Doctor Who: The Deadly Assassin (1976)

In its own way, as seminal a serial as The Tribe of Gum or The War Games; it could even count as closure for narrative threads in play from these groundbreaking stories, though it ends with an obvious set-up for more. Strangely, the return of the Master (Peter Pratt, in skullfaced mutilated form) and his fleeing in a long-case clock TARDIS didn't bring him back as a regular, leaving his plotline on hold for a couple of eventful seasons.

Having kicked Sarah Jane out at the end of The Hand of Fear, the Doctor is uniquely on his own, summoned back to Gallifrey, planet of the Time Lords, by what turns out to be a scheme between the Master and an ambitious politician, Goth (Bernard Horsfall), to frame him for murder of the council President so Goth can get the position, though the Master has a deeper plan which involves using Time Lord artefacts to regenerate himself after his alotted twelve lives are up (at the cost of destroying quite a bit of the universe).

In many ways, Robert Holmes invents the Time Lords here, not exactly contradicting what we've seen earlier (in The War Games or The Three Doctors) but getting away from the suggestion of an airily remote, super-powerful race who don't deign to meddle except by proxy and are so superior that even the Doctor can't stand them. Instead, we have a hidebound, caste-ridden society full of corruption, inefficiency, bungling and nastiness like officially-sanctioned torture: it was to be a hindrance in later shows - no other Gallifrey-based story really works, and all the backstory about Rassilon and the Eye of Harmony has given rise to is a ton of fanwank - but plays here, partly through good writing, partly through interestingly-cast creaky character actors like George Pravda and Erik Chitty. It's not made clear whether all Gallifreyans are Time Lords, or the TL are a ruling caste - and we notably see no women, an omission remedied in later shows which explicitly make Romana a Time Lady or a Lady Time Lord (Susan was written out before the whole Time Lord/Gallifrey business was thunk up). However, it doesn't seem that lordly to be an inept guard or a fatuous TV reporter and Gallifreyans of these descriptions are important to the plot.

Tom Baker, unpartnered, is still on great form, showing the facetiousness that has made him a rebel in this society and in a couple of minutes deducing secrets about the origins of the Time Lords that they have forgotten and never bothered to work out. The bulk of three episodes takes place on studio sets, suggesting the interior, cluttered, gloomy world of the Pantechnicon (with costume elements introduced that stuck around), reserving all the location filming for an episode and a bit set almost entirely within 'the Matrix', a dreamworld maintained by the minds of dead Time Lords (it seems) which is a stretch of ragged quarry/countryside where the Doctor and Goth have a metaphysical battle. There are disturbing bits with a biplane, an evil clown, a gasmasked soldier, a runaway train and other Earth apparatus, and Goth becomes a hunter in a simple black facemask and jungle gear that's effectively menacing. The Matrix scenes are so strong, including violence Mrs Whitehouse didn't care for, that the last episode, which puts the whole universe at threat and involves a scrap around a giant black rod, seems to ease off the suspense a bit.

First published in this form here.

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