Doctor Who and the Monster of Peladon by Terrance Dicks

That vote of confidence is almost absolute, if we’re to judge by the number of Cursey elements called back for a victory lap. It’s quite different from the Pertwee era’s usual noisy style. A sequel to Curse is a vote of confidence in a particularly talky, studio-bound version of the program. They obviously thought it a success, and I think they were right.

And in The Monster of Peladon, a sequel to season nine’s The Curse of Peladon.ĭicks and Letts could have made a sequel to any story they’d produced over the previous four years. Six episodes of Malcolm Hulke and UNIT, four episodes of Terry Nation and the Daleks, six episodes of Robert Sloman (and Letts on the sly) and the Master. These are stories which feel like the old standards, conceived in the interests of expediency. It’s the Doctor Who you make while you’re making other plans.

The result is a set of stories which feels familiar, but not at all challenging or ground breaking. By this stage, Dicks and Letts knew how to pump out a series of Doctor Who, and to save them from a last minute scurry for scripts, they planned the show’s eleventh production block well in advance.

I’ve never seen Moonbase 3, but I think about it when considering Season 11, because it was this season which bore the brunt of its producer and script editor moonlighting (moonbasing?) elsewhere. It was Pertwee dream team of producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks’ attempt at serious sci-fi Moonbase 3. Should it be?) But the first was more substantial. The second of these was producer John Nathan-Turner’s attempt at spinning K9 off into his own series.

In fact, there are only two examples of a production team branching out into new ventures while still trying to get a season of homely sci-fi TV on before the time and money ran out. It wasn’t like this back in the days of classic Doctor Who, where making anything other than the requested set of episodes was almost entirely discouraged. I want a new series of Sherlock and something to replace Wizards vs. “Stop loitering around that photocopier, Moffat! Get back to work! We’re not paying you to take six months of the year off just because your show’s not in production. It’s as if making 13 episodes of a sci-fi behemoth a year leaves you so much surplus time you need to justify your existence. These days, it’s not enough to just make Doctor Who.

Doctor Who and the Monster of Peladon by Terrance Dicks