Escape To Danger No.45

Sometimes when compiling material for this thread, memory dictates that I amass a veritable cornucopia of images from a story that don't much relate to anything I might want to say about the story in question.

 

This is also known as "Serial 4Q Syndrome", as we'll find out at a later date...

 

 

If the title is anything to go by, Serial 4A should ostensibly be about a robot. But the change in lead actor has made the photographic legacy somewhat Baker-heavy.

 

 

It's always difficult to judge the first story of any new Doctor, especially as by the time Tom Baker took on the role, it was fairly established (even to the point of being deliberately written into dialogue of the preceeding serial) that the new incarnation could behave in a somewhat erratic manner.

 

 

Which is understandable, I suppose. Getting a new body and a new personality every now and then must take a bit of getting used to.

 

 

"Robot" feels much more like the end of the Pertwee era than "Planet of the Spiders" does, to be honest. You can tell UNIT's days are numbered, and seeing Tom Baker in Bessie is just plain wrong.

 

 

Barry Letts receives his last Producer credit on this serial, and Terrance Dicks has already jumped ship and rather amusingly invented the precedent of an outgoing Script Editor commissioning himself for a script.

 

 

Despite not having any photos of Patricia Maynard and Edward Burnham to feast upon whilst growing up, at least I got to see an excellent Sladen hat. And after this story, Sarah Jane Smith forgets she's a Letts/Dicks Stereotype Feminist and becomes very likeable.

 

 

Unfortunately for "Robot", the memory tends to linger on the series' variable CSO shenanigans and not enough on how good the robot costume actually is. Which is a shame. Nice OB video work, too.

 

 

More Tom and Bessie. Still not doing it for me, I'm afraid.

 

Quite a lot of well-remembered Fourth Doctor portraits come from these sessions. An illustration of the one above graced the Target cover of "Junior Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius", for example.

 

Whilst that one was used in the artwork of the regular novelisation of Robin Bland's finest ninety-odd minutes.

 

And let's not forget the shot above and the "Doctor Who Monster Book" cover, if I'm not labouring this point way too much.

 

I never twigged the King Kong homage until I'd actually seen the serial itself, and neither did I ever clock that Harry Sullivan was only on hand in case Richard Hearne really did get the job as TV's Dr Who. (A bizarre casting idea from a normally way-too-sensible Barry Letts).

 

Ian Marter is obviously fantastic, and manages to put up with some very poor Dicks comedy material. As part of the "settling-in" process, we have to endure rather more than our usual share of that sort of thing. But it does help drive a wedge between the Doctor and UNIT, leaving the Brigadier wandering around HQ with no-one to talk to, reduced to taking an investigative journalist into his confidence.

And I never even mentioned the tank, did I?