FTA: Doctor Who Classic: Time and the Rani, The Happiness Patrol and The Greatest Show In The Galaxy

This eighth volume of articles from Celebrate, Regenerate! covers stories from the Seventh Doctor.(See here for more on this project.)

Time and the Rani
(Main article.)

When I first sat down to watch Time and the Rani, I was caught up in the fan opinion that it was one of the worst things this side of the Iraq War, but like my reaction to the Sixth Doctor’s stories, I was pleasantly surprised. So surprised, in fact, that I would go so far as to call Time and the Rani one of my favourite stories of the Seventh Doctor’s era, behind only the wonderful The Happiness Patrol. The reason? Time and the Rani doesn’t just break the So Bad It’s Good barrier in the way that a story like Time-Flight does. It smashes that barrier into bits, and leaves you to try and rebuild it while throwing all it can at you. Time and the Rani is not in any way a story; rather, it is an exhilarating and endlessly entertaining experience that never gets old.
     Sylvester McCoy’s early portrayal of the Seventh Doctor is very different to his later more manipulative persona, but that doesn’t make it worse by default. Instead, it’s fresh, vibrant, and unassumingly mad – it takes the bravado of Colin Baker’s Doctor and channels it into a fluid wit. The Rani, while not as unique in her performance as in her introductory story, still balances the new Doctor perfectly. Her scheme is completely mad and fifty shades of scientifically impossible, but it’s the sheer convoluted lengths to which she goes (kidnapping Albert Einstein, etc.) that make the story what it is.
     Fans lambaste Time and the Rani for being too silly, putting an emphasis on goofy humour over plot, characterisation and common sense. But the rejection of the latter is what makes it unique. Doctor Who’s primary feature is variety, and it’s a simple law of probabilities that a story this silly would pop up sometime. And what do the fans do? They have the guile to complain, to complain about this beautiful, nonsensical thing. Time and the Rani doesn’t try to preoccupy itself with the serious stuff, and instead simply tries to let the audience have fun. And at the end of the day, isn’t that just what Doctor Who is about?

The Happiness Patrol

(Main article.)

Despite trying to not get involved with politics, my kinder friends have called me “a liberal”. This, perhaps, is the catalyst to my incredible enjoyment of The Happiness Patrol, a story which takes a metaphor for Margaret Thatcher’s regime and twists it in a deliciously demented way. Even though the Iron Lady herself was described by Sylvester McCoy as “far more terrifying than any monster the Doctor had encountered”, Sheila Hancock’s Helen A is a portrayal that is both hilarious in its send-up of the former Prime Minister and frightening in the way it represents certain aspects of Conservative policy.

     It could have been awfully dry, but the addition of just a few ounces of absurdism makes The Happiness Patrol into a complete and total classic. Most memorably, The Kandyman is a villain that does exactly what good Doctor Who villains do best – they scare the kids, and make the adults think. On the one hand, it’s been suggested that the sucrose-composed robot was designed as an attack on the indulgence and power of the capitalist system, while others simply regard it as a demonstration of just how insane Helen A is.

    And sometimes the story actually puts you under the regime’s spell. So many detractors tell of how they can’t take the villains seriously: they paint the Tardis pink, walk around with frilly hairdos and drown people in strawberry sauce. That’s the whole point! The Happiness Patrol isn’t just a satire of a specific political regime, it’s also a wider warning about the power of appearance over ideology in politics. Of course you couldn’t take Helen A’s happy clappy approach seriously at first, in the same way that people voted for good old Maggie because she looked better than Jim Callahan. 

     Plus, this is where we really see the peak of the Seventh Doctor’s powers of manipulation. Sure, we’d seen him plot to blow up Skaro in the previous story, but that had been set up back in the Pilot episode; here, the Doctor waltzes onto a planet and deposes a tyrannical regime in a single night. He seems to understand everyone he meets instantly; he talks down the Sniper who’s never had to face a man’s eyes, defeats the Happiness Patrol by showing them a smile and then introduces Helen A to the concept of negative emotions. He is not just a faceless hero, but a character in his own right, and one that is prepared to go to any lengths to defend justice, truth and freedom. 

     The Happiness Patrol isn’t just a silly exercise in 80s camp. It’s one that has a dark political undertone that has a lot to say to both the kids of the era and their parents. It's scary, disturbing, funny, melancholy, and exciting. And it’s my favourite story of the entire Seventh Doctor era.

The Greatest Show In The Galaxy

(Main article.)

The much-mocked BBC Quarry has had to stand in for a whole variety of planets, with varying results. In the McCoy era there was a move away from the bland rocky faces of Destiny of the Daleks and Time and the Rani to what has been referred to as “a high-class quarry.” Segonax, the planet currently being inhabited by the Psychic Circle, does as Enlightenment does and provides a visual treat to go alongside one of the most metaphorically profound scripts in McCoy’s era. The Circus has many guests of many different flavours, and the secret at the heart of its’ core reflects the state of the program at that late time in its existence.

       The Circus, having moved about a bit but now firmly in one spot, is the perfect metaphor for Doctor Who. Desperately reaching out to foreign markets, it tries to attract writers and fans to please their audience, the British public (here lovingly rendered as the Gods of Ragnarok.) The Whiz Kidd represents the core fanbase, with their constant admiration for stories broadcast before their birth (“I’ve never seen the old stuff, but I know it’s not as good as it used to be.”) and how their interaction with the show only caused more problems than it solved. The three who run the circus represent various figures in the show’s production team, all of them desperately trying to pull together a show so they’re not devoured by the public’s disinterest. The Doctor, stepping in and destroying the Gods of Ragnarok (or at least ending their influence), is a profound statement by the show. It is the statement that it is ready to move on and do whatever it wants to do, no matter what the executives say. 

     Of course, the joy of the story comes not only with the various metaphorical readings, but also with the story’s aesthetic, which helps to satisfy the children blissfully ignorant of the serial’s undertones. The clowns and robots in black limousines, skating across a acrid desert; Mags transforming in the arena; Ace being locked in the robot room – this is the stuff of nightmares. The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is intelligent, and manages to say a lot more than other stories can without spoiling it for the kids. And that’s just how we like it.

Thanks.

Overview: Doctor Who: The Cartmel Era

Sly and Sophie Aldred formed the best TARDIS team
this side of Five/Nyssa.

Written between the 1st and 2nd of July 2012.

I was a lot more apprehensive about this part of the series. I'd barely seen any McCoy growing up, but I had heard about his era in both positive and negative terms - he was daft at first, then manipulative and dark in a creepy way. Add to that my dislike of Mel and the knowledge that Season 24 is oft considered one of the worst by "fan consensus", and I knew I was in for a ride. Perhaps, I wagered, I wouldn't like it. That might be a change for me, the man who likes some of the worst Who ever made, I might be able to write those fun kinds of scathing reviews that inspired me to start this blog in the first place.
     I had no such luck, and for that I am glad. Even in Season 24, I found the Cartmel era to be a source of either constant fun or constant fascination, ranging from the hilarious antics of Time and the Rani to the dark, primal battles present in Survival. Even where the scripts themselves weren't very good, the characters' humour and characterisation made everything hold together, and there isn't a single serial here that left me truly disappointed - even the depressingly underacheiving Silver Nemesis still has quite a few moments that make me chuckle, and is another of Seven's great chess games.
     Key to this era's success is most definitely McCoy himself, who is an excellent actor. He's perfectly able to balance comedy and drama, his character ranging from the light-hearted, analogy-mixing buffoon to the manipulative chessmaster who seems to revel in the shortest of games. Importantly, he was the first Doctor in a long time (think late Hartnell) to be a true pacifist, even if it meant turning his friends into weapons to fight his battles for him. This can be seen nowhere better than in the closing scenes of Survival, where The Doctor, almost drawn in by the influence of the Cheetah Planet, nearly kills The Master before resurfacing and defying it, enforcing his pacifistic will. It's also seen in a wonderful bit from The Happiness Patrol, where The Doctor manages to get a Sniper to throw away his weapon using only his mind.

I used to hate Mel, but in Season 24 she's
just really awesome.

     The companions are consistantly good in this era, although Mel does have a few issues. She's not a bad companion per se, and her portrayl in Season 24 was enough to make me forget my larger problems with her from Season 23. She's really quite a lot of fun, and her chirpyness, which initially put me off, helped to save the season from total disaster. However, the problem with Mel, especially when compared with Ace, is that she doesn't really have a characterisation; it's once mentioned where she lived, and that she was a computer programmer, but that never has any effect on any of the stories. Sure, it would have been weird for her to solve problems with her knowledge of the ridiculously primitive (by today's standards) 80s computer programming languages, but it would have made the character more of a presence instead of simply some fit ginger bird who pops in for six stories then buggers off with Robert Holmes' version of Captain Jack.

     Ace is much more interesting, and this is probably because she's one of the most well-developed companions that the series ever had. More modernistic writing leading into the Nineties saw a much more definite move away from Something for the Dads and a greater focus on characterisation. As a result, we got to see a hell of a lot more of Ace's background - her family, her hometown and her childhood. Sure, we'd seen companions' families before, but they were all aliens - this was the first time a contempory companion had been given such depth, and the development of Sophie Aldred's character from the boistrous teenage girl of Dragonfire into the mature young woman of The Curse of Fenric is a wonder to behold. If I have any complaints, it's mainly that the 27-year-old Aldred never really came off convincingly as the 16-year-old Ace, but that's purely surface level and there's so much right with the character that I can make that fall squarely into my suspension of disbelief.
     Over all else, this era was a pioneer for interesting sci-fi ideas. Cartmel insisted that he hire new writers instead of lending from the previous era, and this brought the show screaming towards the innovation of the early Nineties with great swiftness. This works best in the final season, with stories like Ghost Light; an example of the era's metaphorical prowess. I interpret Ghost Light as a large metaphor for the Evolution vs Creationism debate, and the anger that bubbles up on both sides. My favourite of these, however, has to be the parable of The Happiness Patrol, which is a brutal, brutal satire of Thatcher's government. The Cartmel Era showed the world that Doctor Who still had good stories to tell.
      I can't do an overview of the Cartmel without discussing his eponymous masterplan. Cartmel wanted to bring mystery back to the Doctor after the eras after Troughton had revealed more and more about his origins and his society of origin. His plan was to reveal that the Doctor had been created (or loomed) from the genetic material of the one of the Time Lord founders, making him incredibly powerful. Eventually, Ace would have gone to the Time Lord Acadamy in Season 27, and trained to be a Time Lady despite her human heritage. This only really pops up in three of the serials, but I'm really not a fan of it and there's a small part of me that's sorta glad that this never happened. The Doctor, as we saw in Season 24, is a chaotic wizard that flies from place to place, righting wrongs and changing lives. He's not a flipping God.

Farewell, Sly. It's all backwards from here.

     My favourite stories of the era? The Happiness Patrol is just 75 minutes of pure awesome, showing The Doctor topple a regime in a single night, a regime that slashed at the contempory government in a way that was subtle enough to not cause trouble and obvious enough to get people thinking. The Kandyman is an excellent creation, a satire of modern capitalism, and he's also scary enough for the kids. Another favourite is Time and the Rani - it's perhaps not the best of stories, but it's far better structured than either of the Rani's other stories, and it's brilliant fun from start to finish. My most disappointing story is probably Silver Nemesis, which tried so much and managed to accomplish so little. It's also where the Cartmel Masterplan is at it's least subtle, which may or may not have something to do with my dislike of it.
      The Cartmel Era is 12 bloody brilliant serials, all of which show that Doctor Who was heading in a really good direction. I enjoy every minute of it, and despite a few issues here or there, it's been one of my most fulfilling examinations of Who so far. I personally will miss McCoy, Langford and Aldred, and I hope that some day they'll get to revisit Who again. The era was intelligent, fun and certainly one of the best.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: I rewind eight years to Season 18.

Overview: Doctor Who Classic: Season 26

This last season saw the bond between Doctor
and Companion grow stronger than it ever had
before.

Written 1/7/12.

The last season of Doctor Who's original run was certainly worthy of heaped praise. Even the much-maligned Battlefield contains a lot of interesting ideas that more than stand up to the heavyweights of the Ace Trilogy, three stories that form some of the best Who I've ever seen. The characters are perfect, the settings are very well executed and the sheer level of sci-fi/fantasy quality is absolutely superb. In previous seasons I've liked the stories ironically, seeing past their faults and just enjoying them warts and all. It's come as a great relief that in Season 26 I haven't had to do that at all - it's been one great story after another.
     The story opens a bit shoddily, with Battlefield's attention-grabbing premise of UNIT and the Brigadier trying to hold up a story that is fundamentally overstuffed. It's the only place where Season 26 falls down, and that's a shame, but the ideas within this first story are still on par with the rest. The Arthurian Parallel Universe is an awesome idea, and with the right execution it could have dwarfed everything else. As it stands, the only thing coming close to decent is the characterisation of Morgaine, which is enjoyably complex. It's nice to see the Brigadier one last time, but his and UNIT's presence don't make up for a story where half of the characters are uninintentionally hilarious in their sheer incompetance.
     The next three stories visit Ace's past, and this in-depth examination of her history is what makes her one of the most well-developed Classic Companions. In Ghost Light we see her troubled childhood, in Curse of Fenric her maternal issues and her manipulation by both The Doctor and Fenric, and in Survival we see her home town and her fight to seperate her own ego from her id. Adding to this are the hints, in her blatant flirting with certain guest characters, that Ace is a bisexual, making her the first LGBT companion. It's a shame that this wasn't allowed to come through on screen, especially as RTD paved the way into equality the moment he came back.
    Of the three stories in the Trilogy, my favourite is probably The Curse of Fenric, which shows the Seventh Doctor at his most manipulative, although not directly. He doesn't do as much direct scheming as in Remembrance of the Daleks and The Happiness Patrol, but it does reveal in part that he's been planning to use Ace to defeat Fenric ever since he met her on Iceworld. It's also got a great atmosphere and a great set of characters, all of which are utilized to their optimal potential.

This series had some great villains, including
a more subtle and controlled Ainley Master.

    This season has some awesome villains, and they're all really complex, which makes a change from the norm. Morgaine is honourable and wise, willing to both kill a woman to test her worth and to cure a blind woman as an act of charity. Light and Josiah Smith are metaphors for the Evolution Versus Creationism debate, with Light as the Creationist so afraid of change that he's willing to harm those around him and then himself. Fenric is dark and scheming, a master chess player who has manipulated hundreds of people over a thousand years. And The Ainley Master gets one last chance to try out his more subtle characterisation, creating a villain that is, for Who, truley unique in his priorities.
     As a final season, we couldn't have asked for anything better. The last third of the Cartmel era, and by extension the end of the Original Run, is an absolute triumph in variety of complex characterisation, setting and theme. The brilliance exhibited here only emphasises the tragedy that so few people were watching, and that this saw the last Who produced by the BBC for a decade and a half. After this, I'll be heading to Bidmead to finish the JNT era as a whole. Before I go though, I just have to say... thank you, Professor. But I've got to go. We've got work to do.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: Survival

The Doctor and the Ainley Master have one
final battle.

Doctor Who - Season 26, Story Four - Survival
Written 1/7/12

This has been a sad time for me, to say the least. Despite the fact that Doctor Who returned triumphantly 16 years later (and I should know, I was there), I still feel a tad poignant knowing that I've just watched the end of Doctor Who's original run. Survival could have been a disaster, but it did a lot of things in unexpected ways and, along with the rest of Season 26, it's another great example of Who done right. While it's not perfect, it's a fitting end to the 26 year run that pioneers both its adventurer spirit and its focus on character.
     In the final part of the accidental Ace trilogy, The Doctor follows one of Ace's offhand requests and takes her home to Perivale to meet her old friends. To her surpise, they're all missing - taken by what appears to be a mysterious cat, controlled from afar by a shadowy figure. Soon Ace has been taken, and The Doctor goes with her, alerted to the true nature of their situation - people are being taken to the planet of the Cheetah People, a place where people are transformed and possessed by their own primal rage, and where the planet responds empathically to the mood of its inhabitants. The Doctor must make sure that Ace does not succumb to the planet's allure, and that his enemy, The Master, doesn't manage to do any more damage to Earth than he already has.
     Ainley at times is a bit subdued as The Master, but it's a brilliant portrayel that oozes sophistication. For the once, he's not trying to control the Universe or even escape - his motivations tie into the themes of the story, about survival and desperation. The Master only wants to escape the Cheetah Planet and prevent himself from being absorbed by the planet's power. Apparently this was what he originally wanted to go with, all the way from Logopolis, and I so wish he had, because he's so wonderfully intimidating in the part. It's a shame, really, because the next story, 7 years later, saw another Master being incredibly camp. Given the power of the Ainley Master here, I despair more about the state of his character in the modern era - the horrendous Eric Roberts, the boring Derek Jacobi and the absolutely ridiculous John Simm.

Ace and Karra have a great chemistry, as she tears Ace
away from everything she knows.

     Survival also finished off Ace's story in style, beautifully showing her conflict between her older, confident side and the primal, possessed Ace attracted to the planet and its people (especially a Cheetah woman named Karra, who has a lot of lesbian chemistry with Ace despite the script having to be reeled back.) This episode does more than any other to cement the character and her dynamics with the Doctor, and it's absolutely perfect. She's flawed, but not in a really irritating way, and she has genuine reasons for being torn between both sides.
      The episode's theme was perhaps an incredibly ironic one. Even though this was never meant to be the final story of the season (that was Ghost Light, in which we find the final filmed scenes), the episodes focus upon survival against all odds does seem rather fitting for a show that had survived so much and was at an all time high. I have absolutely no idea why it was cancelled, but the general consensus was that after the controversy of the Saward Era and the show's rescheduling to run opposite soap giant Coronation Street, so few people were watching that it wasn't worth it any more. The show was put on indefinite hiatus, and in 1990 it was officially cancelled, as had nearly happened three years prior. Survival is a perfect ending to a great season, and to the Original Run. I've had a lot of fun with the Cartmel Era, and I'm gonna miss it.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: Ghost Light

The Doctor plays many games at once...

Doctor Who - Season 26, Story Two - Ghost Light
Written between 28th and 29th June 2012

Ghost Light certainly didn't feel like Doctor Who, but that was a good thing, because it felt like something much better and bigger. It's almost the definition of High Concept, and in this form, I love it. In certain areas of the fandom it gets a bit of flak for being as such, many people requiring mulitple viewings. I wasn't such a person, although that was probably because I knew the basic plot before I watched it unfold, the concept having fascinated me as a child. It was also the beginning of the Ace trilogy, three stories accidentally arranged so as to provide one last burst of character development for this brilliant companion.
      As a thirteen-year-old girl, Ace was angered when her friend's flat was firebombed by racists. Finding herself in the haunted house named Gabriel Chase, she was scared by the place and burnt it down. The Doctor brings her to the house, 100 years prior, to face the evil she felt those years ago. It turns out that the house is controlled by the hypnotised puppet of evolutionary scientist Josiah Smith, a strange figure who is revealed to have been shedding inferior forms and has a Neanderthal butler. Josiah is left over from an alien science expedition who last visited the planet in the late Ice Age, intended upon cataloguing all life on Earth. Josiah rebelled against a powerful being known as Light, and now plans to assassinate Queen Victoria and take over the Earth. Light is revived, Smith's plan is foiled and after The Doctor shows Light that he too is changing, the powerful being self-terminates.
     The entire story is a powerful metaphor surrounding the acceptance of the Theory of Evolution in popular culture. This is highlighted at the beginning, where a priest dismisses Smith's belief in Evolutionary theory (from his advanced alien nature) as blasphemy, and is rewarded with transformation into an ape. Smith himself is someone who has accepted Evolution as empirical fact (he wants to take over the British Empire.) His rebellion is against Light, whose angelic appearance reveals his role as Religious Fundamentalism, so determined to reject Evolution and/or any change in their worldview that they'd rather destroy the Earth. The beauty of Ghost Light is that like most metaphorical Who, it can be interpreted in so many different ways.

     But beyond the metaphorical interpretation, the serial returns very successfully to gothic humour of the style prized by Robert Holmes in the 70s. The Cartmel era seems very successful at returning to old-school scares, and this story is no exception; as well as the Haunted House mechanic, we have freakish insectoid experiments, zombie-like creatures and people being turned to stone. It's also got this smog-thick atmosphere that makes every moment all the more delicious, and matches not only McCoy's darker costume but also his much darker persona.

Light cannot accept Change.

     Where the serial does fail is in the characterisation of its many minor characters. It was originally meant to be a four-parter, and one can see this, as it feels as if all of the important bits like atmosphere and theme have been left in while the rest was sojurned out. Some of those minor characters could have been really powerful, but it's left as a bit of a hodge-podge instead. The most egregious example is by far the mother and daughter of the house, who, having been released from their hypnosis by The Doctor, are instantly frozen by Light to stop them from changing further.
     That scene in particular brought home for me the realisation that we're getting close to the end of the Original run. It just happens to be, due to the series' rearranging, the final scene ever shot for the 63-89 series of Doctor Who. I'm glad that even in this near-final story, Doctor Who continues to be intelligent, exciting and as brilliant as ever. On to the end, gentlemen.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: The show won't survive Survival. Let's see how it all ends.
P.S. I already covered The Curse Of Fenric.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: Battlefield

The Brigadier and Bessie make their last
appearance.

Doctor Who - Season 26, Story One - Battlefield
Written 25/6/12

Merlin! That great yet troubled series staring Colin Morgan... sorry? Oh, no, this is Season 26 of Doctor Who! Sorry about that. Yes, for the first time (and the last) Doctor Who decided to deal with the concept of Arthurian Legend, another of Britain's myths that the show has entrenched itself into.The writer of last season's excellent Remembrance of the Daleks brings us this pseudo-Arthurian tale, and while it tries to be like that former story, it ends up stuffing itself in the process with too many characters and too many conflicts. (The opposite, I can say, of the TV Show.)
     Having discovered a nuclear bomb at an archeological dig, UNIT are called to the scene, led by Brigadier Winifred Bambera (Angela Bruce, who previously played the Female Lister in Red Dwarf). Thunderstorms abound at a castle near Carbury and the mysterious Lake Vortigern. The Doctor arrives just in time to watch UNIT battle a group of warriors enter from another Dimension, one in which Arthurian Myth is all true and where a version of The Doctor is known as Merlin. Using his influence amongst their culture, he joins old friend Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart and a large cast of characters to defeat Mordred and his mother, Morgaine, before they bring their war to our world.
     It's certainly nice to see UNIT again, but they're nowhere near as strong as they were previously, especially with the leadership of Angela Bruce's lacklustre Brigadier, whose incompetance turns her character into humourous slapstick. Indeed, the entire story has an air of the comic, with knights running around the countryside fighting horrendously choreographed battles in an almost Pythonesque way. And after such issues with ye-olde language being thrown about in Silver Nemesis, by far the worst story of the previous season, this continues to be laughable and silly. "Ere" was used no less than three times, for goodness sake. And there are so many characters, many of which have very little reason to be there AND very little to do, to the point where this is still true after four of them are randomly carted out of the story. Luckily the Brig gets some badass lines here or there, especially in the end, where he kills the Destroyer.

Morgaine is a great villain.

     Despite having a very weak link towards actual Arthurian mythology, I thought it was a great adaptation of the concept. The Doctor's character ultimately derives from the Merlin archetype; less, perhaps, than characters like Gandalf and Dumbledore, but he shares a similar role as the mystical mentor. The best part of their role in the story was very much the character of Morgaine, who was a very complex villain in a really good way. To cross continuities, she shares a lot of features with the early version of her counterpart Morgana in Merlin, with a dark villainous streak tempered by a genuine level of respect for those around her. She wants to turn our world upside down in her battle with Arthur, but she still pauses to respect the dead at a WWII memorial and cures a blind woman. The day is only saved when The Doctor tells her that Arthur is long dead, and she mourns for her worthy adversary.
      Battlefield on its own is a great romp, and I certainly wouldn't warn you away from it. But it falls prey to the same things that Silver Nemesis did, albeit in a less dramatic way. It's overstuffed, overlong and instead of the epic Arthurian Yarn we were promised, we got a bit of a runabout. I was expecting Camelot, not Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It wasn't a complete disaster, and it certainly is enjoyable, but not in a memorable way.

Thanks.

Overview: Doctor Who Classic: Season 25

The 25th Anniversary Season was a mixed bag of stories. It was also a very small bag; like the two seasons preceeding it, and every season afterwards, it only had 14 episodes. Half of the season was given over to thought-provoking satires that asked challenging questions, while the other half was given over to crowd-pleasing Monster slideshows, with varying degrees of success. Because the characters haven't much changed, I'll do that other kind of overview where I look at the bests and worsts of the season.

He makes sweets that kill people.

Best Story
By far my favourite story from the entire season has to be The Happiness Patrol, a story with delicious satire and just the right percentage of madness. Everything, from the scathing Thatcherite parallels to the demented Kandyman, is perfectly fine-tuned to make this one of the most interesting stories in the entire Seven era. I loved it from beginning to end, warts and all. Happiness prevailled. My favourite moment was most definitely the Doctor's trick, where he manages to cause a civil war amongst the Patrol simply by pretending to lauch; they wanted to shoot him for causing a riot but couldn't in fear of violating their own dogma.

Worst Story
Poor Silver Nemesis. The story upon which so much importance was placed, it's another "checklist" story where the producers gave the writer a list of things that needed to be here. This time, it was a "silver" theme, the Cybermen, and something to do with the royals. Somehow this was interpreted into a 17th Century Lady, some Neo-Nazis and a Cyber-fleet that does almost nothing. It's not an unpleasant story, but it's certainly one that I don't want to visit again, for the simple reason that I've got much more interesting things to be doing. It really is an empty shell, and the worrying Cartmel Masterplan overtones only make it more throw-away.

Villains

See what I mean?

This is a season with a lot of great villains, but the scariest and spookiest are definitely the Circus from The Greatest Show In The Galaxy. Even Ace thinks that clowns are scary, and the army of eternally smiling robots are incredibly creepy. Add that to the Gods of Ragnarok and their devatatingly biting metaphorical meaning as an unappreciating British audience. And, from The Happiness Patol, you know that I love Thatcherite Helen A and the Kandyman. Worst villains? It's going to have to go once more to Silver Nemesis. On one hand you've got Lady Peinforte, who looks  and acts like a reject from Horrible Histories. Then you've got Herr Flores and his army, who have to be some of the weediest Nazis I've ever seen, not even one bloody swastika. And then there's the Cybermen. Given a silvery paint job, they stand about being impotentand being blown up by impact with a gold coin. It's so utterly disappointing on every level.

Success of the Story
The most successful story - that is, it succeeded in being what it was trying to be - was Remembrance of the Daleks. It was a much better anniversary story than Silver Nemesis, which of course is the least successful.It managed to celebrate the series using not only setting-based and visual cues, but also in the way it revitalised the Daleks and made them awesome again after the post-Genesis Davros stories made them weak. It's the standout story of the season, the one I saw first and the one that everyone is going to remember, standing beside Doctor Who's greats.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Greatest Show In The Galaxy

The Doctor and Ace visit the Circus...

Doctor Who - Season 25, Story Four - The Greatest Show In The Galaxy
Written between 18th and 19th June 2012

Season 25 was a weird season of Doctor Who. There were two anniversary episodes, with a 50% success rate, and two stories that shot out into the avant-garde. The Greatest Show in The Galaxy, long name notwithstanding, is a pacey adventure that perfectly rounds off the season on a high, using weird visuals and interesting characters, mixed in with villains of epic proportions. There's also a teaspoon of satire in there somewhere. I didn't love it quite as much as I did the first two serials of the season, but by the end I was captivated.
     On the planet of Segonax, the Psychic Circus reaches out into the Universe, drawing The Doctor and Ace into the Greatest Show In The Galaxy. Despite Ace's fear of clowns, The Doctor goes in regardless, not suspecting the murderous robotic ticket operator or the violent guests of the circus until the moment it's far too late. The circus takes performers from around the planet, who are forced to perform in front of a family of three; those who impress are hired by the circus, the rest reduced to dust. Most travel the latter path. The Doctor and Ace must uncover the Gods of Ragnarock and entertain them long enough to find a way to save the day.
       There's a hell of a lot of rather nasty metaphors here. The annoying nerdy boy Whizz Kidd, who claims to "have never seen the older stuff, but I know that it's not as good as it used to be" is a parody of anally retentive Doctor Who fans.  The family is the British Audience, forever calling for more and more of a show deprived of resources and perceived as being stuck in one place, then destroying everything that doesn't come up to their ridiculously high standards. The Captain is the corrupt corporate executive, screwing over the performers in the show, and Mags the werewolf represents the people trying to get the show running again that are transformed horribly by the experience. Like all great Doctor Who, The Greatest Show works on many levels, and this is only my interpretation.

"Ashes to Ashes, Funk to Funky..."

     There are a lot of primal fears in The Greatest Show that make it great for kids and adults. Adults can understand the complex, dark themes behind the mythology and the writer's metaphors, while kids can spectacle at the spooky, spooky clowns, robots and werewolves. Even they were making me feel unsettled; the Pierrot clown leading the troop was wonderfully demented, and in fact reminded me of the character from the first series of Ashes To Ashes.
      The Greatest Show In The Galaxy is a fine end to the season, riddled with alternative meanings and characters that either frighten or intrigue. The Doctor and Ace's relationship is better than ever and the writing is just superb. The metaphors may be a bit harsh on the show and its audience, but that's open to interpretation and it's great that this far into the show's run it can still create complex and interesting content.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: I take a break and prepare for the return of Red Dwarf.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: Silver Nemesis

Hi! We're here because... erm... destroy them!

Doctor Who - Season 25, Story Three - Silver Nemesis
Written 18/6/12

JNT was determined to get the show popular again, and to do that he set about producing the show's Silver Anniversary. With a silver theme, the story was to feature royal themes as well as start probing into the Doctor's history with Cartmel's Lungbarrow plotline. They even went to Windsor palace and tried to get Prince Edward involved with the rag, leading to press stories and an official statement from the Royal Family that they would not, in fact, be part of Doctor Who's 25th Anniversary Celebrations. But, unfortunately, for all of Silver Nemesis' attempt to be something, it turns out to be one long 75 minutes of nothing. 
        The Doctor has just had an alarm call; a plan he set in motion 350 years prior is coming to fruition. The asteroid Nemesis, made of living Galifreyan metal Validium, is returning to Earth one last time, and everyone wants it. The Lady who initially designed the Nemesis statue's current form, Lady Peinforte, uses magic to travel forwards in time. Some Neo-Nazis decide to go after the power of the Nemesis, and plan to create a Third Reich. And, just as it's all getting nasty, the Cybermen turn up to claim the power for themselves. Through some carefully crafty explosives and chess-dancing, The Doctor and Ace revive the Nemesis Statue, eliminate the Neo-Nazis, vanquish Lady Peinforte and destroy the Cyber Fleet. Then everyone goes home. And The Doctor is mysterious.
      It literally is this simple. The plot is a basic MacGuffin quest, a hunt for a mystical item that's wanted by multiple parties. It's executed with such bland simplicity that there's nothing really to get behind. Lady Peinforte and co. have a bland "fish of out time" sort of plot that's played for laughs but doesn't really go anywhere, the Neo-Nazis are all cackling villainy but they're not at all camp about it so it doesn't mean anything, and the Cybermen are perhaps the blandest iterations the Classic Series ever produced. There's no clue as to why they're here, where they fit in within the Cybermen's timeline or why the hell Gold has turned from a mild irritant to their systems into a sustance that practically explodes on contact with them.

The Nemesis wakes.

      As I explained in an earlier review, the Cartmel Masterplan was the revelation that The Doctor had been loomed from the genetic structure of The Other, a Timelord founder whose role in forging Time-Lord society was hidden by Rassillon and Omega. Personally, like a lot of fandom I hate this plotline because it presents The Doctor as some kind of God in lieu of the chaotic travelling wizard that he's always been presented as. It also provides so much pretense and fluff to an otherwise fun tale; Russell T Davies would go on to make exactly the same mistake when lauding Ten as the "Lonely God" in NuWho. I hope that this is the last time this will really rear its head, because if it continues like this then Seven will become unbearable before too long.
      Silver Nemesis was an absolute shell of a story, and that's a damn-fine shame. It could have been a spectacle to rival the Five Doctors, but it had an even weaker script and instead tried to stuff more plot elements into a shorter run time, to little avail. The Nazis didn't need to be here, the Cybermen had no excuse for being here and it's just another Cartmel machination that The Doctor was on the scene at all. I didn't loathe it, but it did bore me and leave me with very little impression at all. My first Seven clunker.

Thanks.