Episode #105 : City of Death

"Duggan, why is it that every time I start to talk to someone, you knock them unconscious?"

Episode 105:    The City of Death.
Companions:   4th Doctor and Romana.
Air Date:          Four episodes. 29th September to 20th October 1979.

While taking in the sights of Paris in 1979, the Fourth Doctor and Romana sense that someone is tampering with time. Who is the mysterious Count Scarlioni? Why does he seem to have counterparts scattered through time? And just how many copies of the Mona Lisa did Leonardo da Vinci paint?

The City of Death deals with Scarroth, the last of the Jaggaroth race. Their space ship landed on Earth before life appeared but an accident or malfunction caused their craft to explode. The resulting radiation triggered the primordial soup and from that all life on Earth began. Unfortunately Scarroth is split in several versions of himself throughout time up until the 1970's. These versions seem to have some limited ability to communicate with one another and are planning on travelling back in time to prevent their destruction. Which means of course that mankind would never have existed. The plot is likewise rather convoluted and not so well written.

Scarroth would have made for an interesting villain if he didn't seem some two dimensional. In fact, he is a villain who comes across as yet another James Bond villain although one with green wriggly skin and a cyclopean eye. He has a thuggish henchman who goes along with his orders even though he seems to know exactly what his master is trying to do.

Scarroth is played by Julian Glover who you may remember as the AT AT commander assault Hoth Base in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. You have also seen him more recently in Game of Thrones. There is also a brief cameo by John Cleese as a supposed art expert in the Louvre.

The story is set in Paris and has plenty of on location shots of the Doctor and Romana crossing Parisian streets and on the Eiffel Tower. When I say plenty I mean too many. After a while you just starting thinking "yes, we know you filmed all this in Paris. Please get on with it." Nice to see that the show can get out and about a bit more though.

There is one continuity niggle that bugs me in this one. Only a couple stories ago the Doctor fitted a randomizer to the TARDIS so that the Black Guardian couldn't find them and yet in City of Death the Doctor time travels to visit Leonardo's workshop in 1505 and then back to Paris in 1979 directly. It's only a small niggle but it feels like the idea of the randomizer was forgotten by the writers.

City of Death is not one of my favourites. In fact I think it is somewhat below par. A more three dimensional villain would have made it better though you cannot fault Julian Glovers acting.