City of Death

Somewhere out there, a one-eyed green scaled alien argues with his shipmates that if they try to fly their damaged ship they will all die. The order is given, and Scaroth hits the button, and the ship is blown to bits. Several million years later, the Doctor and Romana, on holiday in Paris in 1979, experience time slips that nobody else around them seems to notice. In attempting to continue with their holiday from running from the Black Guardian, the Time Lords uncover an attempt to steal the Mona Lisa from the Louvre and precious art treausres being sold to finance some dangerous experiments in time travel. It appears that Scaroth did not die with his ship but was splintered across time, and his various selves are working together to push mankind along in its development in an effort to create a time machine to avert the destruction of his people, the Jageroth. Masquerading as Count Scarlioni, Scaroth plans to steal the Mona Lisa and sell it and another six genuine copies to finance his work, and if he succeeds he may well avert the birth of life on Earth...

My friend Nina said it best when she reviewed City of Death for a fanzine called Chameleon Circuit; she pointed out that this being the first time Doctor Who went abroad the production team made the most of the location in the city of Paris without being gratuitous. And you just know she was being sarcastic. The Doctor and Romana stroll past almost every famous landmark there is in the city, manage their way across busy traffic, and take the Metropolitan for a long ride in episode one, spending about seven out of twenty three minutes looking like tourists. Fantastic.

The cast is stellar. Lalla Ward has become the new Romana with the same ease that Tom Baker himself became the Doctor a few years earlier, and with K9 stuck in the TARDIS as he would be a problem in modern day Paris, they are partnered with shades of Harry Sullivan bumbling private investigator Duggan. On the opposite side of the players we have the delightfully elegant and smooth Scarlioni/Scaroth, his clueless wife (what kind of fool marries an alien and never notices he acts a bit strange?), their butler Hermann, an assortment of goons, clueless cafe patrons, and the confused yet brilliant Professor Herenzki. What an ensemble. I often wondered what exactly made this one work so well without Daleks or Cybermen, but it was one of the highest rated episodes ever, a fun romp in a season which, on the whole, would come up short by previous standards. A lot of the failings for the season would be blamed on Douglas Adams, a brilliant writer who many say was out of his elemtn as script editor for the season as he added perhaps too much of his own humour to the episodes he handled. I'm not sure if that's quite it, but the people doing the interviews on the special DVD release seem to think that's it, the treacherous lot.

Sharp-eyed viewers will spot John Cleese in his ony cameo on the series as a pretentious art critic hanging out in a Parisian gallery trying to impress the equally splendid Elanor Bron (her first of three roles in the series) by analysing the artistic merits of a police box. Exquisite. Absolutely exquisite.

NEXT EPISODE : THE CREATURE FROM THE PIT