Doctor Who: Every Tom Baker/Hinchcliffe Era Story Ranked From Worst To Best

4. The Seeds Of Doom

Robert Banks Stewart was supposed to have written the Talons of Weng-Chiang meaning he would have written two finales in a row and that each season would have begun and ended with the same writer had Hinchcliffe had his way with things. It would be interesting to see what the Doctor would have been like in Talons in that scenario, since it€™s here that he€™s definitely at his most alien. Throughout this story he€™s introverted and aggressive. In Talons he probably would have used the Elephant Gun to end things quickly by shooting Li H€™sen Chang in episode one had it been written by Stewart. This performance is matched only by Tony Beckley who plays the main human enemy, Harrison Chase. This six part episode is structured as a two part introduction with a four part body and if the Antarctic is the main backdrop of the first part, Chase easily matches the continent for sheer screen presence. He achieves this through chewing the scenery more than a starving person in a room made of chips. He€™s such a caricature that he€™s almost a supervillain with his superpower being a control of plants. But like everyone in this story, he€™s viciously apathetic. It€™s a story which feels violent and therefore the animalistic overtones and threat feel even more real and threatening. There€™s a pervading sense of danger running throughout that means you buy the uncontrollable nature (pun a happy accident) of the enemy more than any of the other all-powerful Hinchcliffe-era villains. What's more, this story sees all the characters in their most feverish and desperate as soon as they realise what they€™re up against. This is what holds the story together to make it one of the Hinchcliffe era€™s most powerfully tense.