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Doctor Who: The Doomsday Contract

It’s worth noting that the main reason that City of Death got such high viewing figures is that there was literally nothing else to watch. It was broadcast during the great ITV strike that shut the network down for ten weeks.

It’s a good story, and a pretty good introduction to Doctor Who for anyone unfamiliar with the series. And, of course, Adams used elements of this story combined with Shada when writing Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Still City wouldn’t have quite as high a rating if ITV had been broadcasting.

There does seem to have been a trend in trying to copy Adams’ style in the stories written at this time. As well as The Doomsday Contract, the first episode of the 18th series - The Leisure Hive - has a distinct Hitchhikers feel to it.
 
It’s worth noting that the main reason that City of Death got such high viewing figures is that there was literally nothing else to watch. It was broadcast during the great ITV strike that shut the network down for ten weeks.

It’s a good story, and a pretty good introduction to Doctor Who for anyone unfamiliar with the series. And, of course, Adams used elements of this story combined with Shada when writing Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Still City wouldn’t have quite as high a rating if ITV had been broadcasting.

There does seem to have been a trend in trying to copy Adams’ style in the stories written at this time. As well as The Doomsday Contract, the first episode of the 18th series - The Leisure Hive - has a distinct Hitchhikers feel to it.

That's true about the viewing figures for City, I'll grant you. Though I tend to think, as strong of a story as it is, City would still be well-regarded today even without that figure attached to it. Though, in retrospect, you're probably right I should have mentioned that in the article itself (and probably did at some point before either Grammarly or my own inner-critic cut it out).

It's worth remembering that Adams was essentially a co-author on it, having re-written David Fisher's script pretty much from the ground-up. Indeed, the reason I think it's Adams best writing for Who is that he essentially had someone else's plot to build upon as all of plot elements we remember for the story have their origins in Fisher's script for The Gamble with Time. Gamble got re-written in large part because it was discovered they could get a lot more out of the Paris location and save money on sets if the story was set in the present day and not the 1920s as Fisher had written. But the dialogue, and some of the plot twists even late in the day, are definitely Adams invention. Hence why he re-used them later on. Also, as I understand it, Adams had worked with Fisher on developing ideas for Season 18 before he left the script editors chair, which explains the Hitchhikers influence on Leisure Hive.
 
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