The Seeds of Doom

The Seeds of Doom is the sixth and final serial of the 13th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts on BBC1 from 31 January to 6 March 1976.

In the serial, the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) agrees to go on one final mission in his role as UNIT's scientific advisor to investigate a mysterious pod found in the Antarctic.

In Antarctica, a expedition consisting of John Stevenson, Derek Moberley, and Charles Winlett discover an unknown seed pod in the permafrost, buried at a layer that predates any known form of plant life.

[2] This is the third of four serials of the programme to have all of its exterior location scenes shot on Outside Broadcast (OB) videotape rather than film before the official switchover in 1986; the previous two were Robot (1974) and The Sontaran Experiment (1975), and later The Stones of Blood (1978).

"[5] In The Discontinuity Guide, Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping described the serial as "an Avengers episode in disguise" and called it "another gem, and one much benefitting from an excellent performance from Tony Beckley as Harrison Chase".

[6] In The Television Companion (1998), David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker praised how the story was split between two settings and the monster in general, though they felt some aspects of the Krynoid were "rubbish".

[7] In 2010, Mark Braxton of Radio Times awarded it five stars out of five, describing The Seeds of Doom as "a rich, classy serving, with plenty of meat accompanying the vegetables" and arguing that "the archive-raiding of the Holmes/Hinchcliffe era reaches its zenith here."

However, he acknowledged that it was "an abnormally violent outing" and believed that the plot contained a "giant crevasse" in that "it takes a ridiculous amount of time for the Doctor et al to know how to tackle the Keeler-Krynoid, having seemingly forgotten that the Winlett-Krynoid was killed by an explosion".

[10] Ian Berriman of SFX gave the story five out of five stars, writing, "Often bleakly grotesque, blessed with an eerie, mournful score and shot with real brio, this is a rare Who six-parter that you can consume in one sitting, with nary a moment of boredom."

A slightly "Americanized" version of Hinchcliffe's novel was released as #10 in the Pinnacle Books series in March 1980 with a foreword by Harlan Ellison and a cover illustration by David Mann.