Trivia / Doctor Who S18 E7 "Logopolis"

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• Creator Backlash: Tom Baker was unhappy with the fact that the final image that viewers would see of his Doctor would be of him lying prone, being photographed from above. Russell T Davies evidently agreed with Baker's viewpoint, and while in charge of the 2005 revival mandated that all regenerations were to be depicted with the Time Lord stood on his or her feet.
• Enforced Method Acting: Possibly unintentional. When the director ordered Peter Davison to sit up, he did so in a tone that made Peter think he was doing something wrong. His look of surprise is genuine.
• First Appearance:
  • Of Tegan Jovanka.
  • The Cloister Bell is introduced.
  • And Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor, of course.
• Hostility on the Set: Tom Baker said later on how he was aggravated about leaving the series and took it out on others. He refused suggestions from cast and crew about the Doctor. Janet Fielding and John Nathan-Turner both have confirmed this attitude, with Turner even claiming that when Baker had finished his last scene, he left without a word.
• Prop Recycling: John Nathan-Turner was informed that a real police box, one of the last left in the entire country, still stood on the Barnet bypass in London. Sadly, the box was vandalised before production started, so the TARDIS prop from the season before was used.
• Technology Marches On: The highly advanced aliens who are holding the world together with pure mathematics use bubble memory. As the Doctor puts it, "Bubble memory is non-volatile. Remove the power and the bit patterns are still retained in tiny magnetic domains in these chips!" The writer was a computer scientist and bubble memory was quite cutting edge in 1981. Nowadays, not so much, as it's only remembered as an early precursor to modern-day flash memory.
• Wag the Director: The Doctor was supposed to scream as he fell to his death, but Tom Baker felt this wasn’t heroic for his character.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Both Sarah Jane Smith and Leela were asked to return in order to ease viewers into the regeneration. Elisabeth Sladen and Louise Jameson declined to return, so Nyssa and Tegan were brought in — the former to fulfil the "returning character" role, and the latter to fulfil the "companion from contemporary Earth" role that went unfilled since Sarah's departure in "The Hand of Fear" four seasons prior.
  • Several actors, including Peter Cushing, Michael Gough, and Peter Wyngarde were considered for the Monitor.
  • Michael Sheard was considered for the Detective Inspector.

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