Hello everyone! 🙂

Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!

Season 14 is Tom Baker’s third season as the Fourth Doctor in ‘Doctor Who’. It’s arguably one of his best seasons in the entire show. It’s also Philip Hinchcliffe’s final season as producer and it’s Robert Holmes’ last full season as script-editor, although he did script-edit some of the stories in Season 15.

The structure of Season 14 is interesting, as it starts with two stories featuring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor and Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith. There was great chemistry between Tom Baker and Lis Sladen in the series, thus the farewell between them in ‘The Hand of Fear’ is touching.

Tom Baker went solo for a bit in one story of the season in ‘The Deadly Assassin’ where we’re re-introduced to the Time Lords of Gallifrey and we meet a decaying version of the Master, played by Peter Pratt. Tom Baker was keen to do the series by himself without any companions helping him. 😐

Of course, that didn’t happen, as Tom’s Doctor was joined by Louise Jameson as Leela in ‘The Face of Evil’. There was tension between Tom Baker and Louise Jameson whilst the series was being made, but the Fourth Doctor and Leela team-up became as popular as the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane. 🙂

The inspiration behind Leela was to do an Eliza Doolittle-like character, which I’ve seen in the 1964 musical film ‘My Fair Lady’. This is especially clear when the Doctor tries to teach Leela to be less savage whilst they’re having adventures in space and time. It’s an approach to a companion I quite like. 🙂

Season 14 concludes with two very popular stories in ‘Doctor Who’, including ‘The Robots of Death’ and ‘The Talons of Weng-Chiang’. Even though I’m not very enthusiastic about the gothic-horror approach in ‘Doctor Who’ in Tom Baker’s first three seasons, they’re undeniably compelling seasons.

Thanks for reading!

Bye for now!

Tim 🙂