The Leisure Hive | Sophisticated Idiots

Take a deep breath, dear readers.

We’ve entered the decade whose rather notorious output is vajazzled in erratic styles and experimental effects.

Combined with the arrival of a certain new totally uncontroversial and universally-loved producer of Doctor Who, what could possibly go wrong?

The fact that The Leisure Hive is the Season 18 opener – aka the beginning of the end for The Greatest Doctor Ever – is hardly easing our anxiety levels.

Yet, The Leisure Hive is not a bad serial (there’s a zinger promo quote for the next special edition release). It even achieves the feat of boasting a couple of standout moments that live on in the memory (more on these later).

However, it does commit that oh-so-familiar cardinal sin of being dull.

Not aesthetically of course.

Now that the 80s have landed, the producers are contractually obliged by highlighter manufacturer Staedtler to daub everything in Vibrant! Neon!

But this garishness can’t disguise the mundanity around proceedings.

Don’t take our word for it, though – early in Part One the audience is given an uncannily accurate summary of what these four episodes have in store:

“For the next hour and a half, we will examine the wave
equations that define the creation of solid tachyonic images.”

Quick, pass us a can of Monster and the DVD of The Two Doctors (steady on, old boy, we interpret the Foamasi mutter in a click-whistle).

The tone is set immediately, when a windy Brighton press junket results in the slowest pan across a beach in history.

Things briefly pick up when K9 spontaneously combusts at the sight of water (brilliantly, he struggles to move on a polished studio floor so how the ruddy hell we’re supposed to believe he’s traversing shingle we’ll never know).

But then we’re subjected to a befuddling plot in which the Doctor and Romana holiday at a deserted space Butlins and stumble across a colony beset with soap-opera internal power struggles and a young oik with mummy issues.

Amusingly, the irritant in this domestic drama is David Haig, who will become best known for orating the most important comma in sitcom history (“Your cock-up, my arse”).

Here, it’s clear why he became typecast as a smug, slimy sonofabitch: he does it incredibly well in The Leisure Hive. His performance of snivelling petulance also results in a perfect punishment when he’s regressed to a newborn.

The excellence of this whining wet boy aside, the story is distinctly perfunctory. For example, we give you:

A by-the-numbers naff green monster with a stumpy penis eye.
A classic studio set comprising bright corridors (why are there only two Classic Who sets: corridors or quarries?)
Romana’s sole duty is to quote techno-babble at us.
Successive cliffhangers of the Doctor being stuck in the recreation box thing (or, as it turns out, re-creation. A hyphen makes for one hell of a plot twist, we can all agree).

This is all laced with a litany of extremely detailed scientific dialogue that makes the earlier tachyonic quote as snappy as a dodgy political soundbite on the side of a bus.

Nevertheless, we would be remiss not to celebrate the two aforementioned nice touches.

As predictably as day following night, both revolve around Tom Baker – even though he starts the story conked out in a deck chair and puts in a performance that suggests the director never had the heart to rouse him.

These touches are, in fact, so nice that we bestow upon them the honour of bold headers:

Memorable Moment 1

The gimmick of the Doctor’s rapid ageing is handled really well, even though he remains lathered in makeup for so long it smacks of the new producer on the block flexing his muscles. But Tom at 1,000 years old still looks younger than Hartnell.

Memorable Moment 2

Okay, the effects may not trouble the BAFTA panel but the Doctor’s tricksiness (that’s definitely a word) with the clone army is neat and playful. Thoroughly baffling for the audience of course, but neat and playful nonetheless.

So rejoice that it ain't a case of wall-to-wall blandness (max relief - we’re not in Sensorites territory). And yet that's not all…

While watching this serial we were plagued by a nagging doubt, a gut feeling that something didn’t quite feel right. We couldn’t put our finger on it at first.

Then it dawned on us.

The whole thing is a Peter Davison story, only without Davison.

Consider, please, the evidence:

Firstly, it’s utterly discombobulating to be greeted by the Fifth Doctor’s title sequence but with Baker in his place. Especially when the pic used of Tom has clearly been taken mid-strain on the loo.

Then we have the premature arrival of the Peter Davison Era Look ™, with the childish colour palette lending The Leisure Hive a sickeningly Channel 5 Milkshake vibe.

Thirdly, it all feels rather tired and out of ideas (particularly strange given the new broom in the big chair making sweeping changes). Which we guess is something we’ll just have to get used to for the best part of a decade.

There’s probably a good story in here – the concept of a 20-minute war leaving a civilisation unable to reproduce is interesting (upside-down squash matches are not) – but it’s rendered with such plastic cheapness it takes an especially hard-core fan to see past this and identify any quality.

Every story needs a standout moment to be memorable.

And to be fair The Leisure Hive has two - bold ones no less – but these striking images alone are not enough to drag it out of the lower ranks of Baker’s efforts.

So in the immortal words of Adele, hold your breath and count to ten (years): the 80s are gonna be one hell of a bumpy ride.