CHANGE IS!" - N. Peart and P. Dubois

As the season progresses, the show goes in new directions in much more drastic ways. 

First off, we get a new traveller aboard the TARDIS mid-way through the season. The first male one in quite some time. He has some of the traits of a Graham Williams-era companion. Like Romana, he hails from an advanced culture and is, therefore, useful at helping the Doctor with technical issues. But he's also quite young and naive. Like many of the 60s companions were. 

Similar companions were soon to come. Nyssa is, in many ways, just Romana at an earlier age. Like Adric, being so young creates a very different dynamic between her and the Doctor. Whereas Romana and the Doctor felt like equals, it's much more of a mentor/pupil relationship with the Trakenite and the Time Lord (just as it is with Adric). 

Still, it's quite nice that moments like the one we get near the end of Keeper of Traken keep happening. I love that Adric and Nyssa can rig a device that paralyses the Source. This, in turn, triggers a sequence of events that, pretty much, saves the Doctor's life and halts the destruction of an entire civilization (for one story, at least!). Companions may not be so old and wise, anymore - but they're still very useful!  

Tegan only arrives in the very last story, of course. She's the first "Contemporary Earth Companion" that we've seen in quite a while. But, even in Logopolis, she's coming across very differently from the modern-day female companions we got in the 70s. Making her very obstinate and headstrong causes her to seem less like the damsels-in-distress Jo Grant and Sarah Jane often were. So, even though Tegan can't build complex machinery or stab her opponents with Janis Thorns, she still feels like she has something to contribute to each story she's in. She won't just need rescuing all the time or only be there to ask: "What is it, Doctor?!" 

Naturally enough, as new companions roll in - old ones depart. Romana and K9 get left behind in E-Space. Their departure represents the final shedding of All Things Graham Williams. The show is definitely venturing into new territories. All that's left is for Tom Baker, himself, to bow out. Which will happen quite soon. 

These are the much deeper changes that JNT is implementing. The core formula of Doctor Who is moving in a significantly different direction as Season Eighteen progresses. While he hits us quite hard with superficial modifications right away, he is wise enough to take a bit of time with the more significant new courses that the show is going in.  

THE ACTUAL STORIES 

Okay, we've been discussing various elements and traits to this season that I have loved. Let's get into the stories, proper. Are they actually good? Or is it just the more superficial elements of the season that have impressed me so much? 

I can say with full conviction that the stories this season are all excellent. 

Some better than most, of course. And it does take a bit of adjustment to really be able to appreciate them. Oftentimes, they are written very differently from what we've been getting for the last seventeen years. That, in itself, is a bit of a smack in the face. The absence of darker-than-dark villains and rebels that are ready to revolt can leave the viewer feeling a bit lost (fortunately, we still get a bit of that in State of Decay). But I am ecstatic over this particular change. Doctor Who works best when it is re-inventing itself. Trying new things rather than just resting on its laurels. This is why, of course, I don't have the greatest things to say about most of the Pertwee Era. Alot of it is very formulaic. Whereas I would rather the show blunder a bit by trying something new and different like, say, a found footage episode. Rather than just keep cranking out the same old stuff over and over like a sausage factory. 

Leisure Hive is definitely different. The plot, in general, revolves around a form of technology. Not something we've really seen before in the show. Tachyonics is a bit of a MacGuffin, of course. It seems capable of doing a whole lot of different things. It can create fun projections, clone living matter or even be used for time travel. But I wouldn't call this one of those "does whatever the story needs it to" contrivances that we, sometimes, see.  From what I understand of tachyonics, it does potentially have a variety of applications. So it's a handy science to use in a story of this nature. Pretty sure if the Doctor had needed a giant purple unicorn that can shoot lasers from its eyes, he could have programmed the tachyon generator to make one for him!    

It's a very solidly-written plot, too. With several well-developed threads running through it and some good world-building. It also definitely lays downs the fact that we'll be getting a lot of hard sci-fi, this season. So it was good to start things off this way .

I always enjoy a story with some good re-watch value to it. It is nice to do some extra viewings to figure out which times we're seeing Bad Foamasi doing nasty things and Nice Foamasi doing decent things. Something you can't really work out if you only see the story once. 

I'm also very impressed with how Production wanted to intentionally create a cliffhanger that doesn't just get resolved seconds after then next episode starts. It's quite fun watching the Doctor walk around looking like Monty Python's "It's Man" for a bit. 

But there's one sequence that I really enjoy in Part Four that no one ever seems to bring up much. I love it when Romana is being marched off by what she believes to be Pangol clones but are really the Doctor underneath. As the clones start destabilising all around her, the scene is clearly being played for laughs. Particularly as the last Doctor (who was actually the first) checks himself to make sure he's solid. 

I watch that every time and think: "This is how Doctor Who should go for the laughs. The whole thing is very clever. What a breath of fresh air! After several years of Tom Baker just cracking bad jokes and making silly faces, the program needed to do this. They needed to re-assure us that they've moved past the low-brow stuff and will be delivering much wittier comedy from hereon in." 

To me, this is a very important scene. It signposts that the Great Tom Baker Comedy Show has come to an end. Doctor Who will still be funny, but in a much more sophisticated manner.

Next, of course, is Meglos. This is probably our weakest link in the season. Its characters are a bit on the two-dimensional side and some of the expository dialogue feels a little too forced. But, by no means, would I call this a bad story. Just not quite as good as the other stuff in Eighteen. In the end, I still find it all quite entertaining. Meglos goes down as my all-time favorite one-time-only villain (https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/04/book-of-lists-top-5-one-time-only_28.html). It's also another really solidly-written script. Admittedly, Meglos has a bit more fun with itself than the rest of the stories of this year. Production even lets Tom Baker goof off a bit more. But it still never goes too far.  

When Baker portrays Meglos, however, we really see some restraint at work. In just about any franchise I've seen, when actors get a chance to play an evil version of their usual character, they tend to really ham it up. Tom gives a sinister air to the darker version of himself, but he keeps it pretty low-key. Meglos, after all, is trying not to make the Tigellans suspicious. So it's only logical that he shouldn't get too wild with it. But even when he's letting the facade down and doesn't care anymore about fooling anyone, he still pitches things at the right level .Who fans have always been lucky. When we get villains like the Abbot of Amboise or Eleven possessed by the Cyberiad, it's always well-acted. 

So, the first two stories of the season are nicely-done free-standing adventures. We, now, move into the Trilogies. Which are also quite magnificent. 

THE TRILOGIES - E-SPACE

Why, oh why, had it taken the show this long to come up with the idea of doing a trilogy? I mean, really, eighteen seasons in and this is the first time they try it? 

There had been sequels, of course. Even just last season, Destiny of the Daleks had felt like a sequel to Genesis of the Daleks. We also had stories that followed each other that were strongly interconnected. Like Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks. On the other end of the spectrum, we had ambitious efforts like The Key to Time. Where one long story gets told over the span of an entire season. But it wasn't til Season Eighteen that someone finally decided: "Hey! Let's stack three stories back-to-back and have them all deal with a central theme." 

To me, a Trilogy is like "the baby bear option". Umbrella Seasons were too long and sequels too short. This was just right. 

The E-Space Trilogy keeps it really simple. The TARDIS slips through a CVE and struggles for three tales to find its way back home. Easy, straightforward stuff. But some great story-telling takes place throughout it.

Full Circle  is every geeky teenage boy's dream come true. A script you wrote for your favorite Sci-Fi TV programme gets accepted! Being so young and inexperienced, Andrew Smith probably took a lot of coaching from the script editor. One can certainly see Bidmead's influence in this tale. It definitely has that "hard sci fi" edge to it. But it all works quite well. Full Circle is a very intelligently-written story that makes it almost hard to believe it came from the pen of a 17-year-old boy. 

I love that we finally get another moment of moral indignation from Four as he discovers the Deciders are authorising a live dissection of the young Marshman (Marshboy?). He hasn't been this upset since Pirate Planet and it's nice to see the character behaving in such a manner, again. I wish more scenes like this had been written for this incarnation. Baker performs them very well. 

Overall, Full Circle is a solid little story that accomplishes its tasks well. It introduces us to E-Space and has a decent plot to it. It also fits in quite nicely with so much of the other high-concept stuff going on throughout the season.  

State of Decay does the exact opposite. This is the story that most resembles the sort of material we were getting before Season Eighteen. A much more "traditional" Doctor Who adventure. Bidmead did attempt a re-write to make it feel much more sophisticated and cerebral but the director assigned to the story insisted on the original version from Terrance Dicks. 

Impressively enough, Decay still feels like it fits in with everything else. But it also delivers a very important message: 

"Look, Seasons Sixteen and Seventeen! Look at how good you could have been if you had kept Tom Baker under control!" 

Again, Tom does have a bit of fun throughout the story. The joke, for instance, with Romana accidentally stepping on his foot was, more than likely, something he came up with on the spot. The vampires even come perilously close to feeling campy in some places. But, for the most part, we're able to take the whole thing reasonably seriously. And that makes it very refreshing to watch. It is the sort of story we would have gotten in the seasons I just mentioned (in fact, it was originally meant to be made in one of them but got pushed back to Season Eighteen) but probably wouldn't have been half as effective because The Great Tom Baker Comedy Show would have altered it far more than Bidmead ever could have. 

Quite often, the middle installment of a trilogy is the weakest. But State of Decay stands just as strong as the other two. 

THE TRILOGIES - REGENERATION 

And so, the end draws near. Though the saga won't truly complete itself until next season, the Regeneration Trilogy begins... 

While we're still eight episodes away from the moment that has been prepared for, Keeper of Traken manages to feel quite sombre. The funeral atmosphere will increase significantly in the next story, of course. But I still feel hints of it in this adventure, too. Admittedly, I've had my issues with Baker. He's not as high up on my list of fave Doctors as he is with most fans (https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2016/11/book-of-lists-doctors-from-worst-to.html). But I still can't help but be a bit sad that we haven't much time left with him. And I usually start feeling that way as Keeper begins. I'm not even sure why the first few minutes of the story instill this emotion in me. Maybe it's the sudden absence of Romana and K9... 

If we're being really honest, though, the real purpose of Keeper of Traken is to re-introduce the Master as a recurring character. Those last few minutes of Part Four with the two old rivals facing off are really quite spectacular. As is the takeover of poor 'ole Tremas in the final scene (as much as I feel sorry for the guy, that's what you get when you play with anagrams!). 

A story of this nature can always be a bit tricky in its execution. When it introduces a very significant change in the Lore of the show, the lead-up to that moment can be quite lacklustre. Almost as if no one really cared much about the actual plot, they just wanted to get to the Big Moment. 

It's massively cool, for instance, when we discover the Master is in league with the Daleks during Frontier in Space. The five-and-a-half episodes of captures-and-escapes that lead up to that Reveal,  however, are not so exciting!   

Fortunately, I don't feel this way about Keeper. There is a solid amount of plot and even intrigue to sustain the three-episodes-and-some-change that occurs before the climactic confrontation in the Master's Console Room. 

There is a very nice Elizabethan feel to the whole proceedings. Not just in the costume, prop and set designs but in the very story structure, itself. The characters and various twists and turns that happen within the tale feel very much like something from a Shakespearean play (or one his contemporaries who had to live in his shadow!).    

There's also a couple of really gorgeous arcs that work through the four parts. Kassia's obsession to stop her husband from becoming the next Keeper takes her down a darker and darker path until she is completely trapped in the most miserable of fates. It's a great little descent  to observe. I also like how we learn more and more that the Melkur isn't just a statue with nasty intentions. As the story evolves, we witness snippets that indicate just how elaborate of a character he is. Because this builds up so beautifully, that Big Reveal at the end of the fourth episode is all-the-grander. 

So, yes, it's great to have the Master back after a fairly long absence (something the show likes to do now and again), but it's even better that Keeper of Traken works just as well as a story even before we get to the Return of the Master. 

THE TRUE CLASSICS 

Some of you, no doubt, are remarking to yourselves: "Rob! You've been talking about the Trilogies but have been excluding certain stories!" 

I did that for a reason, of course. I wanted to put specific adventures in their own special category. Season Eighteen gives us two absolute masterpieces and I felt I should discuss them separately from the reviews of all the other tales.    

I've already spoken about how visually amazing Warrior's Gate is and how great of a job Paul Joyce does directing it. These attributes, alone, almost make it a Classic. The aesthetics of this tale are breath-taking. Like Leisure Hive, that opening shot sets such an incredible tone,  We can see that we're in for something very different. And we get exactly that. The imagery in this story is incredible. So many little details make this is so fun to watch. The coin flipping through the air as the ship crashes. The way Biroc looks as he's running out of phase across the void. How, in Part One, the Doctor re-sets the goblet he will knock over at the end of Part Three. It's all absolutely gorgeous. 

But flashy visuals can't be enough. We need a good story, too. Fortunately, Warrior's Gate doesn't just look good - it also has an incredibly cool and delightfully bizarre plot. This is not just something we've never really seen before in Doctor Who, it's, pretty much, completely different from anything we've ever seen on television! JNT may have been a controversial figure, but it's hard to debate the fact that he really gave creative freedom to the writers. He even admits that there were times during this story's creation where he wasn't entirely sure what was meant to be going on in the narrative. But he trusted the talent that was composing the script and let them go ahead with it. Which ended up giving us one of the most unique and legitimately awesome tales the show has ever produced. It's extremely high concept and, perhaps, even a bit pretentious. But that's part of what makes it so damned beautiful. 

Warriors Gate doesn't quite make it into my Top Ten, but it gets pretty close. 

Logopolis, on the other hand, does make it in (https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2015/12/book-of-lists-top-ten-who-stories-10.html). It's also my favorite Master Story (https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2021/11/book-of-lists-top-five-master-stories_29.html) Essentially, there's a lot that I love about it. So, as always, I will try to avoid repeating things said in other entries. There is, however, one point that must be re-emphasised: 

The music in this story is just so damned amazing. 

Easily, one of the best soundtracks any Doctor Who story has ever had. The atmosphere it evokes makes an already great story all-the-more incredible. The church organ effect creates that funeral tone that so many fans talk about. But there's more to these melodies than just melancholia. Look at how the excitement level increases during the chase scenes across the Pharos Project grounds because of the score that's put behind it. Or how the flute effect makes everything feel so much more hopeful as Tom Baker  transitions into Peter Davison  

The music is truly magical 

Oddly enough, I never really talk much about Tom Baker's actual performance in any of my reviews. There are a few scenes in this story where I feel he does some of his best acting in the whole show. I love how much he changes his characterisation after talking to the Watcher in Part Two. While he won't reveal to Adric (and to us, either, of course!) who this mysterious figure is, there is a beautiful undertone to his portrayal from this point, onwards. He is a man who is now conscious of his own imminent demise and will do his damnedest to face it bravely. I also absolutely love it as he sits on the floor of the console room of his shrunken TARDIS and proclaims: "I will not be beaten! I will simply not be beaten!" It's a genuinely inspirational moment. 

As I have said before, I do have issues with some of the choices Tom Baker has made over his seven seasons. But in Logopolis, I love him dearly. When the Watcher merges with him and we watch Four fade away, I do shed a legitimate tear or two. 

There will probably never be a better swansong story than Logopolis. 

CONCLUSION

And thus, it ends: The best season the show has ever produced. I know many would probably give the title of "greatest season" to something earlier in this period. But that "Golden Age" always seems to be plagued by, at least, one story a season that really missed the mark. Sometimes more. 

Whereas I have so few complaints about anything we see in Eighteen. If anything bothers me, it's that K9 does get abused just a little too much! But even that makes a sort of sense. It telegraphs the automaton's oncoming departure. Life with the Doctor is just getting a little too rough for him!   

Otherwise, so much of the material in this season is made to such a high standard. JNT and Bidmead really do drag the show out from the pit is was sliding down and give us something so much better. The whole gesture almost feels a bit abrasive. Going from something like Creature from the Pit to Warrior's Gate can almost give a viewer whiplash!   

Season Eighteen is so good that it can even teach lessons to the show's future. Like many of the seasons of New Who, there is an arc moving across all the tales of Eighteen. The central image of the whole season is Entropy. Aside from a somewhat blatant reference to it in Keeper of Traken (which it manages to get away with since it is the penultimate story of the season so they want to emphasise things just a little bit harder as we get to the grand finale!), the theme is handled with great subtlety. In stories like Leisure Hive, Meglos and State of Decay, for instance,  we see civilisations in different stages of collapse. They are all dealing with various forms of entropy that have eroded their systems. Conveying the core idea of the season in such a manner is so much better than just awkwardly shoe-horning in the word "Torchwood" or "Hybrid" every few episodes. 

One of the other things that really stands out for me in Season Eighteen is how good of a departure Tom Baker actually gets. This is extra surprising when you start learning the behind-the-scenes happenings at the time. He really does seem to be on some sort of path of self-sabotage as he keeps trying to re-create the circumstances of his last two seasons. Apparently, there were some massive fights with various members of Production as they insisted Tom perform scenes the way they were written rather than add his own little "embellishments" that would, quite frequently, destroy the credulity of the story. It's almost ludicrous that so many people struggled so hard to make sure he gets a great send-off while the actor, himself, seemed dead-set on ruining it! 

Fortunately, the effort was worth it. No Doctor gets a better exit. Not just in his final story, but throughout the entire season. The central theme of entropy applies to the lead, himself. He too, is withering away as time erodes him. And, because he ties in so nicely with all the other images of entropy, the whole year feels like it was about bracing ourselves' for his departure. 

Everything in this season comes together quite beautifully. The show moves in an entirely new direction. Production quality, on every level, improves radically. And one of the most beloved versions of our hero leaves the show in a dignified and legitimately touching manner. 

Season Eighteen is, quite simply, a masterpiece. Doctor Who is at its best, here.