Doctor Who - The Leisure Hive VHS

Product Description The Doctor and Romana are among the first tourists at a holiday resort built on the remains of a planet laid waste by a 20-minute war. Amazon.com Particularly significant in terms of Doctor Who's history, The Leisure Hive marked an end to Who's descent into vaudeville, and heralded the entrance of new hotshot series producer John Nathan-Turner. The opening long, slow pan across a wintry beach, on which an autumnal Doctor sits slumped, immediately declares the show's serious intentions. The narrative itself is an erudite discussion on fascism and racism taking in regeneration, megalomania, cloning, and a series of Agatha Christie-esque murders. It's the style, rather than the story, however, that's most prominent in The Leisure Hive: along with his new sober ambitious approach, Nathan-Turner brought a new theme tune, a new logo, a striking red costume, and a new title sequence--one that, tellingly, moved away from the enclosed time tunnel to show the vastness of space opening up. Productions values are also high: the Quantel effects are impressive even now, and the performances are quite stunning, particularly Baker's as the prematurely aged, infirm Doctor. By dispensing with the clowning and with what he termed "Douglas Adams's undergrad humor," Nathan-Turner reinvigorated a show that was becoming stale. The diegetic rebirth brought about by the Regeneration Drive at the show's denouement is an apposite motif that was emblematic of the rebirth of the show itself--The Leisure Hive truly represented a new beginning for Who. --Paul Eisinger