Logopolis/Castrovalva: A Universal Change

 Hello!

This week, I'm reviewing the Fourth Doctor's final episode and the Fifth Doctor's first episode! Both stories, as it happens, feature the Master, one of the Doctor's most notorious enemies. The Master is also a fellow Time Lord, though one who's reached the end of his cycle and therefore resorted to stealing bodies. At the time of these episodes, he's squatting in the body of the father of one of the Doctor's companions. His role in the episodes is rather strange - he's directly responsible for the Fourth Doctor's death, tries to get the newly-regenerated Fifth Doctor killed, then tries to help him recover from his traumatic regeneration...so that he can kill him properly. To top off this weirdness, he used to be the Doctor's friend, though he went down a very different path to the Doctor.

Goodbye to an iconic Doctor

Logopolis

Logopolis took place at the tail-end of Tom Baker's turn as the Doctor; he played the Doctor for the longest period, to date - seven years! It's no wonder Tom Baker has proved an iconic Doctor. When we first see the Doctor, pacing around a room in the TARDIS, he even looks older and greyer - it's the first on-screen depiction of the Doctor growing older. The Doctor is accompanied by his latest companion, a boy (from another universe!) called Adric; prior to the events of Logopolis, the Doctor went to another universe, called E-Space, where he met Adric. His companion at that time, another Time Lord called Romana, chose to stay in E-Space to help out there. It's also worth mentioning an adventure the Doctor and Adric had on a planet called Traken immediately before the events of this serial; the Master once again had his fingers in everything. They met a young lady called Nyssa there; she later becomes the Doctor's companion as well. The third companion, the newest, is Tegan Jovanka, introduced in this episode. She is a cheerful, chatty Australian air stewardess. Well, it's her first day, so she's not quite an air stewardess. She meets the Doctor when, on the way to Heathrow for her first day, the car breaks down and she goes to a nearby police box to phone for help. In a departure from tradition, it is a police box, just with two TARDISes (the Doctor's and the Master's) in it.

 Logopolis is a planet of mathematical geniuses - the people there can devise any calculation, any solution to a problem, even create things out of thin air. They do this through word of mouth, no computers. They're also single-handedly preventing entropy from engulfing the universe, by way of opening small gaps in the fabric of reality - the universe is no longer a closed system, so entropy isn't as severe.

Nice place.

When we first see the Doctor and Adric, they're in a room in the TARDIS, having a discussion about fixing the chameleon circuit, so the TARDIS won't be stuck as a police box. After obtaining measurements from a real police box on Earth, they head to Logopolis, as the genius mathematicians there can calculate a solution to the chameleon circuit problem. This is also where Tegan turns up - she enters the police box for help and gets stuck in the Doctor's TARDIS. The Master, having also been stuck in the Doctor's TARDIS, has been brought to Logopolis; Nyssa, meanwhile, has been teleported there by a mysterious figure; said figure was also spotted on Earth by Tegan and the Doctor! The Master sticks around to cause trouble...spoiler alert, this ends up accelerating the rate of entropy. The two Time Lords team up to prevent the destruction of the universe, heading to the Pharos Project on Earth to use the telescope there to open one of those voids and slow entropy down. The Doctor's companions, removed from the space-time continuum by the Watcher, are safe...Nyssa's home planet, however, is destroyed. Along with a full quarter of the universe. The Master has a lot to answer for. Adric pilots the TARDIS back into the universe, to the Pharos Project; meanwhile, the Doctor and the Master successfully prevent the destruction of the remaining 3/4 of the universe by opening the void. Then the Master tries to blackmail said 3/4 into accepting him as its ruler; the Doctor cancels the blackmail transmission, but falls off the radio tower in the process. As his companions gather round, the Watcher appears and merges with the Doctor; the Master, meanwhile, absconds, giggling to himself. Because that's how you react to watching someone you've known since childhood fall to his death.

The Doctor and his companions. Left to right, Tegan, Nyssa, Adric and the Doctor.

Castrovalva

Castrovalva, as with Power of the Daleks and Robot, begins with a recap of the Doctor's regeneration. It also introduces the concept of a regeneration going wrong - the synapses get mixed up, meaning that complex situations can be very unhealthy for the regenerating Time Lord. Zero Rooms help with that - they cancel out all external influences. The Zero Room in the Doctor's TARDIS gets destroyed during the events of Castrovalva, which is why the Doctor and friends need to go to Castrovalva.

The minute he's finished regenerating, the Doctor and his companions have to run for the TARDIS - they're currently on private property without permission. Once they reach the TARDIS, the Doctor goes off in search of the Zero Room, with Adric going to help him. He later disappears; on the way to the TARDIS, he got captured by the Master, and the Master replaced him with a holographic projection. Making use of the Index File (flight thingy on planes...and TARDISes), Tegan pilots the TARDIS to Castrovalva. Which is a city, by the way. Once entering the city, the Doctor is prescribed some sleeping draughts by the physician, who assures Nyssa and Tegan that he'll be well again in the morning. The next day, it turns out Castrovalva is not actually a real city - it was created through the mathemtical calculations of poor Adric. The Master devised the entire series of events (including the Index File, apparently!) in order to trick the Doctor into coming to him, so he could kill him properly. Once the Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan, the librarian, and the physician find their way to the Master's lair, they find out the truth. The librarian bravely sacrifices his non-existent life to set Adric free. The Doctor and his companions promptly make good their escape, while the Master gets trapped as the city fades from existence. Not that that's the last of him, naturally.

Nyssa on the far left, Adric on the Doctor's right, Tegan on the Doctor's left and the Doctor himself in the centre

Overall, I really enjoyed Logopolis - it's thrilling. It's interesting to see the Doctor looking older and greyer - you see that he's visibly aged. That does make sense - the character aged with the actor. The Doctor almost seems to have some sort of precognition of what will happen - he has a grim, gaunt look in his face which suggests that he knows his time is coming. This attitude is present elsewhere - even the TARDIS is getting old. There's a sense of old age, world-weariness, where all is fading and leaving only memories, such as Romana's old room. Tegan provides a contrast - she's light-hearted and jovial, full of energy. In some senses, she is an omen of rejuvenation and change; similarly, the Doctor jettisons Romana's room, abandoning the old and embracing the new. Though such symbolism is presumably unintentional, it's still neat foreshadowing of the Doctor's regeneration. 

The characters are all fun as well. It's fun to see how quickly Nyssa, Adric and the Doctor bond with Tegan. Nyssa and Tegan's reactions to the Master killing their loved ones is realistic and natural; Tegan breaks down into tears, while Nyssa is understandably furious with the Master. Indeed, Nyssa's reaction to Traken being annihilated is interesting as well - she's completely calm. You get the impression that she's in shock, unable to express the grief of seeing her entire planet disappear. The Doctor, similarly, is evidently disgusted by the Master and the necessity of working with him; while the Master is exultant, the Doctor barely looks at him and refers to working with him as "collaboration". In light of the Master's misdeeds, both on a personal level and those affecting the universe, the Doctor's use of the term "collaboration" has connotations of those who collaborated with the Nazis in the Second World War. The Doctor therefore implicitly puts the Master on the same level as the Nazis - which effectively demonstrates how disgusted he is with the Master's actions. The Doctor's nobility can also be seen in the fact that he willingly endangers his own life to stop the Master from blackmailing the universe – the Doctor actively puts his life in danger for the sake of every living thing in the universe. It's a telling transition from the First Doctor, who in his regeneration episode was far more passive in his sacrifice. I would rate Logopolis 9/10 - it's got good plotting and believable characterisation. The music is also really good - especially the Doctor's regeneration music.

Speaking of seeing change in action, Castrovalva represents a change in the depiction of the post-regeneration process. While Power of the Daleks, Spearhead from Space and Robot featured the Doctor experiencing various post-regenerative symptoms such as memory loss, disassociation and mania, Castrovalva is the first to have the Doctor's post-regenerative state be a plot point. The Doctor spends most of the runtime in a state of confusion; as a result, his companions are forced to look after him, and to take responsibility for some of the usual roles of the Doctor, such as flying the TARDIS. It also provides an opportunity to deepen Nyssa and Tegan's relationship, as Adric spends most of the story captive. They balance each other out - Nyssa is a scientist, basing decisions on logic and reasoning, while Tegan is more belief-driven, acting more impulsively. As the Doctor puts it, Tegan is the coordinator - while Adric the maths whizz and Nyssa the scientist sometimes prevaricate, attempting to think through the possible solutions, Tegan simply takes the plunge, spurs the others on to act.

Another element of this contrast between Nyssa and Tegan is the fact that all three of the Doctor's companions have a role to play post-regeneration. As illustrated, Tegan's the co-ordinator, while Nyssa's the scientist, able to take the helm while the Doctor's out of commission. Adric, equally, is the bridge; he's the one who knew the Fourth Doctor the best, so he's the one who can guide the Fifth the easiest. The Thirteenth Doctor later summarised the post-regeneration period as self-discovery: old instincts from previous incarnations mixed in with new impulses, trusting your gut and seeing what happens. (Come to think about it, that neatly describes the Doctor's general ethos!) Adric would be a guide in such a situation - he knows best how the Doctor would think, so can remind the new Doctor how he would think. This is best illustrated in a scene where the Doctor regresses to the behavioural patterns of his First, Second, Third and Fourth incarnations – the Doctor, struggling to understand who he is, reverts to who he was in an effort to guide himself to familiar ground.

On a similar note, I like the familiarity between the characters - Nyssa and Tegan, for example, despite only meeting a few hours ago, already get on very well, working very efficiently as a team. The Doctor has similarly only met Tegan a few hours prior, but he already trusts her intensely, acknowledging her skills. Nyssa and Adric's interactions are also sweet - one that comes to mind is their reunion in Logopolis; Adric sees Nyssa and immediately shouts her name in joy. Nyssa, for her part, is clearly ecstatic to see Adric. Equally, after he's been captured in Castrovalva, Adric risks punishment by sneaking off to visit Nyssa - and specifically Nyssa. When he visits, she's visibly worried about his plight, but at the same time relieved that he's at least OK enough to appear to her.

Following precedent, Castrovalva is quite low-key and light-hearted in comparison to Logopolis; it provides a calm, tranquil experience, much as the titular city is purported to do. I would rate it at 9/10.

Before

And after!

Random observations:

-When Nyssa realises that the Master killed her father,  his reaction is spectacularly cold: his only response is that her father's corpse remains useful.

-I suspect that the Watcher is a less sophisticated version of Cho-Je in Planet of the Spiders: what prompts the regeneration is so lethal that a projection of the Time Lord's future self appears to assist them in their regeneration.

-According to expanded universe materials, Tegan learns during the Fifth Doctor's tenure that he has a fear of heights. This is unsurprising for Tegan, given the circumstances of the Fourth Doctor's death.

-Adding on to that, I have a theory that that applies for all Time Lords who die suddenly - their next incarnation fears whatever killed the previous. The Fifth Doctor fears heights, the Eighth Doctor would fear guns, the Missy incarnation of the Master would have an inexplicable nervousness around sharp objects. (The incarnation prior got stabbed. By Missy.)

-The Eleventh Doctor later described Tegan as a "gobby Australian". Charming!

-The Doctor claims that the chameleon circuit's stuck. However, the outside doesn't look the same throughout the show - I think it's still semi-functional, the TARDIS just likes it like that.

-There's an amusing sequence in the final episode of Logopolis where the Doctor's companions distract the security guards as the Doctor and the Master leg it up the radio tower; Nyssa and Adric tell the guards that they're aliens who have heard the Pharos Project's message. It's not actually false, as both are in fact aliens.

-Adric continues trying to say he's an alien in the beginning of Castrovalva. The security guards still do not believe him.

-He also repeatedly tells the guards that the Doctor's regeneration might have gone wrong...despite the fact that they'll hardly know what regeneration is, let alone that it might go wrong.

-It's never explicitly stated what the final stage of a regeneration going wrong would be.

-In both Logopolis and Castrovalva the Cloister Bell goes off to signal imminent doom; this never happened in earlier episodes. I can only conclude that during the First Doctor's time, the Cloister bell was broken.

-You might be wondering how Adric visited Nyssa when he was captive. It might have been a psychic image - the boy's a genius, after all. Or she dreamt it, which I think says a lot about her concern for her friend.

-Technically, if you don't count people who never existed, nobody died in Castrovalva. 

-Regeneration count - fourth regeneration, caused by a long fall (Fourth Doctor to Fifth Doctor). 8 of 12 regenerations remaining.