The Leisure Hive
Encyclopedia
The Leisure Hive is a serial in the British
science fiction television series Doctor Who
, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 30 August to 20 September 1980.
’s holiday in Edwardian Brighton
is brought to a sudden end when K-9
takes in sea-water and explodes. They instead venture to the Leisure Hive of Argolis, a holiday-complex-come-peace-message built by the surviving Argolin following their devastating twenty-minute war with the Foamasi forty years earlier. They arrive at a point of crisis (as per usual). The Leisure Hive is facing bankruptcy because of falling tourist trade (through stiff competition from other Leisure Planets) and the Argolin’s Earth agent, Brock, arrives with his lawyer Klout, bearing an offer to buy the planet outright. Regrettably the offer is from the Foamasi, the only species that could live on the radiation-infused surface of Argolis, and so the Argolin Board will not consider it. Hit by the shock of events, the ageing Board Chairman Morix succumbs to a rapid death – the Argolin war curse of advanced cellular degradation – and his consort Mena is declared the new Chairman. The Doctor is intrigued by the manipulation of the tachyon
in the Hive’s Tachyon Recreation Generator, which is the main tourist attraction and is able to duplicate and manipulate organic matter. He witnesses the Generator kill a human tourist after it has been sabotaged, the latest in a series of acts of wilful damage.
No sooner has Mena returned to Argolis to replace her spouse than her own body clock begins to speed up (one of the side-effects of the radiation-heavy atmosphere). Earth scientist Hardin has been brought to Argolis to help her and her people by using time experiments to rejuvenate a people rendered sterile by the war. Recognising the value of scientists, instead of confining them Mena engages the Doctor and Romana to help Hardin with his work. The time travellers know Hardin has been faking his work, but Romana feels the experiments should have worked.
After discovering a skin of Klout in a wardrobe,Hardin’s financier, Stimson (who travelled with him and persuaded him to fake the demonstrations), is brutally murdered and his murder is pinned on the Doctor. The Time Lord
is put on trial while Romana and Hardin perfect the Time Experiments. Just in time, they perfect it and manage to bargain the Doctor's freedom. However, after they leave, the hourglass of their experiment shatters. Mena wants to be the first guinea-pig for the time experiment due to her worsening condition, but the Doctor volunteers instead. As he is inside the machine, there is a malfunction and he emerges five hundred years older—an old man with flowing white hair. Pangol, Mena’s son, is the most warlike and vindictive of the Argolin and orders the Doctor and Romana to be confined, fastening special collars on them to limit their movements within the Hive. Hardin later frees them, which is when the slower-witted Doctor sees something odd in the name of the Recreation Chamber. Romana sees it too eventually Recreation; re-creation, the repeated creation of things, or people.
The three of them, sneaking back to the Recreation Room, find that certain of the Argolins, led by Pangol, are performing dangerous experiments, trying to perfect some secret project using the entertainment as a blind. Meanwhile, Brock and Klout bring a new offer from a mysterious organisation calling themselves the West Lodge. It is then, in tearing up the offer, that Pangol reveals the secret of his past and the reason that he is the only young Argolin in the Hive. He was the only successful, un-deformed child of a cloning experiment meant to save the Argolin using the Recreation Generator. But Pangol has been driven insane by hatred of the Foamasi and a xenophobic fear of all aliens, lusting after a war-forged empire like their ancestor Theron (who started the war and doomed the Argolin to extinction). He needs an alien witness to see his taking Mena's place after her death and the beginning of what he called the 'New Argolis'.
Meanwhile, the Doctor, Romana and Hardin have found Foamasi agents in the Hive and escort them to the council chamber, where the agents reveal Brock and Klout for what they are; Foamasi impersonators. The lead agent reveals the West Lodge to be a hounded criminal group who needed Argolis as a base of operations. With the leader (Brock) captured, the organisation was doomed to fold and the Foamasi prepare to take the rogues for trial. But Pangol refuses to let them pass and, taking the Helment of Theron (a sacred symbol on Argolis, reminding the Argolins to espouse peace and understanding) and rallying the Argolins to his cause. The Doctor, seeing what the mad Argolin is up to, takes the Randomiser from the TARDIS and attaches it to the Recreation Chamber, hoping to destabilise the mechanism.
Romana tries to stop Pangol from using the Generator, but she cannot persuade him or the Argolins to stop the madness. The Foamasi shuttle tries to leave and is destroyed by Pangol before he dons the Helmet of Theron and uses the Generator to create an army of Tachyon replicas, creating an obedient and renewable army to rebuild the Argolin race. He orders Romana to be put outside, while Hardin finds Mena dying and carries her to the Generator room. As Romana is taken, the clone Pangols are revealed to be merely Tachyon images of the rejuvenated Doctor built up in a FIFO stack; first out, first in. She and the first Doctor to emerge (the real Doctor) go back to the Generator Room, where Mardin has put Mena into the Recreation Generator.
Pangol, enraged that the Doctor has foiled his first attempt to create an army, goes back into the Generator, which closes behind him. The Doctor reveals that he set the machine on 'rejuvenate', but it cannot be stopped. Pangol and Mena seem to be merging, so the Doctor grabs the Helmet of Theron and throws it into the visualising crystal, stopping the mechanism. Mena exits rejuvenated, holding Pangol, who has regressed back to being a baby. It is now that the Foamasi agents make their appearance and reveal that the West Lodge criminals tried to escape in the shuttle (so, in the words of the Doctor 'Brock and Klout are kaput'). Against Romana's wishes, the Doctor leaves the Argolin and Foamasi to make up and the Randomiser attached to the Recreation Generator (thus leaving the Tardis and time-travellers vulnerable from the Black Guardian).
produced. Nathan-Turner was keen to get away from what he considered the excessive silliness of recent Doctor Who stories, and wanted to increase the series' production values, because he felt that they were poor when compared with glossy American science-fiction series. Among the changes Nathan-Turner instituted was the scaling back of K-9's appearances (the unit is out of commission for most of this serial), eventually writing the character out in Warriors' Gate
. Nathan-Turner would produce Doctor Who until 1989.
In a further attempt to update the image of the series, the original 1963 Delia Derbyshire
arrangement was replaced by a more contemporary-sounding arrangement by Peter Howell
, and a new, '80s-styled neon tubing logo(which was en-vogue at the time) replaced the diamond logo most associated with the Fourth Doctor. The updated title sequence is most associated with the Fifth Doctor.
Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, Barry Letts and Christopher H. Bidmead all protested John Nathan-Turner's decision to add question-marks to Baker's shirts, arguing that it was gimmicky. Baker in particular was unhappy with it and told Nathan-Turner that it was "annoying, absurd and ridiculous", while Bidmead later called it "a silly, quite absurd gimmick really". Bidmead, who found working with Tom Baker "difficult to say the very least", supposedly told Baker and Nathan-Turner during recording of The Leisure Hive that exclamation marks would have been more appropriate for Baker's shirts. The Seventh Doctor
Sylvester McCoy
would later protest his question-mark adorned jumper in similar terms, but the question-mark motif would remain until the end of the classic series in 1989. Baker also disliked his new scarf, requesting that his old multi-coloured one be re-instated, but expressed gratitude to costume designer June Hudson
for refusing to adhere to Nathan-Turner's demands to ditch the trademark scarf altogether and managing to find a compromise.
The show's stars took exception to many of John Nathan-Turner's other changes as well, with Tom Baker and Lalla Ward criticising the change in theme music and opening titles. Baker also criticised the new synthesised incidental music, comparing it unfavourably with Dudley Simpson
's earlier scores. Ward later complained that Nathan-Turner had "removed all the lovely humour", while Baker said that he wanted the scripts to improve and regain some of the quality of those of the Philip Hinchcliffe
era, as he felt that the quality of the scripts and storylines had declined under Graham Williams
. He later said that he felt such improvements did not by and large occur, and that most of Nathan-Turner's changes were either cosmetic or misguided.
in The Gunfighters
and later played Dastari in The Two Doctors
.
, was published by Target Books
in July 1982. The novelisation retains many elements of the original script that was intended as a spoof on the Mafia. The original name of Argolis is given as Xbrrrm.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
science fiction television series Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 30 August to 20 September 1980.
Plot
The Doctor and RomanaRomana
Romana, short for Romanadvoratrelundar, is a fictional character in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who...
’s holiday in Edwardian Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
is brought to a sudden end when K-9
K-9 (Doctor Who)
K-9, or K9, is the name of several fictional robotic canines in the long-running British science fiction television series, Doctor Who, first appearing in 1977...
takes in sea-water and explodes. They instead venture to the Leisure Hive of Argolis, a holiday-complex-come-peace-message built by the surviving Argolin following their devastating twenty-minute war with the Foamasi forty years earlier. They arrive at a point of crisis (as per usual). The Leisure Hive is facing bankruptcy because of falling tourist trade (through stiff competition from other Leisure Planets) and the Argolin’s Earth agent, Brock, arrives with his lawyer Klout, bearing an offer to buy the planet outright. Regrettably the offer is from the Foamasi, the only species that could live on the radiation-infused surface of Argolis, and so the Argolin Board will not consider it. Hit by the shock of events, the ageing Board Chairman Morix succumbs to a rapid death – the Argolin war curse of advanced cellular degradation – and his consort Mena is declared the new Chairman. The Doctor is intrigued by the manipulation of the tachyon
Tachyon
A tachyon is a hypothetical subatomic particle that always moves faster than light. In the language of special relativity, a tachyon would be a particle with space-like four-momentum and imaginary proper time. A tachyon would be constrained to the space-like portion of the energy-momentum graph...
in the Hive’s Tachyon Recreation Generator, which is the main tourist attraction and is able to duplicate and manipulate organic matter. He witnesses the Generator kill a human tourist after it has been sabotaged, the latest in a series of acts of wilful damage.
No sooner has Mena returned to Argolis to replace her spouse than her own body clock begins to speed up (one of the side-effects of the radiation-heavy atmosphere). Earth scientist Hardin has been brought to Argolis to help her and her people by using time experiments to rejuvenate a people rendered sterile by the war. Recognising the value of scientists, instead of confining them Mena engages the Doctor and Romana to help Hardin with his work. The time travellers know Hardin has been faking his work, but Romana feels the experiments should have worked.
After discovering a skin of Klout in a wardrobe,Hardin’s financier, Stimson (who travelled with him and persuaded him to fake the demonstrations), is brutally murdered and his murder is pinned on the Doctor. The Time Lord
Time Lord
The Time Lords are an ancient extraterrestrial race and civilization of humanoids in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, of which the series' eponymous protagonist, the Doctor, is a member...
is put on trial while Romana and Hardin perfect the Time Experiments. Just in time, they perfect it and manage to bargain the Doctor's freedom. However, after they leave, the hourglass of their experiment shatters. Mena wants to be the first guinea-pig for the time experiment due to her worsening condition, but the Doctor volunteers instead. As he is inside the machine, there is a malfunction and he emerges five hundred years older—an old man with flowing white hair. Pangol, Mena’s son, is the most warlike and vindictive of the Argolin and orders the Doctor and Romana to be confined, fastening special collars on them to limit their movements within the Hive. Hardin later frees them, which is when the slower-witted Doctor sees something odd in the name of the Recreation Chamber. Romana sees it too eventually Recreation; re-creation, the repeated creation of things, or people.
The three of them, sneaking back to the Recreation Room, find that certain of the Argolins, led by Pangol, are performing dangerous experiments, trying to perfect some secret project using the entertainment as a blind. Meanwhile, Brock and Klout bring a new offer from a mysterious organisation calling themselves the West Lodge. It is then, in tearing up the offer, that Pangol reveals the secret of his past and the reason that he is the only young Argolin in the Hive. He was the only successful, un-deformed child of a cloning experiment meant to save the Argolin using the Recreation Generator. But Pangol has been driven insane by hatred of the Foamasi and a xenophobic fear of all aliens, lusting after a war-forged empire like their ancestor Theron (who started the war and doomed the Argolin to extinction). He needs an alien witness to see his taking Mena's place after her death and the beginning of what he called the 'New Argolis'.
Meanwhile, the Doctor, Romana and Hardin have found Foamasi agents in the Hive and escort them to the council chamber, where the agents reveal Brock and Klout for what they are; Foamasi impersonators. The lead agent reveals the West Lodge to be a hounded criminal group who needed Argolis as a base of operations. With the leader (Brock) captured, the organisation was doomed to fold and the Foamasi prepare to take the rogues for trial. But Pangol refuses to let them pass and, taking the Helment of Theron (a sacred symbol on Argolis, reminding the Argolins to espouse peace and understanding) and rallying the Argolins to his cause. The Doctor, seeing what the mad Argolin is up to, takes the Randomiser from the TARDIS and attaches it to the Recreation Chamber, hoping to destabilise the mechanism.
Romana tries to stop Pangol from using the Generator, but she cannot persuade him or the Argolins to stop the madness. The Foamasi shuttle tries to leave and is destroyed by Pangol before he dons the Helmet of Theron and uses the Generator to create an army of Tachyon replicas, creating an obedient and renewable army to rebuild the Argolin race. He orders Romana to be put outside, while Hardin finds Mena dying and carries her to the Generator room. As Romana is taken, the clone Pangols are revealed to be merely Tachyon images of the rejuvenated Doctor built up in a FIFO stack; first out, first in. She and the first Doctor to emerge (the real Doctor) go back to the Generator Room, where Mardin has put Mena into the Recreation Generator.
Pangol, enraged that the Doctor has foiled his first attempt to create an army, goes back into the Generator, which closes behind him. The Doctor reveals that he set the machine on 'rejuvenate', but it cannot be stopped. Pangol and Mena seem to be merging, so the Doctor grabs the Helmet of Theron and throws it into the visualising crystal, stopping the mechanism. Mena exits rejuvenated, holding Pangol, who has regressed back to being a baby. It is now that the Foamasi agents make their appearance and reveal that the West Lodge criminals tried to escape in the shuttle (so, in the words of the Doctor 'Brock and Klout are kaput'). Against Romana's wishes, the Doctor leaves the Argolin and Foamasi to make up and the Randomiser attached to the Recreation Generator (thus leaving the Tardis and time-travellers vulnerable from the Black Guardian).
Continuity
- Every serial between The Leisure Hive and The Five DoctorsThe Five DoctorsThe Five Doctors is a special feature-length episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, produced in celebration of the programme's twentieth anniversary. It had its world premiere in the United States, on the Chicago PBS station WTTW and various other PBS member stations...
is linked in some way, either directly leading from one storyline to the next, or through direct reference. - At the beginning of the story, on BrightonBrightonBrighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
beach out of season, the Doctor grumpily states that this is the second time he has missed the opening of the Brighton PavilionRoyal PavilionThe Royal Pavilion is a former royal residence located in Brighton, England. It was built in three campaigns, beginning in 1787, as a seaside retreat for George, Prince of Wales, from 1811 Prince Regent. It is often referred to as the Brighton Pavilion...
(by the best part of two centuries, it would appear). The first time was with LeelaLeela (Doctor Who)Leela is a fictional character played by Louise Jameson in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Leela was a companion of the Fourth Doctor and a regular in the programme from 1977 to 1978...
in Horror of Fang RockHorror of Fang RockHorror of Fang Rock is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 3 September to 24 September 1977.-Synopsis:...
. - Although the Randomiser is removed from the TARDISTARDISThe TARDISGenerally, TARDIS is written in all upper case letters—this convention was popularised by the Target novelisations of the 1970s...
in this story, the Black GuardianBlack GuardianThe Black Guardian is a character in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. He was played by Valentine Dyall....
does not catch up with the Doctor until he is in his fifth incarnationFifth DoctorThe Fifth Doctor is the fifth incarnation of the protagonist of the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who. He is portrayed by Peter Davison....
in Mawdryn UndeadMawdryn UndeadMawdryn Undead is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was originally broadcast in four twice weekly parts from 1 February to 9 February 1983...
. - Beginning with this story, the Doctor abandoned his famous multi-coloured scarf in favour of a burgundyBurgundy (color)Burgundy is a shade of purplish red associated with the Burgundy wine of the same name, which in turn is named after the Burgundy region of France. The color burgundy is similar to other shades of dark red such as maroon...
and purple one. Also, the question mark motif made its first appearance here as a regular element of the Doctor's wardrobe. The Doctor also sported a new burgundy overcoat, as part of his new colour coordinated clothing.
Production
- Working titles for this story included The Argolins and Avalon
- Writer David FisherDavid Fisher (writer)David Fisher is a British professional writer for television. He was born in 1929.He wrote the scripts for four serials of Doctor Who. He first contributed The Stones of Blood and The Androids of Tara during that show's sixteenth season, and The Creature from the Pit for the seventeenth season...
conceived of the Foamasi as a race of organised criminals. "Foamasi" is a near-anagram of "mafiosoMafiaThe Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
". The episode was written as a satire of the decline of tourism in the United KingdomTourism in the United KingdomThe United Kingdom is the world's 6th biggest tourist destination, with 24.8 million visiting in 2003. US$17.2 billion was spent in the UK by tourists. VisitBritain recently released data showing that the US remains the most-valuable inbound market, with American visitors spending £2.1bn in 2010...
in the 1970s. - Features a guest appearance by David Haig and Adrienne Corri. See also Celebrity appearances in Doctor WhoCelebrity appearances in Doctor WhoThis is a list of actors who have made guest appearances in Doctor Who.-First Doctor stories:-Second Doctor stories:-Third Doctor stories:-Fourth Doctor stories:-Fifth Doctor stories:-Sixth Doctor stories:-Seventh Doctor stories:...
. - The alien costume used for the Foamasi was later reused in the 1981 BBC The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (TV series)The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is a BBC television adaptation of Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy broadcast in January and February 1981 on BBC Two...
as the leader of the G'Gugvuntt. - A new TARDISTARDISThe TARDISGenerally, TARDIS is written in all upper case letters—this convention was popularised by the Target novelisations of the 1970s...
prop is introduced in this episode which replaces the one used since The Masque of MandragoraThe Masque of MandragoraThe Masque of Mandragora is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 4 September to 25 September 1976. It opened Season 14 of the series.-Synopsis:...
. This prop would be used right until the end of the original series' production in 1989. - This was also the first story to use the QuantelQuantelQuantel is a company based in the United Kingdom and founded in 1973 that designs and manufactures digital production equipment for the broadcast television, video production and motion picture industries...
digital image processing system. - Filming on the story ran badly over budget. As a result, the director, Lovett Bickford, was never asked back again.
Format changes
This was the first Doctor Who story which John Nathan-TurnerJohn Nathan-Turner
John Nathan-Turner was the ninth producer of the long-running BBC science fiction series Doctor Who, from 1980 until it was effectively cancelled in 1989...
produced. Nathan-Turner was keen to get away from what he considered the excessive silliness of recent Doctor Who stories, and wanted to increase the series' production values, because he felt that they were poor when compared with glossy American science-fiction series. Among the changes Nathan-Turner instituted was the scaling back of K-9's appearances (the unit is out of commission for most of this serial), eventually writing the character out in Warriors' Gate
Warriors' Gate
Warriors' Gate is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was written by the English author Stephen Gallagher and first broadcast in four weekly parts from 3 January to 24 January 1981...
. Nathan-Turner would produce Doctor Who until 1989.
In a further attempt to update the image of the series, the original 1963 Delia Derbyshire
Delia Derbyshire
Delia Ann Derbyshire was an English musician and composer of electronic music and musique concrète. She is best known for her electronic realisation of Ron Grainer's theme music to the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and for her work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.-Early...
arrangement was replaced by a more contemporary-sounding arrangement by Peter Howell
Peter Howell
Peter Howell is a musician and composer. He is best known for his work on Doctor Who as a member of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop....
, and a new, '80s-styled neon tubing logo(which was en-vogue at the time) replaced the diamond logo most associated with the Fourth Doctor. The updated title sequence is most associated with the Fifth Doctor.
Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, Barry Letts and Christopher H. Bidmead all protested John Nathan-Turner's decision to add question-marks to Baker's shirts, arguing that it was gimmicky. Baker in particular was unhappy with it and told Nathan-Turner that it was "annoying, absurd and ridiculous", while Bidmead later called it "a silly, quite absurd gimmick really". Bidmead, who found working with Tom Baker "difficult to say the very least", supposedly told Baker and Nathan-Turner during recording of The Leisure Hive that exclamation marks would have been more appropriate for Baker's shirts. The Seventh Doctor
Seventh Doctor
The Seventh Doctor is the seventh incarnation of the protagonist of the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who. He was portrayed by the actor Sylvester McCoy....
Sylvester McCoy
Sylvester McCoy
Sylvester McCoy is a Scottish actor. As a comic act and busker he appeared regularly on stage and on BBC Children's television in the 1970s and 80s, but is best known for playing the seventh incarnation of the Doctor in the long-running science fiction television series Doctor Who from 1987 to...
would later protest his question-mark adorned jumper in similar terms, but the question-mark motif would remain until the end of the classic series in 1989. Baker also disliked his new scarf, requesting that his old multi-coloured one be re-instated, but expressed gratitude to costume designer June Hudson
June Hudson
June Hudson is a British television costume designer, most famous for her work on British science fiction tv series in the 1970s. Her most notable work featured in the classic series of Doctor Who and Blake's 7.- Doctor Who :...
for refusing to adhere to Nathan-Turner's demands to ditch the trademark scarf altogether and managing to find a compromise.
The show's stars took exception to many of John Nathan-Turner's other changes as well, with Tom Baker and Lalla Ward criticising the change in theme music and opening titles. Baker also criticised the new synthesised incidental music, comparing it unfavourably with Dudley Simpson
Dudley Simpson
Dudley Simpson is an Australian television composer who is best known for his work on Doctor Who.Prior to leaving Australia, Simpson composed for the Borovansky Ballet Company, forerunner to the Australian Ballet. Among his early television work was the music for Moonstrike...
's earlier scores. Ward later complained that Nathan-Turner had "removed all the lovely humour", while Baker said that he wanted the scripts to improve and regain some of the quality of those of the Philip Hinchcliffe
Philip Hinchcliffe
Philip Hinchcliffe is a British television producer, who brought shows including Private Schulz and The Charmer to the screen, probably best known for the overseeing of British television series Doctor Who from 1974-1977...
era, as he felt that the quality of the scripts and storylines had declined under Graham Williams
Graham Williams
Graham Williams was a British television producer and script editor, whose best known work was on the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who....
. He later said that he felt such improvements did not by and large occur, and that most of Nathan-Turner's changes were either cosmetic or misguided.
Cast notes
Laurence Payne had previously played Johnny RingoJohnny Ringo
John Peters "Johnny" Ringo was an outlaw Cowboy of the American Old West who was affiliated with Ike Clanton and Frank Stilwell in Cochise County, Arizona Territory during 1881-1882.-Early life:...
in The Gunfighters
The Gunfighters
The Gunfighters is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, set in 19th Century America on the days leading up to the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral...
and later played Dastari in The Two Doctors
The Two Doctors
The Two Doctors is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in three weekly parts from 16 February to 2 March 1985. It starred Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant as the Sixth Doctor and his companion Peri, respectively...
.
In print
A novelisation of this serial, written by David FisherDavid Fisher (writer)
David Fisher is a British professional writer for television. He was born in 1929.He wrote the scripts for four serials of Doctor Who. He first contributed The Stones of Blood and The Androids of Tara during that show's sixteenth season, and The Creature from the Pit for the seventeenth season...
, was published by Target Books
Target Books
Target Books was a British publishing imprint, established in 1973 by Universal-Tandem Publishing Co Ltd, a paperback publishing company. The imprint was established as a children's imprint to complement the adult Tandem imprint, and became well known for their highly successful range of...
in July 1982. The novelisation retains many elements of the original script that was intended as a spoof on the Mafia. The original name of Argolis is given as Xbrrrm.
VHS, DVD and CD releases
- This serial was released on VHSVHSThe Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
in January 1997. - The story was released on DVDDVDA DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
July 5, 2004. - In 2002, Peter HowellPeter HowellPeter Howell is a musician and composer. He is best known for his work on Doctor Who as a member of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop....
's incidental music for the serial was released on the compilation album Doctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop Volume 3: The Leisure HiveDoctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop Volume 3: The Leisure HiveDoctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop Volume 3: The Leisure Hive was the third in a series of compilations showcasing the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's work on the science-fiction programme Doctor Who. The album focused mainly on the Peter Howell synthesiser score for the 1980 serial "The Leisure...
.