The Leisure Hive

I like cold, windy beaches. There's a wistful, emotive loveliness about strolling down the promenade in the middle of winter, observing the empty sand, crashing sea and boarded up shop-fronts. I suppose it's because the beach belongs to everyone at the height of summer, and is spoiled because they all want it at once. In winter, it passes into the possession of me and a handful of brave dog-walkers. We appreciate it so much more.

A brilliant place to put the TARDIS and begin a Doctor Who story then, and an even better parking space for the biggest thematic and stylistic shift in Doctor Who's history. We laugh at the people who claim Doctor Who ended with Season 17, but who can deny that everything it had come to stand for, the gradual appropriation of verve and swagger, went with Lalla Ward's toothy smile at the end of "Horns of Nimon"?

You might be forgiven for thinking that fictional years have passed before Brighton Beach, and perhaps they have. I always thought that big picture of an aged, grey Tom with Lalla on his arm from "Doctor Who: A Celebration" looked like the Doctor had retired and Romana was his nursemaid. The relationship is indeed cast adrift in Season 18 - Tom is no longer vibrant or youthful enough for the romantic sparks to really fly, and he seems too preoccupied anyway. "The Leisure Hive" needed a contemporary setting to re-establish a balance between the two characters under this harsh new regime, intent on dragging the show into the nineteen eighties. Brighton Beach would have been perfect.

Alas, "The Leisure Hive's" opening ten minutes are its most sombre and reflective, qualities that appeared as a reaction to the madcap action of the previous year. Without them, the pair are still tearing about as if re-living past glories, only everything is tons more glossy than it needs to be. The problem, then, is that "The Leisure Hive" and Season 18 are far from maudlin and doom-laden, which was what was really needed. Needed because the era was coming to an end, needed because that's how Tom and Lalla seem to want to feel. Needed as a reaction to the very humorous excesses that had sparked the change. Where they should have counterbalanced flippancy with seriousness, instead they address cheapness by making everything look more expensive.

The result is that the series now looks gorgeous, but feels slightly ill fitting in its new guise. It would be unkind to the actors involved to make out they couldn't separate their on-screen characters with their real-life personalities, but just imagine a Season 18 where the Doctor and Romana clashed big-time! Imagine a "Leisure Hive" where the Doctor remained as old and tired as he seems at the start when seen snoring in a deckchair (or even, if they wanted to be really daring, as he becomes when subjected to the Tachyon Generator). Later on, all hands set to work making the early "Logopolis" episodes seem like a prophecy of doom, yet arguably the desired atmosphere had been there for the taking all year. They let Tom and Lalla be themselves enough the previous year, how about now as well? Perhaps one of those many TARDIS scenes could have been home to an almighty Time Lord slanging match, with the two hurling removable roundels at each other?

"The Leisure Hive" is undoubtedly a classy Doctor Who adventure, but one that strives to cook up something fresh and exciting from old ingredients - if only it had all happened a Season later, then perhaps "Castrovalva" would have kicked Peter Davison off with the fresh start he needed. Instead, the transformation begins a year before, and poor old Tom is forced to grin and bear it before he can leave, like a disgruntled employee being forced to work through every last minute of his notice period with a smile on his face. How telling that he seems most at home on windswept Brighton Beach, asleep beneath that cold grey sky...