Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor Era (1974-1981) - Part 2

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm reviewing classic Doctor Who stories based on my fading memories of a Twitch marathon I watched ages ago, again!

I've reached the second era of the Fourth Doctor's run here, which was when Graham Williams took over as producer and Anthony Read took over as script editor (before passing the job over to Douglas Adams for season 17). So this article will feature reviews of every serial from seasons 15 to 17, starting with Horror of Fang Rock and ending with The Horns of Nimon.

I'm still dropping SPOILERS for every story I review, but they'll be limited to the current serial and those that came before it. I'm not jumping ahead in my personal timeline.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition

Written by:

Harold Livingston

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Directed by:

Robert Wise

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Release Date:

1979

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Good news everyone! Today on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm going to improve the internet by posting a few thousand extra words about Star Trek: The Motion Picture, padded out with pictures of people in beige staring at a cloud.

I love that this is called 'The Motion Picture' by the way. It's not a film or a movie, it's a motion picture, it's about something, it cost money. A feature film based on a TV series starring the same cast isn't unheard of, but they're rarely set up to be the next 2001: A Space Odyssey. They even got Robert Wise, the guy who made The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Andromeda Strain, to direct it. Which kind of explains why it looks like The Andromeda Strain now that I think about it.

There were a few attempts during the 70s to bring Trek back in some form, but this particular project started life as Star Trek: Phase II, a television series starring most of the same cast (minus Leonard Nimoy) intended to launch a new fourth US TV network. But someone decided the pilot script had movie potential and there were soon bigger plans in play. From what I've heard the series was actually cancelled within a month of being announced, but they had to let pre-production roll along for almost a year while they got the movie deals in place. Of course the film was expected to pay for all the work done on the false starts along the way, which made it seem even more wildly over-budget than it actually was. The most expensive movie ever made at the time in fact, aside from maybe Superman. But you couldn't call it flop; if you adjust for ticket price inflation it's actually right up there with the J.J. Abrams movies.

You'd think this leap to cinemas was inspired by the success of Star Wars, but it was apparently much the opposite. I read that Paramount believed they'd missed their chance because everyone had already spent their money on one big sci-fi movie and wouldn't want to see two of them in just a few years! That's why they were making Phase II instead. But the massive success of Close Encounters of the Third Kind that same year made it clear that science fiction had a future.

Anyway this is going to be 50 images separated by SPOILERS for the entire motion picture, so either mentally prepare yourself for that ordeal, or bail now. You can tell me what a huge mistake this was in the comments box underneath.