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The Leisure Hive by David Fisher is a mixed bag. The story came toward the end of the Tom Baker years, after Tom had begun to rely increasingly on his personal style of comedy (which I personally think is brilliantly funny). Tom ad-libbed many of his lines by this point, and some Doctor Who directors found him somewhat difficult to work with. Some, such as John Nathan-Turner, had begun to feel that Doctor Who, once a sci-fi show full of ideas, had slowly become “The Tom Baker Show,” a half-hour pop culture phenomenon in which Baker pranced around and cracked jokes. When John Nathan-Turner took over as producer (I believe The Leisure Hive was his first story as producer), having felt that Doctor Who had become too jokey and silly for its own good, he immediately had some changes to make. First, K9 was killed off instantly. Many people, including Tom Baker, did not like K9, and some felt that the robot dog only made the show more childlike. Nathan-Turner wanted to get the show back to its roots a bit, placing greater emphasis again on the sci-fi element of the show. Further, he wanted the sci-fi in the show to extend beyond mere gobbledygook, hopefully incorporating ideas from real science. Hence all the tachyon talk in The Leisure Hive. Tachyons are actual hypothetical constructs from physics, and Fisher’s story used the concept to good effect.

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However, as I said at the beginning, The Leisure Hive is a mixed bag. Though the story is very good; unfortunately its execution is somewhat shoddy. As stated above, many had complained that Tom’s humor was getting in the way of the show; I however think that his humor was part of his character, and never found that it got in the way of anything. His wit and ad-libbed banter, and his remarkable ability to rewrite parts of the script in his head on the spot, were reliable assets. His dialogue was often better than what was written, and, again, the man is just plain laugh-out-loud hilarious. Interestingly, the episode the many refer to as evidence that Baker’s Who had become too jokey, Nighmare in Eden, was actually a great story about drug use with some very adult aspects to it, but I digress. Recreate his character a bit they did, including giving him his new, grand, burgundy outfit with ever larger scarf. Not a bad change, I must admit. This is also the first episode to feature the “starburst” opening, complete with the new title music by Peter Howell, who had been told that what was wanted was something that sounded more like dance music.

Now, what’s wrong with The Leisure Hive? Well, for starters, a great irony occurred. Producer John Nathan-Turner wanted to “update” the show; he thought much of it looked dated and he wanted to “bring it into the eighties.” The irony is that many of the changes they made to “update” the effects really only further dated the show! For example, the new synthesizer music by the BBC, though some of it was quite good, seemed, compared to films today, much more dated than Dudley Simpson’s previous scores. The Leisure Hive producers also spent a lot of money on a new computer process called Quantel, which gave us all those effects of heads and arms and whatnot separating from bodies in the regenerator. Though this was doubtlessly very cutting edge at the time, it looks very poor today, poorer even that many special effects found in much older episodes of Doctor Who. The special effects in The Pyramids of Mars, for instance, a much older episode, are much better than in The Leisure Hive. (It must be added though that budget cuts had something to do with that.) The outfits for the reptile race of the Foamasi are downright awful, some of the worst in the whole history of Doctor Who. If one looks closely at these big fabric beasts one can actually see the human actor’s face through the holes in the reptile’s head.

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Fans of Who shouldn’t make issues out of the effects though. The bad special effects I have always felt only added to the charm of the show, and may have even kept the show’s quality up there in terms of forcing writers to write around budget difficulties. The big problem with The Leisure Hive is that it is actually boring, which is never a word I usually associate with Doctor Who, one of the most brilliant and fantastic shows in television history. It makes one yearn for the Hinchcliffe/Holmes years, which brought us such goodies as The Seeds of Doom and The Talons of Weng-Chiang. It is interesting that hot head Nathan-Turner wanted to take the show back from Tom Baker, and yet, it was in Nathan-Turner’s hands that the show ultimately fell apart. He was producer for far too long.

Romana on Argolis: “It’s the first of the leisure planets. In relative Earth Date 2250, there’s a hideous war against some reptile people called the Foamasi. Most of the planet gets wiped out by two thousand interplanetary missiles, but the survivors build a recreation center called a Leisure Hive. And there’s something called an experiential grid. Cells of different environments designed to produce physical, psychic, and intellectual regeneration.”

After not only missing the opening of the Brighton Pavilion but also getting the century and season wrong, the Doctor and Romana go to Argolis in 2290, forty years after that terrible war, and become involved in the intrigues of the native Argolins. Bookings to their hive are disastrous, as other leisure planets have anti-gravity swimming pools and speed learning. Brock, the initially pessimistic Earth agent who advises the Argolins to do something about their cash flow, accepts the position on the Board, but recommends they sell the planet and hive to the Foamasi, their ancient enemies, of which the Argolin survivors still have bitter memories. After all, selling them their own planet would be the ultimate defeat. Things have a chance when Hardin, an Earth scientist and lover of Argolin Chairwoman Mena, claims to have found a better use of tachyonics–to manipulate time.

The main attraction of the hive is the Tachyonic Recreational Grid, run by the youthful Pangol. The science of tachyonics, the manipulation of faster-than-light particles, involves temporary duplication of any physical object, and the manipulation of the duplicate object without harming the original, demonstrated by Pangol going into the TRG and his tachyon duplicate’s arms and head coming detached while it’s talking. Soon, the TRG becomes the site of sabotage, accidents, and later murder, as Hardin’s assistant Stimson is found strangled by the Doctor’s scarf. And guess who’s suspected?

There’s wonderful exchange when the Doctor, Romana, and Mena are gazing at the glowing red sands of Argolis. “Radon 222 decays rapidly.” says the Doctor. Mena says, “But not the heavy metal dust. It won’t be habitable for three centuries. … Now you understand the purpose of the Hive. … to promote understanding between life forms of all cultures and genetic type. There must be no more such wars. Each race learns to understand what it is like to be a foreigner.” And the Argolins have the helmet of Theron, a golden hooded helmet resembling a curved KKK hood as a reminder of what happened to them.

Adrienne Corri (Mena) is best known in Clockwork Orange as the ill-fated Ms. Alexander, the author’s wife. David Haig does a good job as Pangol, being charming presenter, scientist, and Argolin patriot at the same time.

The first story of John Nathan-Turner’s turn at producer heralded some changes that had some great consequences. He toned down the silliness of his predecessor, Graham Williams, and tried to rein in Tom Baker, whose hat, long coat and scarf are red instead of the familiar brown. In trying to get a Star Wars-style image to Dr. Who, he had the new digital Quantel special effects used, as well as an electronic revamping of the theme music. And he even recruited Barry Letts, who had produced Who in the Jon Pertwee era, as Executive Producer for Season 18.

The opening titles are changed, where instead of the bluish time tunnel, there was a galaxy of stars coming towards the viewer, with some in the center gradually forming the Doctor’s face. The diamond logo was changed as well.

A story on the horrors of nuclear war and the necessity for cultural understanding between races, with stylish designs (the Argolins’ beehive hairdo, flowing yellow robes, goatees for men, and plastic statues) and concepts, how Argolins turn from green to human colour when they grow older. A pity that this and the final season story, Logopolis, are the two best stories in Tom Baker’s last season as the Doctor.
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