Doctor Who: City of Death [1979]

Amazingly, this outstanding serial - arguably the show's last great effort - came in a season otherwise stuck with some of the worst efforts [Nightmare of Eden, The Creature From the Pit, The Horns of Nimon]. Scripted by Douglas Adams and Graham Williams under the pseudonym David Agnew, it's a rare instance of the Adamsian wit and the Baker goonery actually working for the show - mostly because it's packed with ideas and puts Baker [plus a delightful Lalla Ward] up against some characters who can hold an epigram with him or otherwise serve as comic foil, notably Tom Chadbon's ridiculously two-fisted private eye and Catherine Schell's slinky Countess but supremely Julian Glover as a white-suited suave Bond-type baddie [with a Lovecraftian fried-egg mess underneath his mask] whose apt and tart dialogue [when the Doctor warns him not to meddle in time, he snaps 'but that's all you ever do'] oddly mitigate against the finale whereby it's felt to be no great loss that his entire race [the Jagaroth] are irreversibly wiped out in an explosion that irradiates some goo 400 million years ago and thus creates life on Earth.

All this in a runaround on location in Paris [somewhat indulgent] which involves amassing a fortune through selling-off stashed historical valuables like six copies of the Mona Lisa when only one has been stolen; oddly, in this scheme, only robbing the Louvre is really illegal [or even immoral] since the villain's scam mostly depends on buying cheap and salting away rather than outright thievery. A joke cameo from John Cleese and Eleanor Bron is a too-easy poke at arty pretension, but what else do you expect. David Graham, memorable Gerry Anderson voice artist, does French as a harrassed scientist who gets aged to a skeleton in a time-warp. For once, an alien spaceship effect looks rather good - until the standard explosion.
KIM NEWMAN

First published in this form here.

Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com