Doctor Who - Season 19 & 20 (1982 - 1983)

Costume Design by:

- Odile Dicks-Mireaux ( notable efforts: Blackadder (1982), The Woman in White (1997), Great Expectations (1999), Gormenghast (2000) )

- Colin Lavers ( notable efforts: Timon of Athens (1981), All's Well That Ends Well (1981), Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1984), Loves's Labours Lost (1985), Titus Andronicus (1985), A Royal Scandal (1997) )

- Barbara Kidd ( notable efforts: A Christmas Carol (1977), The Serpent Son (1979), Blake's 7 'Trial' to 'Star One' (1979), No Country for Old Men (1981), The Cleopatras (1983), Tender is the Night (1985), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2015) )

- Rosalind Ebbutt ( notable efforts: The Flipside of Dominick Hyde (1980), Downton Abbey (2011), Victoria (2016) )

- Dee Robson ( notable efforts: Moonbase 3 (1973), Blake's 7 (Season 3, 1980), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981) )

- Ken Trew ( notable efforts: The Prisoner of Zenda (1984), Strangers and Brothers (1984) Clarissa (1991) )

- Amy Roberts ( notable efforts: The Legend of King Arthur (1979), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1981), Gulliver in Lilliput (1981), Dracula (2006), The Crown (2019 - 2022) )

- Dinah Collin ( notable efforts: Edward II (1970), A Tale of Two Cities (1980), The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1983), Pride and Prejudice (1995) )

'Castrovalva'

Costume Design by: Odile Dicks-Mireaux

The first serial of Peter Davison's tenure, where he finally would sport his ironic costume...which I'm not really going to highlight here partly due to, well, redundancy (there's enough photos online, as well as his costume obviously being themed around cricket). The focus here will instead be on the titular world of Castrovalva, which was set on the titular mystery world created by none other than the Master, disguised as ‘the Portreeve’, notable for his white robes and double-brimmed plastic hat. Other notable ‘denizens’ of Castrovalva wear long cylindrical hats and gowns, in a similar manner to the Portreeve.

The most spectacular outfits in this story for me have to be the Castrovalvan’s hunting gear – two-toned masks (looking almost like a stylized spacesuit helmet), with feathers adorned on top and long woolen multicolored cloaks - it is genuinely a crying shame that each individual outfit isn't shown in its full glory really!

'Four to Doomsday'

Costume Design by: Colin Lavers

This serial involved the evil alien Monarch (Stratford Johns) and his deputies Persuasion (Paul Shelley) and Enlightenment (Annie Lambert) abducting humans from various periods of Earth history and duplicating them into androids. The costume designer for this story was Colin Lavers, whose most notable design here is the robe worn by Monarch, who sports the an outfit of green patterned robes, with a large collar in a blotched gold and black scheme.

His deputies Enlightenment and Persuasian (in their original forms) are dressed identically, but with the collars slightly shorter and flatter.

This story also has Adric briefly wear charming spacesuit design, with a visored helmet and silver kneepads.

'Kinda'

Costume Design by: Barbara Kidd

This serial was set on a mostly peaceful tribal people of the title slowly coming under the influence (along with the human colonists and the Doctor’s companion Tegan) of an evil entity called the Mara. The costumes for this story were designed by Barbara Kidd, in her last credit on the original series. The Kinda themselves are in fariyl cliched tribal gear, being just cloth skirts that seem to be made up of patterns that slightly resemble snakeskin, with yellow and black pendants over their chests.

The exceptions to this uniform dress sense are their two ‘wise women’, Panna (Mary Morris) and Karuna (Sarah Prince), who are designated by their black and red dresses, which are cut to form streamers at the front, and with necklaces of metal shapes - this is worn with a headdress during her trance, which unfortunately is overlayed with computer effects meaning the actual headdress is never seen proper in the story – a shame, as its frankly the best design in the story.

The military officials of the colonists are in neatly-cut tan and olive-green uniforms, which have a very similar design to the humans’ outfits in ‘The Ark in Space’ – this isn’t very surprising considering that Barbara Kidd, who was the costume designer on ‘Kinda’, also had that role on ‘The Ark in Space’. The designs have a bit of a colonial motif, with the pith helmets being a very obvious detail, and the ranks only being distinguished by the number of lines on the cuffs.

There is also scientist Todd (Nerys Hughes) who wears a zip-up labcoat fitted with blue vinyl popped collars and shoulder boards, worn with high heels and tights too.

'Black Orchid'

Costume Design by: Rosalind Ebbutt

One of the few period serials of the 1980s Doctor Who seasons to have costumes of note was this Agatha Christie pastiche set in the 1920s - most of the costumes are no doubt reused from the period wardrobe, but Nyssa and Tegan both wear some cute dresses for a costume party. Nyssa's is a butterfly style dress with a shiny mask fitted with antennae, whilst Tegan wears a pink and green dress designed like flower petals.

'Earthshock'

Costume Design by: Dinah Collin

This rather more gritty serial involved the Cybermen taking over a spaceship as part of a plot to destroy Earth; this was definitely inspired by the more lived-in aesthetics of Star Wars and Alien, with the crew wearing fairly nondescript uniforms consisting of grey shirts and black trousers. The most futuristic aspect are their jackets, with consist of several buttons, zips and straps; the spaceship's captain Briggs (Beryl Reid) wears a grey leather jacket with pointed collars. There are also soldiers in rented jumpsuits, motorbike armour, and specially made helmets that would see a lot of reuse in later years in Doctor Who and Red Dwarf.

'Arc of Infinity'

Costume Design by: Dee Robson

The twentieth season of Doctor Who opened up with a serial set back on Gallifrey, and of course a return to the iconic costumes of the Time Lords. Once again the Time Lord costumes followed the example set by James Acheson’s work in ‘The Deadly Assassin’ with a notable new additions being sported by President Borusa (this time played by Leonard Sachs) such as his lilac gown which has its chevron made of a threaded material.

He also wears a shint robe for his more ceremonial duties, wearing the classic headdress with it as well.

The other notable Time Lord characters in this story are in garb mostly reused from previous serials, such as the orange robes worn by Councillor Hedin (Michael Gough) being mostly a reuse of the outfit of Chancellor Goth that James Acheson designed for 'The Deadly Assassin', with Zorac's (Max Harvey) purple robes also being a slightly tweaked reuse of Acheson's costumes for that serial, meanwhile the 'Castellan' (Paul Jerricho)gown and cloak is a reuse of the gold lined gown designed by Dee Robson for 'The Invasion of Time' - the only new addition to all of them (past Hedin's shiny golden frock worn under his gown) is the new ornate skullcaps.

Among the Time Lords is a new addition in the form of the dress worn by Chancellor Thalia (Elspet Gray). who wears a far more regal dress with shades of Elizabethan fashion, with golden jewel pieces embedded in the front, and is also worn with another gown when the headdress is worn.

The leader of the Time Lord's Chancellery Guard this time is Commander Maxil (Colin Baker), who is clad in the usual uniform as designed by James Acheson for 'The Deadly Assasin' but this time has a metal armor plate over his chest with an assymetrical pattern carved onto it, as well as a plumed helmet that has ornate golden detailing on the front, as well as the large purple feathers.

Last for this story is the returning villian Omega, whose outfit had gone a radical revision since his previous appearance in ‘The Three Doctors’ – this version of the outfit has an almost organic element to its design, though sadly is again not even properly seen throughout the story until the last episode - in a lot of these sequences, the actor in th Omega costume is show in negative, so a bit of image editing does the trick to show him off a bit better though.

'Snakedance'

Costume Design by: Ken Trew

This serial was set on the archaic and aristocratic empire of Manussa, which made a nice contrast to the typical 'futuristic' settings that had been the norm for this period, with this design sense translating to the costumes too. A good example of this is the outfit worn by Lon (Martin Clunes), sports a shirt, waistcoat and trousers, with multiple blue belts tied around the waistcoat, all topped off with long patterned brown gloves.

Lon is the son of Tanha (Colette O’Neil) and soon-to-be Federator of Manussa, and the historian Ambril (John Carson). In almost all his scenes, Lon The only exception to this is his introduction scene where he’s in a gown of yellow and red. Ambril however, is almost always in a pink-lined black gown, sometimes worn with a furred hat.

In one scene his robe instead has white lining, and briefly wears it with an ornamental headdress as well - not part of the costume, but a fun image!

Tanha's outfits, along with most of the serial's cast, were outfits reused from period wardrobe stock; the one that I suspect may not be consists of a blue dress worn with a gold-lined large gown over it, the gown having other golden pieces over the shoulders. The headdress has to be reused though.

Tanha's last notable outfit is a pink and black dress, with a solid pink skirt segment, and again worn with an ornate tiara that again I feel was reused from another production - the blue gown she wears at other points in the serial had to be reused from another production, in my opinion.

The outfit Lon wears for his crowning as Federator is perhaps one of the most memorable of any contained in this story, with the spiked blue-jeweled headdress, cloud-patterned white and yellow shirt, and of course the bright red patterned gloves.

Ambril's assistant Chela (Johnathan Morris) wears a brown smock with rounded lapels that are arranged in a slightly asymmetrical fashion, worn with a sash as well.

The hermit Dojjen (Preston Lockwood) is dressed a bit similar to Chela, only his smock is cut to resemble a skirt almost, and has no lining on the lapels.

The fortune-teller who Tegan consults sports in a silver and purple dress fixed with a large triangular hood that goes over to her shoulders, definitely one of the most striking designs of the serial past Lon's ceremonial dress! In the various crowd scenes, other women can be seen wearing similar hooded dresses.

'Mawdryn Undead'

Costume Design by: Amy Roberts

This serial saw the introduction of Mark Strickson as new companion Turlough and the return of the Brigadier amidst a very time-travel oriented plot, involving the alien scientist Mawdryn (David Collings) attempting to undo the agonising immortality they were forced to endure – Mawdryn and his followers are all in robes fastened with curved strips, giving a strangely organic element to the robes.

This serial also marked the return of the Black Guardian, who this time wears an ornate robe with a large collar, feathered cuffs, and - perhaps the most unintentionally amusing aspect - a crow's headdress that even had a head sculpted on!

'Terminus'

Costume Design by: Dee Robson

This serial was set on a grotty spaceship being used by a medical corporation in order to cure ‘Lazar’s disease’ and staffed by armored slave workers, the ‘Vanir’, all clad in bronze masked armor fitted with masks clearly modeled after Saxon war helmets. The intimidating design is kind of undermined by the way they fasten their cloaks into hoods though.

Also present on Terminus are a pair of space pirates clad in outfits that are deeply ‘space age’ designs (and very 1980s as well!). The capes being fastened to their shirts, the large belt buckles, and the bubble helmets are all features that I quite frankly adore.

There is also the supposedly monstrous (but actually just weirdly cute) Garm who wears a top covered in triangular bits of shiny material, no doubt meant to come across as a futuristic chainmail suit, but instead feels like an attempt to out-camp the patterned top worn by the Gorn in the original Star Trek series.

'Enlightenment'

Costume Design by: Dinah Collin

This serial was set on-board the sailing ships used by the immortal and deeply-bored Eternals, and also featured a return of the Black Guardian's counterpart, the White Guardian (Cyril Luckham). Dinah Collin's costume design for the White Guardian mirrors Amy Roberts' design for the Black Guardian, right down to having a dove as part of his hair to contract with the Black Guardian's crow hair. I don't really find the other costumes of the serial worth noting, as it is either bland spacesuits, or just some pretty but fairly unmemorable period dress.

'The Five Doctors'

Costume Design by: Colin Lavers

The anniversay special that followed this season, which once again featured the Time Lords but in rather different outfits than to their previous appearances - it seems costume designer Colin Lavers opted to take a more original approach than copying Acheson's designs, such as the design of the costume worn by Borusa (Philip Latham), a robe of cream and gold, worn without the headpiece and collar.

Accompanying him is Chancellor Flavia (Dinah Sheridan) in a red glittery gown (which she then gets to wear the collar over).

When Borusa is revealed, he sports another robe of black, with a pointed skullcap fixed with a bejewelled crown.

The body of the deceased founder of Time Lord society, Rassilon, wears a similar cap and crown, though his robes are a shiny variant of the Time Lord robes that were designed by Nicholas Bullen for 'The War Games' roughly a decade before.