<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Doctor Who, Season 15 would prove a daunting task for new producer Graham Williams. The three previous seasons had seen Doctor Who become more successful domestically than it had ever been before. It would be a tough act to follow. The task was made more difficult by the fact that Williams had been given explicit instructions by his BBC superiors that the horror coding that dominated the previous seasons should be toned down and that the cost overruns of previous seasons would no longer be tolerated. To address the first issue, Williams chose to move the program in a more comedic direction.

The latter issue would prove to be particularly difficult. For years, increases to the program's budget had failed to keep up with the rate of inflation and Williams worried that the program's increasingly tight budget could no longer produce a program that would look credible in a world which had seen the debut of Star Wars.

Williams was able to persuade script editor Robert Holmes to stay on for the majority of the season, hiring Anthony Read to take his place for the last two stories.

Holmes was entranced with a robotic dog character K-9 in the script for "The Invisible Enemy" and urged the character's adoption as a regular traveling companion. This suggestion was eventually taken up but, the radio controlled K-9 prop would cause chaos on set, interfering with cameras and frequently going haywire. The delays would cause the loss of vital studio time.

Further complicating the start of production was the fact that the BBC management had nixed the planned script for the season's first serial, a vampire yarn which may have been titled "The Witch Lords." They feared that it might be seen as a parody of an upcoming BBC adaptation of Dracula. "Horror of Fang Rock" was hastily penned as a replacement.

Louse Jameson had indictated that she would be leaving. Her character Leela would have to be written out at the end of the season.

Most troublesome, however, was the advent of union disputes that would cost the season's final serial virtually all of its studio time. Management suggested that the serial should simply be scrapped, but Williams fought for his season finale, eventually dipping into an emergency fund to complete filming in non-BBC facilities.

Season Fifteen began airing on September 9, 1977. Aside from the debut of the incredibly popular K-9, the season is known for the screen debut of the Sontarans' nemesis, the Rutans, for a clever parody of the British tax system ("The Sun Makers") and for a second story based on the Doctor's home world.

• Horror of Fang Rock (4 episodes)
• The Invisible Enemy (4 episodes)
• Image of the Fendahl (4 episodes)
• The Sun Makers (4 episodes)
• Underworld (4 episodes)
• The Invasion of Time (6 episodes)