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

Doctor Who, Season 18 marked the debut of series producer John Nathan-Turner, who would continue as the producer of the classic series until its end in 1989. Upon his arrival at the job, he discovered that he had big script problems. The previous season's script editor, Douglas Adams had left the show due to the rapidly increasing demands of his own Hitchhiker's Guide series. Furthermore, Adams had left behind only 1 script near completion and no contact information for potential script writers.

Eventually, Christopher Bidmead was hired as the new script editor, which allowed the development of the season to begin in earnest. Nathan-Turner was unhappy with the recent direction of the show and wanted big changes. He disapproved of the jokey tone the series had taken under producer Graham Williams and wanted a return to the show's more serious roots. He was also painfully aware that, although the series had started out with state of the art effects and production values, the BBC had not allowed the show's budget to keep pace with inflation and the show was looking increasingly cheap, especially in light of the debut of Star Wars, a mere three years earlier. Upon appeal to BBC management, his request for additional per episode funding was denied. However, they agreed to comission two additional episodes per season in order to increase the show's overall funds. Among other things, this allowed the comissioning of the first new title sequence in six years and the first new arrangement of the theme music since the program's start.

Lead actors Tom Baker and Lalla Ward informed the production team that the new season would be their last. This somewhat pleased Nathan-Turner, who disliked Baker's use of humor, and felt that the combination of two Time Lords and a seemingly omniscient dog with a nose laser was a little bit too invulnerable. He was already planning to dispense with K-9 later in the season and had lured the role's originator, John Leeson, back with the promise that the character would be written out. This, however, left Nathan-Turner with another problem, he had to recast the title role and come up with at least one new companion character before the end of the season.

The first new character to be introduced would be Adric, a boy who was orignally conceived of as being a sort of Artful Dodger type, but eventually became simply a brilliant young tag along to the Doctor. He would appear in the season's third story, "Full Circle."

To replace the departing Romana, bossy Australian stewardess Tegan Jovanka was written into the season's final story.

Finally, the production team was so interested in the character of Nyssa in "The Keeper of Traken" that they wrote her in as a full time companion starting with "Logopolis."

For the title role, he cast Peter Davison who had become quite a celebrity playing Tristan Farnon on Nathan-Turner's other project, All Creatures Great and Small. Worried, however, that the departure of the hugely popular Tom Baker would have a negative impact on the ratings, the producer decided to end the season with a cliffhanger involving the return of arch enemy, the Master, who had appeared only once since season 10.

Season eighteen began airing on August 30, 1980.

• The Leisure Hive (4 episodes)
• Meglos (4 episodes)
• Full Circle (4 episodes)
• State of Decay (4 episodes)
• Warrior's Gate (4 episodes)
• The Keeper of Traken (4 episodes)
• Logopolis (4 episodes)