Day 552: Logopolis Part 3

There's actually an awful lot to talk about that occurs in this episode. There are key character developments for Nyssa and Tegan, as well as a strong moment at the end of the episode for the Doctor and the Master. But one thing keeps cropping up: Entropy.

Doctor Who has become more scientific as a result of the new script editor, Christopher H Bidmead, and as such he has been introducing more scientific concepts into the series. Entropy is a concept in thermodynamics, referring to the nature of decay within systems. It is related to the second law of thermodynamics, being that energy will always increase in a closed system until thermal equilibrium is achieved. In other words, everything decays. The way in which this is used in this story is that the Logopolitans who live on Logopolis have quietly been working away to prevent the decay of the Universe, by opening up portals to other universes such that the Universe as we know it is no longer a closed system and entropy will no longer be as much of a problem. This fails when the Master meddles with it, meaning that the Doctor now has to prevent the heat death of the Universe. Which would be bad.

So why do I mention all of this? Well, as has perhaps been mentioned previously on this blog, I study Physics. And today, I had a test on Statistical Mechanics, a particular branch of thermodynamics that's possibly a bit too complicated for me to go in right now. But it does mean that I get an extra level of enjoyment from this story, as I can now look at various explanations of the thermodynamical concepts and smile as I see stuff that I study in class in Doctor Who, making both the story and my studies just a little bit more exciting.