Logopolis

“Doctor Who and the Watcher”. “Entropy The Dragon”, “Genesis of the Master”

“The One with the Magical Column” (USA), “Entropy is Green??” (Physics Today)

Doctor Who stops the Master from destroying most of the universe but at the cost of his charisma and popularity with the British public.

*** - It’s a laugh a minute and no mistake.

“The Watcher – so he was Peter Finklestone all the time” (cut for legal reasons)

The Master: “Woolly pants Doctor”

The Doctor: “Yes but very itchy when worn next to the skin”

The portable cassette player shown during the Pharos Project scenes was such new and exciting technology that two security guards were permanently on standby in case it needed guarding. Such machines at the time cost more than an entire season's Doctor Who budget.

A scrap of paper in the BBC written archive shows that algebra was used to prove that a third companion was needed to bridge the regeneration: T=D+F+(10xW)+(7.5xS)  Chris Bidmead put a tick by the side of it to show it had the approval of a scientist.

A film crew from BBC1's "Panorama" series were shadowing production of the final episode because JNT - in an early publicity drive - had leaked the story that Tom Baker would actually die and regenerate into Peter Davison. Panorama fell for the story and were hoping to gather a dossier of evidence they could hand over to Scotland Yard.

Real entropy was used in episodes three and four. It wasn't correctly disposed of afterwards and Television Centre was closed for a fortnight in 1986 when traces of entropy were discovered in the heating ducts.

The idea of the hero falling to his death would later be used in an episode of Jeremy Brett's "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" though with much less success.

The soundtrack for Logopolis was number one in the charts for a week - taking over from Roxy Music's "Jealous Guy" and being knocked off the top by the Shakin' Stevens classic "This Ole House".

...is that even if the moment is prepared for, the end is still the end.

Si Hunt

Some years ago, Francois Devine and I decided to prove once and for all whether there is life on other planets. I forget why we wanted to know – it was probably something to do with debunking Star Trek – but went spent six days and nights staring through a large telescope in the hope that we would spot something conclusive. With hindsight, it might’ve been better had we taken it in turns to stare through the telescope and slept while off duty. Instead, one stared until his spectacles became too misty to see through and the other wrote down every single detail of what we observed (or rather stood by ready to write down anything we might’ve seen). After six days and nights, delirium set in and I’m ashamed to say we became a little boisterous.

“This telescope is rather like a see saw” opined Francois Devine.

“Yes it is” I agreed.

“Shall we play?” he asked. Those of you paying attention will have seen how foolish I was to agree to this – imagine placing an apple on one side and an entire green grocers on the other.

“Yes – let’s” I agreed. I sat on the narrow end – my gusset being sufficiently close to the viewing lenses that we could never again use it for the purpose it was intended – and waited for Francois Devine to sit on the magnifying end. The moment he placed the first hint of a buttock on our makeshift see saw I was catapulted some twenty feet into the air.

So you see there is nothing heroic in falling from a telescope. At least I didn’t have hallucinations on impact – I was attended to by Francois Devine, a man walking his dog (more precisely a man wanting me to get off his dog) and Sir Cliff Richard whose presence passed everyone else by but I saw him so he must’ve been there. There is literally no other explanation.

"I remember watching part four with a mix of regret and excitement" wrote Peter-Peter Coggy in 'Doctor Who Splash' magazine. "With three minutes to go, my heart was thumping. When we had the montage of old clips, my trousers were steaming and when Tom Baker's Doctor died I thought I would too. The mood of utter desolation I felt was only lifted when Peter Davison's face appeared (I said to Mrs Coggy that I do like an honest and open face) and when my father started shouting at the television, swearing to write to Points of View and demand an explanation as to why the Doctor didn't land on Adric, thus killing him too. They read out dad's letter but in a tone of voice which made him sound like a nutter. It was then - not when Doctor Who died - that I lost all respect for the BBC."