Doctor Who: Season 18

1980 · 28 episodes · ★ 6.8

What Season 18 of Doctor Who

The season opens on the planet Argolis, where the Doctor and Romana investigate a series of deaths that threaten the tourism the city depends on. Next, they face Meglos, a giant cactus who wants to conquer the galaxy, and a society trapped in E-Space, a negative universe where evolution takes a different path. The stories revolve around entropy, the theme that ties all the episodes together, and have a darker, more mature tone than the previous era. The season also brings back the Master, who has stolen a new body instead of regenerating.

28episodes

Aug 30, 1980premiered

Mar 21, 1981Latest episode

11.1 hrtotal runtime

Season 18 Episodes

18x01 The Leisure Hive (1)
Aug 30, 1980 · 24 min · ★ 6.5
The planet Argolis, around the year 2290. The Argolins live in a huge shielded city, protected from the irradiated wasteland outside. The planet's survival depends on the tourists their Leisure Hive attracts. But a series of horrific deaths seems to jeopardise that future - can the Doctor and Romana find a solution?
Directing: Lovett Bickford · Writing: David Fisher · Starring: Nigel Lambert, Adrienne Corri, David Haig, Laurence Payne
18x02 The Leisure Hive (2)
Sep 6, 1980 · 21 min · ★ 6.2
Another man is found dead, strangled by the Doctor's scarf, so the Doctor is put on trial. By some of the archaic rules of law, he's made to "prove" his innocence by becoming a test subject in a new tachyon experiment with time. The result will prove his innocence or guilt, so they say.
Directing: Lovett Bickford · Writing: David Fisher · Starring: Nigel Lambert
18x03 The Leisure Hive (3)
Sep 13, 1980 · 22 min · ★ 6.2
With the Doctor suffering from the time experiment, the clandestine schemes of others start coming to light, along with the secreted purposes to which the tachyonic generator has been used.
Directing: Lovett Bickford · Writing: David Fisher
18x04 The Leisure Hive (4)
Sep 20, 1980 · 22 min · ★ 6.6
With the saboteur and murderer revealed and arrested, peace should now be restored, but a new threat emerges - a war-monger who's both ready and eager to aggress upon other worlds with a newly manufactured warrior army.
Directing: Lovett Bickford · Writing: David Fisher · Starring: Nigel Lambert
18x05 Meglos (1)
Sep 27, 1980 · 25 min · ★ 6.0
The desert planet Zolpha-Thura, the 1980s. Giant intelligent megalomaniac cactus Meglos is planning to conquer the galaxy but first it needs the dodecahedron, a powerful energy source currently on the planet Tigella. To get it back Meglos recruits a band of galactic mercenaries and hatches a cunning scheme requiring it to impersonate the Doctor...
Directed by Terence Dudley · Written by John Flanagan, Andrew McCulloch
18x06 Meglos (2)
Oct 4, 1980 · 22 min · ★ 6.2
With the TARDIS occupants trapped in a chronic histeratic loop (forever reliving the same moment in time), the devious Meglos - disguised as the Doctor - gains the trust of the Tigellans along with full and private access to their power chamber.
Directing: Terence Dudley · Writing: John Flanagan, Andrew McCulloch · Starring: Jacqueline Hill, Bill Fraser, Crawford Logan, Edward Underdown
18x07 Meglos (3)
Oct 11, 1980 · 22 min · ★ 6.2
Can Romana escape the Gaztaks? What has become of the Dodecahedron? What pressing appointment awaits the Doctor?
Directed by Terence Dudley · Written by John Flanagan, Andrew McCulloch
18x08 Meglos (4)
Oct 18, 1980 · 20 min · ★ 6.2
With the Doctor about to be ritualistically sacrificed to appease the god Ti for stealing the dodecahedron, Meglos and the pirates return to Zolfa-Thura with the dodecahedron to fire up an ancient weapon and blast Tigella out of existence.
Directed by Terence Dudley · Written by John Flanagan, Andrew McCulloch
18x09 Full Circle (1)
Oct 25, 1980 · 25 min · ★ 6.7
Deep space, an unknown time - on course for Gallifrey, the TARDIS passes through a strange disruption. When they materialise, the scanner shows the Time Lord homeworld... but the travellers have passed into the negative pocket universe of E-Space and are in fact on the planet Alzarius, where evolution works very differently...
Directing: Peter Grimwade · Writing: Andrew Smith · Starring: Matthew Waterhouse, June Page, James Bree, Andrew Forbes
18x10 Full Circle (2)
Nov 1, 1980 · 23 min · ★ 6.6
As the humanoid community takes refuge in their crashed spaceship, venomous marsh spiders begin to hatch from the local fruit while bestial marshmen emerge from the waters to walk the land. It is quite apparent that the marshmen desire entry into the spaceship. Meanwhile, as a curious marshchild shadows the Doctor, a group of teen rebels decides to take over the TARDIS.
Directing: Peter Grimwade · Writing: Andrew Smith · Starring: Matthew Waterhouse, June Page, James Bree, Andrew Forbes
18x11 Full Circle (3)
Nov 8, 1980 · 22 min · ★ 6.4
Infection from a spider bite causes Romana's personality to change. Meanwhile the Doctor, after discovering that the spaceship society is in a perpetual state of repair and upgrade, has morality issues with the ship's leading scientist who readies himself to perform gruesome experiments on the live marshchild while it's fully conscious.
Directing: Peter Grimwade · Writing: Andrew Smith · Starring: Matthew Waterhouse, June Page, James Bree, Andrew Forbes
18x12 Full Circle (4)
Nov 15, 1980 · 25 min · ★ 6.8
Marshmen invade the Terradonian ship thanks to Romana, who seems to be in communion with them. While the ship's inhabitants flee for their lives, the Doctor discovers a crucial fact why these humanoids can never return to the planet Terradon.
Directed by Peter Grimwade · Written by Andrew Smith · Starring Matthew Waterhouse, June Page, James Bree, George Baker
18x13 State of Decay (1)
Nov 22, 1980 · 23 min · ★ 7.1
Still trapped in negative E-Space, the TARDIS lands on an unnamed world to find a society sliding back into feudalism. What is the secret of the Three Who Rule? And what ancient enemy of the Time Lords is stirring again on this world...?
Directed by Peter Moffatt · Written by Terrance Dicks · Starring Matthew Waterhouse, Arthur Hewlett, Clinton Greyn, Rhoda Lewis
18x14 State of Decay (2)
Nov 29, 1980 · 24 min · ★ 7.0
The Doctor and Romana are escorted to the tower to meet the royal leaders, hoping they can find answers to why this society evolves backwards. The Doctor recognizes the tower as an old Earth spaceship, and further finds that the old fuel tanks, far from empty, are full - but with blood. Meanwhile, Councilor Aukon senses intelligence in Adric and selects him to be the their first "Chosen One."
Directed by Peter Moffatt · Written by Terrance Dicks · Starring Matthew Waterhouse, Arthur Hewlett, Clinton Greyn, Rhoda Lewis
18x15 State of Decay (3)
Dec 6, 1980 · 25 min · ★ 7.0
The Doctor finds archive material in the TARDIS that tells him he's dealing with an ancient enemy of the Time Lords, a nearly indestructible king vampire who's ready to revive and reenter normal space, spreading death, once again, across the universe.
Directed by Peter Moffatt · Written by Terrance Dicks · Starring Matthew Waterhouse, Arthur Hewlett, Clinton Greyn, Rhoda Lewis
18x16 State of Decay (4)
Dec 13, 1980 · 25 min · ★ 7.0
The Doctor joins the villagers' revolt against their vampire rulers, unsure how to kill the king vampire. Meanwhile Adric is first in line to join the new vampire order while Romana is laid out as a sacrificial Time Lord for the awakening king vampire and his swarm of bats.
Directed by Peter Moffatt · Written by Terrance Dicks · Starring Matthew Waterhouse, Arthur Hewlett, Clinton Greyn, Rhoda Lewis
18x17 Warriors' Gate (1)
Jan 3, 1981 · 23 min · ★ 6.3
The TARDIS is drawn into an empty white void, somewhere between universes. But they are not the only ones trapped there.
Directed by Graeme Harper, Paul Joyce · Written by Stephen Gallagher · Starring Matthew Waterhouse, Clifford Rose, Kenneth Cope
18x18 Warriors' Gate (2)
Jan 10, 1981 · 24 min · ★ 6.6
When Rorvik learns that Romana is a time sensitive, he takes her prisoner, forcing her to find a way out of the void. The Doctor attempts to discover what lies beyond the mirror.
Directed by Graeme Harper, Paul Joyce · Written by Stephen Gallagher · Starring Matthew Waterhouse, Jeremy Gittins, Clifford Rose, Kenneth Cope
18x19 Warriors' Gate (3)
Jan 17, 1981 · 23 min · ★ 6.6
While Biroc leads the Doctor to a view of the Tharil's lordly past, Romana learns more about the damaged freighter and the cold-heartedness of its crew. Meanwhile Commander Rorvik, confounded by the time mirror inside the universal center gateway, ignores evidence that it's no simple mirror and decides to blast it, imperiling the lives of everyone.
Directed by Graeme Harper, Paul Joyce · Written by Stephen Gallagher · Starring Matthew Waterhouse, Jeremy Gittins, Clifford Rose, Kenneth Cope
18x20 Warriors' Gate (4)
Jan 24, 1981 · 25 min · ★ 6.6
The Doctor deduces that the freighter is a slave ship loaded up with Tharils to be sold as time machine components, but the immense weight of Rorvik's damaged ship, designed to contain the Tharils, is now collapsing the fragile void of the micro-universe in which they're all stuck, pulling everything inside ever closer.
Directed by Graeme Harper, Paul Joyce · Written by Stephen Gallagher · Starring Matthew Waterhouse, Jeremy Gittins, Clifford Rose, Kenneth Cope
18x21 The Keeper of Traken (1)
Jan 31, 1981 · 25 min · ★ 7.4
The planet Traken. The Traken union is a society living in perfect harmony, watched over by the powerful but benign Keeper. But now the Keeper is dying, and he senses a great evil within his protectorate. Can the Doctor help him discover the secret of the Melkur?
Directing: John Black · Writing: Johnny Byrne · Starring: Geoffrey Beevers, Matthew Waterhouse, Sarah Sutton, Ralph G. Morse
18x22 The Keeper of Traken (2)
Feb 7, 1981 · 25 min · ★ 7.3
Tremas claims consular privilege to protect the Doctor and Adric from execution, though it binds his fate to theirs if they're found guilty of murder. Melkur strengthens his hold over Kassia while Seron decides to have rapport with The Keeper to learn truth, and Adric finds evidence of another TARDIS in the area.
Directing: John Black · Writing: Johnny Byrne · Starring: Geoffrey Beevers, Matthew Waterhouse, Anthony Ainley, John Woodnutt
18x23 The Keeper of Traken (3)
Feb 14, 1981 · 24 min · ★ 7.5
With Tremas falling under suspicion, due to his association with the Doctor, a new Keeper Nominate is named. Now, with everything in place, Melkur has only a short wait before his full malevolence can unfold.
Directed by John Black · Written by Johnny Byrne · Starring Geoffrey Beevers, Matthew Waterhouse, Anthony Ainley
18x24 The Keeper of Traken (4)
Feb 21, 1981 · 26 min · ★ 7.5
With the merciless Melkur in control of The Source, the Doctor and his allies have only a slim chance of deposing him, which also puts the peace of the Traken Union in severe jeopardy.
Directed by John Black · Written by Johnny Byrne · Starring Geoffrey Beevers, Matthew Waterhouse, Anthony Ainley
18x25 Logopolis (1)
Feb 28, 1981 · 25 min · ★ 7.6
Deciding to repair the TARDIS' chameleon circuit, the Doctor goes to Earth to find a real police box. But an old enemy is one step ahead of him.
Directing: Peter Grimwade · Writing: Christopher H. Bidmead · Starring: Janet Fielding, Matthew Waterhouse, Tom Georgeson, Anthony Ainley
18x26 Logopolis (2)
Mar 7, 1981 · 25 min · ★ 7.5
The Doctor, aware that his time may soon be ending, travels to the Logopolis where a series of fateful events are set in motion.
Directing: Peter Grimwade · Writing: Christopher H. Bidmead · Starring: Janet Fielding, Matthew Waterhouse, Tom Georgeson, Anthony Ainley
18x27 Logopolis (3)
Mar 14, 1981 · 25 min · ★ 7.5
With Nyssa from Traken unexpectedly rejoining the group, Adric aids the Monitor of Logopolis in trying to save the Doctor before time runs out. The Master, at liberty to prepare, is finally ready to reveal his true target, which unknowingly sets off the biggest catastrophe of all time.
Directed by Peter Grimwade · Written by Christopher H. Bidmead · Starring Janet Fielding, Matthew Waterhouse, John Fraser, Anthony Ainley
18x28 Logopolis (4) Season Finale
Mar 21, 1981 · 26 min · ★ 8.3
With the universe collapsing, the Doctor forms an uneasy alliance with the Master to save it. In case all does not go well, the Watcher takes the Doctor's companions to a safe place, but his plans for them don't stop there. The one hope for all lies back on Earth.
Directing: Peter Grimwade · Writing: Christopher H. Bidmead · Starring: Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Matthew Waterhouse, John Fraser