I’ve been counting the number of fun holiday activities you can indulge in on Argolis and I’m afraid the list is short. As far as I can see, you can play zero gravity squash and after that, you can look out through the windows at the devastated surface of the planet and contemplate the awful effects of nuclear war. Or you can attend a lecture on tachyonics where they’ll examine wave form equations for an hour and a half. Equations chat for an hour and a half? Slow down, thrillseekers! Just point me towards the swim up bar please and pre-order me an extravagant cocktail. Two stars on Trip Advisor.

If Argolis is such a great place for a holiday, why isn’t it fun? Why is it all so sterile and po-faced? I think the answer lies in the handover between script editor Douglas Adams and his successor Christopher H. Bidmead.

In Adams’ wild and wacky Season Seventeen, I think The Leisure Hive could have been a hoot: jokes accentuated, performances with more brio. The anagrammatic Foamasi would have kept their insect heads but stayed dressed in gangster suits. But, it was not to be. Bidmead and new producer John Nathan-Turner were on a campaign to stamp out any silliness in the show and I suspect it was they who sucked all the fun out of this holiday world. I imagine if you went on holiday with Bidmead, he probably would want to listen to someone yammer on about equations all day.

Still, there’s one light-hearted moment left which seems like the sort of joke which might have appealed to both Adams and Bidmead. In Part Three, when the Doctor (a newly question marked Tom Baker) needs to incapacitate a guard (as so often needs to happen in Parts Three everywhere), he scribbles an enormously complex sum on the outer plasmic shell of the TARDIS and the poor yellow-clad fellow is so overwhelmed by the implications of what he sees that he faints in astonishment. Y’see, that joke survived because it’s about equations; a nerdy subject both script editors approved of.

Still, someone on the crew is yearning for the old days. Amongst the Doctor’s maths they’ve scrawled a sly warning: “beware of the dog”.

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They might as well have written “beware of the director”. Not that I’m about to slag off Lovett Bickford for trying to do something different than the standard approach to classic Doctor Who directing which can be summarized as, “just point the camera at it, get it in the can and let’s get back to the bar”. In fact, only last post I was whinging about Pennant Roberts’ pedestrian approach to shooting The Pirate Planet. Imagine if they’d let hot shot Lovett have a go at that one. A wildly imaginative script matched with a wildly innovative director. Think of the resulting four episodes of that! The director general of the BBC might have fainted during the playback, like that poor Argolin extra.

Bickford’s approach is, for the most part, refreshingly distinct. He refuses to let the show’s multi-camera format discourage him from trying to make a Kubrick film in TC1. He mimics a single camera approach, often going for intense close ups, creeping tracking shots, oblique angles and rapidly cut together reaction shots.

When it works, it’s electrifying. Like when shifty earthling Stimson (David Allister) stumbles into the quarters of equally shifty earthling Klout (Ian Talbot) and finds his fake face hanging up in a wardrobe; Bickford shoots it from the wardrobe’s point of view: its door slides open, we see the mask, then Stimson’s shocked face. Or look at the end of Part Two, with the Doctor stuck in the malfunctioning Recreation Generator and there’s a series of rapid cuts between the assembled cast, then we get the Generator’s POV shot of Romana (Lalla Ward) looking shocked and Mena (Adrienne Corri) looking downcast, then the Doctor emerging, greatly aged.

The Leisure Hive is filled with moments like this and the story is mostly enriched by them. But Bickford’s ambition occasionally backfires on him. Sometimes, his drive to be innovative obscures the story writer David Fisher is trying to tell. Take for instance, the moment when Mena arrives on Argolis to assume the role of Chair of the board. She marches down a corridor and Bickford lets her come straight for the camera, then a flip and we’re following her back as she continues down that same corridor. Stylish, but it means that Mena’s dialogue gets lost, and it’s useful explanatory stuff, saying she has brought with her scientist Hardin (Nigel Lambert) who is offering some Hive-saving time travel experiments.

Then there’s the scene in Part Three, when the Doctor, Romana and Hardin are discussing the need to re-enter the generator, and it’s done with all three actors’ backs to the camera. If The Leisure Hive is already an arcane experience for audience members (with all its talk of tachyons, baryon shields and Schrodinger oscillators) it can’t help that the direction is making it harder to understand what’s going on. I could go on… and will.

The hijinks about the faked time experiment don’t land properly because the screen is barely visible, making the tell about the two necklaces impossible to see. The complex series of cuts that opens Part Four as the West Lodge Foamasi are outed and defrocked bewilders rather than excites. And the very final scene has so much squeezed in: the explanation of the climax, the reveal of the red herring about the Foamasi shuttle, the cute bit with the baby and the cheery banter back to the TARDIS… all rushed through… giving the impression of a story suddenly turned off, rather than allowed to close at its own pace.

Don’t get me wrong – I actually love Lovett’s work, but both its pros and cons are on screen for all to see. I wish they’d let him do more Doctor Who stories, where he could have kept his directorial flair but honed his skills at telling the story. And for a story which is trying so hard to be new at everything, he successfully changed the whole look and feel of the series… for four episodes. Next story it was back to, “just point the camera at it, get it in the can before Tom cracks it about having to do a two shot with K9 again.”

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There’s just time to mention my favourite performance in The Leisure Hive which is delivered by David Haig as Pangol. Haig will go on to infamy as one of the hapless grooms in Four Weddings and a Funeral – the one who gets lucky against all odds at the first wedding and has energetic sex with his new bride in the second, while Hugh Grant is trapped inside the closet. Here, he’s young and vital, lacing each of his lines with disdain for anyone who’s not an Argolin.

Plus he never misses an opportunity to add a smirk; he could smirk for England, this guy. When his head lifts off in the tachyonics demonstration – smirk! When he traps the Doctor in the generator – smirk!  When the penny finally drops that he’s the only young Argolin in the Hive, he smoothly asks “How old do you think I am, Mr Brock?”  Giant smirk!

Y’see, Pangol gets it. He knows that in this so called Leisure Hive, you have to make your own fun.

LINK TO The Pirate Planet: Both Tom stories! In fact, we’re on a bit of a Tom-a-thon because…

NEXT TIME… Head for the imurginsee eggsit, we’re facing The Invisible Enemy,