Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 716: Battlefield, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I really do love it when a story comes along that I’m not really expecting a great deal from, and then I end up absolutely loving it. Battlefield is one of those stories. As the closing credits kicked in on today’s episode, I declared to the empty room that this is brilliant, and that I’m really - really - liking it. Oh, I’ve still not really forgiven that nonsense in the first episode about no one having the faintest clue about the Doctor, and opening the season with a shot of a garden centre is unforgivable (even if that wasn’t the original plan), but there’s an awful lot to enjoy about this one.

And I keep coming back to the fact that I know I’d have loved this as a kid. The more the story goes on, the more I’m watching it with the mind of an excited child as opposed to a ‘grown up’ fan. During the first episode, I thought that Bambera was rubbish - with far too much comedy for the character she’s supposed to be. Now, though, I’m actively embracing the comedy, and it’s a shame that we only ever get to see her this once! I’ve often mourned the lack of a consistent ‘UNIT family’ outside of the Pertwee years (which is why occasional returns for characters such as Magambo between Turn Left and Planet of the Dead, or the team headed up by Kate Stewart in the more recent episodes really appeal to me), and I’d quite like to see how one would have been handled in the early 1990s, with Bambera as the head of the organisation, and our faithful Lethbridge-Stewart cropping up from time-to-time to lend a hand.

Oh, and I have to mention him here, don’t I? There’s something quite bold about not having the Doctor and the Brigadier meet until this third episode, but the actual greeting is rather well handled when it does arrive; ‘who else would it be’ is absolutely perfect for the Brig we know and love. He settles in with the Seventh Doctor pretty much instantly, and they continued to amuse me as a pairing throughout the rest of the episode. I commented the other day about the programme bringing back as many of its icons as possible before the end, but I’m terribly glad that they got the Brig back for this one - his final appearance in Doctor Who proper (he’ll be cropping up for Dimensions in Time in a couple of weeks, and then for a Sarah Jane Adventures story later on, which I’ll certainly be watching, even if I don’t write about it in the Diary).

While we’re on the subject of bringing back old companions, I’d better make mention of Jean Marsh, too. In the special features on this DVD, Jean goes into quite a lot of depth about the way that she saw her character, and how she chose to play it based on the material she was given… you sort of get the impression that she’s giving it quite a lot more thought than perhaps anyone else. That said, I’m glad I listened to her opinions on the part last night, because it means I’ve been watching her performance in today’s episode with a slightly different view. She really is giving all she can to the character, and it’s coming off the better for it. Marsh talks at some length about the way that she thinks nothing of killing someone, but then restores the sight of a blind woman, and it’s really beautifully done in this episode; I’d sort of forgotten just how close together the two acts are, as part of the same scene.

Not all the credit can be given over to Ms Marsh, though, because a lot needs to be laid at the door of Ben Aaronovitch, who’s back on writing duties this time around. I was very impressed with his script for Remembrance of the Daleks last season, and he’s managed to bring the same skill in to this story. He’s managed to balance the comedy and the drama particularly well, and once again slipped in several continuity references to the past without them feeling overbearing or shoehorned in. It’s a pity that this is the last script we’ll be seeing from him in the programme - I’d have loved to see what he’d do in the early days of the 21st century series.

One final thing to bring up - Sylvester McCoy. During The Happiness Patrol last week, I seemed almost surprised by the fact that he was rather good in the part - having been so unsure about him during those first few stories. The one thing that’s always troubled me about McCoy’s performance, though, is when he’s asked to do something big, and angry. There’s a few sequences that stand out in my mind (notably from Survival), which I recall as not being very good, because he simply couldn’t handle such ‘big’ moments. But then you’ve got this episode, in which he runs in to the middle of a battlefield and bellows at the combatants… and it’s wonderful. It’s one of his greatest moments as the Doctor, and it’s really won me round on his ‘angry’ acting. I’m just hoping now that I’m mis-remembering the scenes from Survival, and they they won’t be tainting this one in the near future… 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 715: Battlefield, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I’m almost surprising myself when I say that this one is really good! Yesterday, I mentioned that Battlefield didn’t have the strongest reputation behind it, and I’d sort of resigned myself to thinking that it would probably be the weak link in Season Twenty-Six, but actually, I’m really caught up in things, and I’m really enjoying it!

In many ways, this feels a lot like a Matt Smith episode. There’s strange goings on with time, with the suggestion that a large chunk of the guest cast have encountered the Doctor at a point later in his time stream than he is currently, a lot of bluster on the part of the Doctor as he tries to remain in charge while piecing everything together, and lots of little moments that wouldn’t feel at all out of place in a more recent Steven Moffat episode. The Doctor looking down at the mysterious inscription in the ground and commenting that it says ‘dig hole here’ in his own handwriting elicited a huge laugh from me, and I love him working out how to open a door inside the space ship simply by barking ‘open up, it’s me’. It’s giving McCoy a chance to flex his more ‘entertainment’ muscles again, too, which is always fun.

Even the mythologising of the Doctor that we get in this story seems to fit better with the depiction of the Doctor in the 21st century version of the programme. Oh, sure, there’s been elements of it right the way through the programme, going right back to almost the very beginning, but there’s some lovely descriptions of the Doctor here - that he ‘rides the ship of time’ and that he has ‘worn many faces’ - which would sit right at home in the modern programme, and are really rather lovely. It often gets said that the McCoy years are very much a basis that the 2005 rival picks up from, and I’m seeing that more and more as the episodes roll by. Add in the on-going character arcs for Ace and the Doctor, the relationships with the companions’ family (this was perhaps more prevalent with Tegan, but there a new relative just popped up when they needed to put someone in danger), and the fact that the programme has become far more Earth-centric in this final season - there’s a solitary alien world in Survival, but even that’s tied to Perivale - I can really see where the comparisons come from.

Aside from all of that, there’s also the sheer fun of the idea at the heart of this one. It’s Doctor Who does the Arthurian legends… and being Doctor Who, they can’t just go for setting it in a time of myths and magic, but they instead make the knights dimension-hopping soldiers who’ve been caught up in a time-travel based plot with a future version of the Doctor, and they pit them against UNIT. I mean, come on, that’s a brilliant Idea, and it really is something I’d have loved as a kid. I was so completely in to castles and knights, and wizards… give them laser guns and point them towards a nuclear convoy, and it only gets better!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 714: Battlefield, Episode One

Dear diary,

I’ve never noticed before just how neatly the final two seasons of the ‘classic’ run bring back all of the programme’s icons for one last outing before the end. Of course, the Daleks and the Cybermen turn up in Season Twenty-Five (they had to, somewhere in this era), but then you’ve got the return of the Brigadier here for the first time since The Five Doctors, UNIT back for the first time - really - since The Seeds of Doom, even Bessie is back out of mothballs, and the Master will put in an appearance before the year is out, having become such a regular part of the show for a few seasons before taking some time out.

Sadly, the appearance of Nicholas Courtney here as the Brigadier doesn’t quite have the same impact it did when he turned up in Mawdryn Undead, and it may all be down to the way that he’s introduced to us. In that story, we’ve watched two boys crash an antique car, and witnessed deals with the ‘devil’ before a figure turns around and it’s the Brigadier that we’ve not seen for ages. This time around we meet him - indeed, we join the entire story - in a garden centre. Where we then get some quite forced in dialogue to remind us who he is. Oh dear. I think the fact that the seasons have been so short lately means that even though it’s been six years since we last saw him (in The Five Doctors), it’s not been all that long for me. Between Terror of the Zygons and Mawdryn Undead, there were loads of adventures for the Doctor and his companions. This time around, it just doesn’t feel like that long since the Brig was last in the show (it’s not that long - he was in Silver Nemesis last season!)

I’ve also got major issues with the way that the Doctor is being dealt with here, which I’ve never actually noticed before. When he arrives at UNIT early on, Brigadier Bambara doesn’t have a clue who he is (even allowing for the change of face), and has to be told by one of her officers who served under Lethbridge-Stewart (when he was about eight years old, by the look of him!) that there was a man called the Doctor, who had occasionally changed his face. He goes on to say that the rumour was that he changed everything about himself, as if he’s not entirely sure. I can almost buy that the Doctor’s involvement with UNIT is so top secret that he’s effectively been struck from the official records, and the cases that relate to him have been conveniently ‘lost’, perhaps, so Bambera - even as head of UNIT in the UK - may not know all the precise details about him… but if there’s people still serving with UNIT at this point who were around when the Doctor was, then surely she’d have at least heard of him? A scientific adviser who used to work for them, was friends (sometimes) with their head of operations, and changed appearance from time to time? Even if the official story is that different people took over the role under the codename of ‘the Doctor’, there’s clearly rumours about this shape-shifting scientific advisor - because Zbrigniev knows about it! Can you tell, this wound me up a little while watching…

Oh, but it’s nothing compared to a few scenes later, when Geneva phones for the Brigadier. There’s something quite lovely about the idea that the Brig doesn’t care who it is on the phone, he’s retired and he’s doing his gardening. There’s also something really lovely about the fact that as soon as the Doctor is mentioned, he’ll drop everything to be there. It’s a beautiful kind of loyalty to the man, and it works really nicely. But then the Brigadier’s wife has to ask who the Doctor is?!?! I’ll accept that they’ve possibly not been married for long - although Doris was mentioned back in the day, she certainly didn’t seem to be on the scene when we last caught up with the Brigadier in 1983 (and I’m sure I’ll need to touch on the dating of this story at some point in the next couple of days…) - but good grief! She knows about his soldier days to some extent, because she brings it up at the garden centre, and the Brig can make a joke about Sergeant Benton, and yet he’s never told her about the Doctor? Really?

I’m willing to suspend my belief pretty far when watching Doctor Who - it’s a programme about an alien who travels through time in a phone box, after all - but this pushes me just that bit too far. It doesn’t feel consistent within the show’s own continuity that the Brigadier wouldn’t have brought this man up at all over the years, considering how close they were during lots of the Pertwee era, and it feels wrong that UNIT don’t even remember who he is, either. It’s convenient for story reasons, to build up a little bit of mystery around the character, which fits in well with the themes of the programme at the moment, but it took me right out of the narrative on more than one occasion.

All that said, I’ve still somehow managed to rather enjoy this one. Battlefield is a story I first watched on VHS years ago, and I don’t really have any strong feelings one way or the other about it. Over the years, it’s managed to build up a bit of a poor reputation, but I don’t particularly recall not liking it. I’m sure I’ll be going in to more detail over the next few days about where things work for me, but I’m hoping that now everyone’s up to speed with who the Doctor is, I can stop worrying a bit, and just enjoy the action… 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 713: The Curse of Fenric, Episode Four

Dear diary,

The cliffhanger to yesterday’s episode, leading in to this one, must surely rank among the very best that the programme has ever done? It’s so firmly embedded on to my mind that I can’t help but quote along as it plays out - right down the the intonation of each word. It’s also quite telling that the use of the words ‘Time Lord’ here carry real impact. We’re in a period of the show where there’ve been several references to the Time Lords and Gallifrey quite vital to the stories (Remembrance of the Daleks and Silver Nemesis both go so far as to namecheck Rassilon and Omega, while inventing new parts of the Gallifreyan mythos), and yet somehow, the whole concept of the Time lords feels more distant than at any time since - quite possibly - the 1960s.

By the time Pertwee’s Doctor arrives on the scene, the Time Lords are always sending him off on missions, and they begin to lose some of their grandeur. Once you’re into the late 1970s, you’ve got the likes of The Deadly Assassin letting us actively in to their world, and then The Invasion of Time littering it with cheap plastic furniture. I’ve mentioned enough times in the last six months how much I dislike the 1980s version of the society, with its marble effect and pastel colours, but suddenly here it’s become something rather special again.

Our last actual contact with another Time Lord was the Rani at the start of Season Twenty-Four (and it’s strange how long ago that feels now - the programme really does evolve in to a different beast in these final two years), and then the season before that was littered with Time Lords, but we never get to visit Gallifrey because it’s in political turmoil. Suddenly, the idea that this entity knows that the Doctor is a Time Lord and can make the word sound so sinister - in a story where you’re so not expecting to hear it - is wonderful, and it might just be my favourite part of the entire story. I can wholeheartedly guarantee that I’ll have watched the closing moments of Episode Three several times over before I next watch The Curse of Fenric in its entirety.

Add to all this the fact that Fenric is really rather good, thank you very much. I love it when villains in Doctor Who are given a vein of comedy, and Dinsdale Landen plays the possessed Judson so perfectly. He manages to make the performance camp, but without pushing it too far. I love the way he reacts to the Ancient One not being around ready for his revival, and I’ve more than once used the line ‘don’t interrupt me when I’m eulogising’. Frankly, I find excuses to slip it in to my day-to-day life. I think the only issue that I have with Fenric is that he’s defeated very easily, isn’t he? We’ve had three episodes building up to his release, with the stakes (and the stress) growing steadily across those episodes. We then find out that he’s been manipulating other recent events in the Doctor’s life - citing the chess set in Lady Peinforte’s study and Ace’s arrival on Ice World as examples. He’s supposedly this great cosmic force, evil since the dawn of time… and yet he struggles very much with a chess problem until Ace gives him the answer, then he grandstands for a bit before being wiped out with a deadly poison. It feels as though he should be a bit more of a problem to dispose of…

Which brings up a point that I’ve been musing a bit in the last couple of weeks. As I’m making my way through the McCoy years, I’m becoming ever more determined to listen to all of the Seventh Doctor’s audio adventures. Don’t worry - I’m not suddenly going to be dropping them in to this marathon and extending it out by another year, but I’m certainly more eager than ever before to hear them all. I’ve dipped in and out of them from time to time, but I’d love to follow the continuing story, because it very much builds on what we see on screen in this period of the programme. I know, for example, that Fenric shows up again at one stage, and I’ve head an episode in which the Doctor and Ace manage to check in on little Audrey; there’s something very appealing about the idea of hearing this story continue to play out, and I think it’s probably going to be my next ‘marathon’ undertaking once this whole watch-through is over in a few months.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 712: The Curse of Fenric, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Once upon a time, when I was living in my flat in Norwich, I used to have a shelf of Doctor Who action figures up in the living room. Each Doctor - from Hartnell to Smith at the time - was accompanied by an enemy from their era. Hartnell had a Dalek, Troughton had an *Invasion*-style Cyberman, Pertwee had a Sea Devil (and/or the Master, depending on my mood), Tom Baker had the K1 Robot, Davison had the Ainley Master (or, as Nick likes to point out, Kameleon), Colin Baker had an Earthshock-era Cyberman, and McCoy had two Haemovores. Now, Character Options have never produced any Haemovore figures, but I had a friend who made some really great custom models to suit the range, and when I saw that he was selling off a few of the vampiric creatures, I leapt at the chance to own them. Specifically, it was the couple that we see peering round the tombstone here - presumably the Sundviks? 

I love the design of the Haemovores, and I really think that they’re a great example of just how brilliant the monster design is in this season. In the next story we’ve got the Destroyer coming up - which is another fab design that I’m surprised hasn’t yet been immortalised in action figure form - but the Haemovores really made an impact on me early into my journey to becoming a *Doctor Who* fan. Regular readers will no doubt be surprised that they were etched on the my mind while reading Doctor Who: The Legend, and every time I come back to this story, I’m a little bit delighted to find that I’m loving the look all over again. That we get to see them besieging the church is just a bonus, really!

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been complaining that even though I knew where The Curse of Fenric was heading, it had completely lost me along the way. There’s been so much going on in this story, and it was all happening so quickly, that I’d completely failed to keep up with everything. Suddenly, today, I’ve realised why I’ve struggled so much - you’re not really supposed to understand what’s happening here. All the stuff with the Russians, and the vampires, and the evil fog… that’s all just to keep you interested and watching for two-and-a-half episodes, before you’re suddenly given some information about what’s happening at the same time as Ace. Quite how I’d managed to forget this beautiful exchange is beyond me;

ACE

You know what's going on, don't you? 

DOCTOR

Yes. 

ACE

You always know. You just can't be bothered to tell anyone. It's like it's some kind of game, and only you know the rules. You knew all about that inscription being a computer programme, but you didn't tell me. You know all about that old bottle, and you're not telling me. Am I so stupid? 

DOCTOR

No, that's not it. 

ACE

Why then? I want to know. 

DOCTOR

Evil. Evil since the dawn of time. 

ACE

What do you mean? 

DOCTOR

Will you stop asking me these questions? 

ACE

Tell me!

It’s the kind of scene that we’ve been needing to build towards for some time now with this pair - Ace has been caught up in the Doctor’s schemes since her second story, and while that’s not all that long ago at a time when the seasons are so short, it’s felt like a real through-arc building up to this. It’s taking that final scene from Silver Nemesis, and building on it before we move on to Ghost Light and seeing the Doctor push his companion into ever darker places.

And it’s something I’ve mentioned before, but you really do get the sense that Ace is growing up during her adventures. I’ve said elsewhere that I’d happily believe the pair of them have spent around two years beetling around the galaxies by this point, and I think all of Ace’s comments here in regards to not being a little girl any more and starting to change her mind about marriage and her future would certainly fit her at about eighteen years old. Yes, we all cringe a little bit during that flirting scene (‘faster than the second hands on a watch?’), but it’s another part of Ace’s evolution that feels right to be shown.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 711: The Curse of Fenric, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I don’t know what’s wrong with me this week, but I’m completely lost with this story! I mean… I know where it’s all building, as I said yesterday, and I’m enjoying it on the whole… but I’m struggling to keep up with it! Everything is moving very fast, with characters darting from one location to another, sometimes only remaining there for the duration of a very brief scene, before heading off to the next place. The Doctor is especially bad as a culprit of this, and I’ve very quickly lost track of everything. Is it just me? It’s not a particularly complex story, but it’s at a pace I’m simply not used to seeing from Doctor Who!

Still, as I’ve said, I’m enjoying the story irregardless of my ability to follow it. There’s just so much atmosphere to The Curse of Fenric, isn’t there? Something about the way the mist rolls in while Phyliss and Jean go for their swim sums up the entire story so perfectly, and it’s the first time in a while that I’ve been able to claim that it’s the kind of thing that would have taken a hold of my imagination as a child and hooked me right in to the programme. It continues to get better from there - when we next see them, having ended their previous scene on a shot of the empty water, it takes a moment to really register what’s happened. Have they been zombified? Are they simply okay? It’s not for a good few seconds that it hits you that their fingers and nails have grown long and spindly, and that they’re pale and drained of blood. They then tempt the Russian soldier in to the water, and watch on as the hands emerge from the water to drag him down. Later on in the episode, when those same creatures come marching from the sea, I always remember a note in the About Time books that makes reference to the fact that this is the late-1980s version of ‘monster emerges from water’, citing Full Circle’ and ‘The Sea Devils’ as earlier examples in the programme. It’s *such a great shot, though, isn’t it? And I think this may be the best example of it yet.

The thing I’m enjoying most about this episode has nothing to do with the effects or the eerie atmosphere, but is relevant to something I read recently. During Series Eight, I read a comment online regarding Frank Skinner’s appearance in Mummy on the Orient Express. Someone complained that it was ‘pushing stunt-casting to the same levels we got under John Nathan-Turner’, and suggested that it was bad for the show, citing ‘Beryl Reid, Ken Dodd, Nicholas Parsons, and Hale & Pace’ as examples. Now, I spoke about Beryl Reid’s casting during Earthshock and concluded that actually she probably wan’t quite right for the role. I also discussed Ken Dodd during Delta and the Bannermen, and decided that he was absolutely perfect for the part - and looking back he’s probably my favourite thing about that entire season; I still love the way he’s shot in the back as he tries to get away!

But I sincerely doubt I’m alone in saying that Nicholas Parsons in this story completely justifies the practice of casting well known ‘names’ for the show. He’s most well known for hosting Sale of the Century or for charing Just a Minute, and that’s often brought up when people take a pot shot at him taking on a dramatic role in this story, but he’s frankly wonderful as the vicar here. His performance is honestly one of the best that a guest actor has ever given to the programme, and I could quite happily spend time just watching him. I’ll admit that it doesn’t always work - again, Beryl Reid, I’m looking at you - but surely this is the ultimate example that just because you cast someone who’s mostly known for ‘light entertainment’, it doesn’t mean that they’re not right for Doctor Who, also?

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 710: The Curse of Fenric, Episode One

Dear diary,

Just as a recap to those of you who may not have been keeping up with the Diary over the last few weeks - I’m watching lots of Seasons Twenty-Five and Twenty-Six out of broadcast order because… well, because they work a bit better being watched in the order that they were intended to be seen in! I’m also going all out with The Curse of Fenric, and watching the Special Edition on the DVD, though I’m still breaking it down into individual days, just pausing the DVD at the appropriate cliffhanger points. I can’t tell you how tempting it was today just to carry on and watch it as a movie-length version, though! I think this story may have been the first McCoy tale that I ever saw, and there’s certainly a fair bit that I like about it…

Perhaps largely, it’s the relationship between the Doctor and Ace. It’s something I’ve been touching on for a while now, but they really do gel together as a team in a way that other Doctors and companions haven’t since about the time Romana was on the show. Don’t get me wrong - Davison worked very well with Tegan, and Colin Baker went well with Peri (even when they were arguing, in an odd sort of way) - but McCoy and Ace just fit, don’t they? I speculated during Remembrance of the Daleks that up to six months may have passed for the pair between their first meeting and the events of that story, and by the end of last season I’d decided that they’d already spent a year together. I think I’m willing to take another big leap here and say that we might well be coming up on the two-year mark. Something about the fact that the seasons are so short in this period (over in a fortnight!) makes it feel automatically as though there must be a lot of off-screen adventures happening somewhere, and the relationship between our leads just fits that idea beautifully.

I’m finding this episode a bit strange to come to now, because it’s a story that I’m so familiar with. I know that the Doctor will go on to battle with Fenric by the end, and that Ace is a pawn in this game, and yet this first episode doesn’t really give you many clues as to what’s going on. The Doctor has obviously come here with a distinct purpose (Ace is even dressed for the period when they arrive), and then he spends the episode running from location to location, but he seems to switch between knowing what’s going on, to not having a clue. I think I’m right in saying that he’s worked out that Fenric is involved somewhere (or, at the very least, he’s almost entirely certain that it must be him), but that he’s not entirely sure how everything factors in to Fenric’s plan? Or is he looking in to all of these things to confirm his theories about what’s happening? The problem is that because I’ve become so used to looking at this story as part of the ‘bigger picture’ within the era, it’s suddenly throwing me to be watching it properly again - it’s been a good few years!

From tomorrow’s instalment, I’m going to try and block all of that out of my mind, and just go along with the story. Certainly I’ve enjoyed today’s episode, but perhaps not as much as I was expecting to because there’s so much back and forth trying to get everything in to place so that the story can progress. It’s one of those occasions when knowing too much can have a detrimental effect - but I’m also quite keen on the idea of watching this story again in the very near future, once I’ve regained a better grounding of how the story works in itself, as opposed to being part of the overall story.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 706: Silver Nemesis, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Right then, you might want to hold on to something, because I’m about to bang on about the Time War again. My friend Alex loves the Seventh Doctor. I mean, really loves him. His first exposure to the programme was through watching this era as a kid, and in the 1990s, it was picking up the spar odic McCoy-era video tapes that really kicked off his enthusiasm for the programme. Oddly enough, the last Seventh Doctor story that either of us saw is the one I’ll be starting tomorrow - The Happiness Patrol. He’d purposely put off watching it for years because he liked there being a little bit of the Seventh Doctor out there somewhere that he had yet to experience. Anyway, I’ve known Alex for years and years now. We used to work together, we even lived together for a while, and earlier this year I made the trek home from Cardiff to be at his wedding. In all that time, we’ve discussed a lot of things about Doctor Who, and one of my favourite things that we do is theorise. I don’t really do it as much with any of my other friends, but with Alex, we go over all the little details to build up our own head canon on any trivial point that we care to think of. The big one, and the one that’s relevant for today’s episode, is our theory on the Time War.

Back when we first met, we didn’t actually know an awful lot about the Time War. It was this vast and mythical event which took place at some point between the TV Movie and Rose. It had wiped out all but one Time Lord, and almost all of the Daleks. It had raged for millennia in various forms, and occasionally the Doctor would throw in a reference to some event that he witnessed in the war. As the seasons rolled by, we slowly got drip-fed more and more information about that time, and Alex built up a fairly intricate theory about the war, which I’ve always rather liked, and which largely fits with what we’ve seen on screen since - or, rather, it does with a bit of squinting.

The general gist of it for the purposes of this entry are that the Seventh Doctor knew the Time War was coming (he was the one who fired the first real blow in Remembrance of the Daleks, after all, having kicked things off way back in Genesis), and that what we see on screen between Seasons Twenty-Four and Twenty-Six is him preparing the battlefield. He wipes out Skaro - a seat of power which could easily be used to unify the scattered Dalek forces. He takes out the Cyberfleet here, so that they won’t be in the way while the battle is raging, and they’re one less destruction. I’m sure in the books there’s another similar incident which Alex had built in to his theory (and I’ve always loved one of Jamie Lenman's fab Doctor Whoa cartoons from Doctor Who Magazine, in which the Doctor is trying to offer the Ice Warriors an ancient Gallifreyan weapon). Then there’s the whole oft-stated plan that Season Twenty-Seven would have seen the Doctor pack Ace off to the Academy on Gallifrey. We theorised that he’d be doing this specifically to shake them up a bit, provide a kick up the arse, and get them out of their stuffy ‘observers’ role that many Time Lords have been stuck in for centuries.

Why would it be the Seventh Doctor doing this? Two reasons - firstly, the war could kick off at any point once he’d made that shot at Skaro, and secondly because he knew that his next incarnation wouldn’t be up to the job. When Night of the Doctor came along and the Eighth Doctor was presented as a conscientious objector to the war, it fitted the theory perfectly - and it meant that we felt even more sure about it being the Eighth incarnation who tried to save Davros from the ‘jaws of the Nightmare Child’*, because while the Seventh Doctor had gone around the universe wiping out all these old foes in an attempt to ‘clear the stage’ for the war, the Eighth Doctor was desperately trying to cling on to anything that made him still ‘the Doctor’, and knowing that Davros was out there somewhere plotting a new ridiculous scheme is part of that.

The bit that I most enjoyed about the theory is that it all works very nicely with the Doctor’s words in this episode - when he’s talking to the Nemisis statue about the future;

NEMESIS

You might need me in the future, then?

DOCTOR

I hope not.

NEMESIS

That is what you said before.

In Alex’s theory, the Doctor hoped not to need the Validium any more, because he was hoping to find a way of averting the war.

Watching this story again now, there’s a few more ideas that crop up which I’m sure I’ll want to incorporate in to the theory, in light of the events of last year’s anniversary special. I’ve not quite got them worked out in my mind yet, but I love that Lady Peinforte knows who the Doctor is because the Nemesis told her - and in my head the Nemesis is such a complex construct that it can easily see all possible futures, but knows that the Doctor is the man who will one day use ‘the Moment’. Greater than the Hand of Omega, or the Validium, that’s the one weapon that should never be used. I love the thought that when Peinforte is saying that she knows who the Doctor truly is, it’s because she knows he’s the man who will destroy his own people and live to tell the tale.

I’m sure you don’t particularly care about all these Time War theories I keep throwing out there, trying to retroactively shoehorn modern continuity into the older stories, but it keeps me interested, and otherwise you’d have had a day of ‘there’s a lot to like again here, but also a fair bit of padding’…

*Incidentally, in Alex’s visions of the war, the ‘Nightmare Child’ is actually a Time Lord battleship made of pure Validium, and piloted by none other than Ace!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 706: Silver Nemesis, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Right then, you might want to hold on to something, because I’m about to bang on about the Time War again. My friend Alex loves the Seventh Doctor. I mean, really loves him. His first exposure to the programme was through watching this era as a kid, and in the 1990s, it was picking up the spar odic McCoy-era video tapes that really kicked off his enthusiasm for the programme. Oddly enough, the last Seventh Doctor story that either of us saw is the one I’ll be starting tomorrow - The Happiness Patrol. He’d purposely put off watching it for years because he liked there being a little bit of the Seventh Doctor out there somewhere that he had yet to experience. Anyway, I’ve known Alex for years and years now. We used to work together, we even lived together for a while, and earlier this year I made the trek home from Cardiff to be at his wedding. In all that time, we’ve discussed a lot of things about Doctor Who, and one of my favourite things that we do is theorise. I don’t really do it as much with any of my other friends, but with Alex, we go over all the little details to build up our own head canon on any trivial point that we care to think of. The big one, and the one that’s relevant for today’s episode, is our theory on the Time War.

Back when we first met, we didn’t actually know an awful lot about the Time War. It was this vast and mythical event which took place at some point between the TV Movie and Rose. It had wiped out all but one Time Lord, and almost all of the Daleks. It had raged for millennia in various forms, and occasionally the Doctor would throw in a reference to some event that he witnessed in the war. As the seasons rolled by, we slowly got drip-fed more and more information about that time, and Alex built up a fairly intricate theory about the war, which I’ve always rather liked, and which largely fits with what we’ve seen on screen since - or, rather, it does with a bit of squinting.

The general gist of it for the purposes of this entry are that the Seventh Doctor knew the Time War was coming (he was the one who fired the first real blow in Remembrance of the Daleks, after all, having kicked things off way back in Genesis), and that what we see on screen between Seasons Twenty-Four and Twenty-Six is him preparing the battlefield. He wipes out Skaro - a seat of power which could easily be used to unify the scattered Dalek forces. He takes out the Cyberfleet here, so that they won’t be in the way while the battle is raging, and they’re one less destruction. I’m sure in the books there’s another similar incident which Alex had built in to his theory (and I’ve always loved one of Jamie Lenman's fab Doctor Whoa cartoons from Doctor Who Magazine, in which the Doctor is trying to offer the Ice Warriors an ancient Gallifreyan weapon). Then there’s the whole oft-stated plan that Season Twenty-Seven would have seen the Doctor pack Ace off to the Academy on Gallifrey. We theorised that he’d be doing this specifically to shake them up a bit, provide a kick up the arse, and get them out of their stuffy ‘observers’ role that many Time Lords have been stuck in for centuries.

Why would it be the Seventh Doctor doing this? Two reasons - firstly, the war could kick off at any point once he’d made that shot at Skaro, and secondly because he knew that his next incarnation wouldn’t be up to the job. When Night of the Doctor came along and the Eighth Doctor was presented as a conscientious objector to the war, it fitted the theory perfectly - and it meant that we felt even more sure about it being the Eighth incarnation who tried to save Davros from the ‘jaws of the Nightmare Child’*, because while the Seventh Doctor had gone around the universe wiping out all these old foes in an attempt to ‘clear the stage’ for the war, the Eighth Doctor was desperately trying to cling on to anything that made him still ‘the Doctor’, and knowing that Davros was out there somewhere plotting a new ridiculous scheme is part of that.

The bit that I most enjoyed about the theory is that it all works very nicely with the Doctor’s words in this episode - when he’s talking to the Nemisis statue about the future;

NEMESIS

You might need me in the future, then?

DOCTOR

I hope not.

NEMESIS

That is what you said before.

In Alex’s theory, the Doctor hoped not to need the Validium any more, because he was hoping to find a way of averting the war.

Watching this story again now, there’s a few more ideas that crop up which I’m sure I’ll want to incorporate in to the theory, in light of the events of last year’s anniversary special. I’ve not quite got them worked out in my mind yet, but I love that Lady Peinforte knows who the Doctor is because the Nemesis told her - and in my head the Nemesis is such a complex construct that it can easily see all possible futures, but knows that the Doctor is the man who will one day use ‘the Moment’. Greater than the Hand of Omega, or the Validium, that’s the one weapon that should never be used. I love the thought that when Peinforte is saying that she knows who the Doctor truly is, it’s because she knows he’s the man who will destroy his own people and live to tell the tale.

I’m sure you don’t particularly care about all these Time War theories I keep throwing out there, trying to retroactively shoehorn modern continuity into the older stories, but it keeps me interested, and otherwise you’d have had a day of ‘there’s a lot to like again here, but also a fair bit of padding’…

*Incidentally, in Alex’s visions of the war, the ‘Nightmare Child’ is actually a Time Lord battleship made of pure Validium, and piloted by none other than Ace!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 708: Silver Nemesis, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Somehow - even though we’ve hit the phase of the programme where three-part stories, a format that I’ve been extolling as the best possible for ‘classic’ Doctor Who since pretty much the start of this marathon, have become common place - this story still manages to feel a bit padded out! Today opens very well, with an all out battle between the Cybermen, the Nazis, Lady Peinforte, and with the Doctor and Ace caught in the middle. There’s plenty going on, and if there’s one thing that Silver Nemesis is very good at, it’s the explosions. It’s all go for this battle, and it looks great. But then, once the fighting is at an end, everyone just sort of wanders off in their own separate directions.

The Doctor and Ace at least have a certain kind of logic to their actions - they steal the bow, take the TARDIS out of the way (as the Eleventh Doctor says in The Bells of Saint John, he doesn’t want to take the ship in to battle), and then set about tracking down the statue on foot. Fine, I’ll go along with that. The Cybermen, too, have a certain logic to their movements. They head off with the statue to take refuge in Lady Peinforte’s tomb, reasoning that she will go crazy when presented with her own death. I can sort of see their thinking there, but surely if she’s a foe powerful enough for the Cybermen to know about, then they should also be aware that she’ll not be overly bothered by the sift of the tomb. Still, I’ll nod along, because they’re at least doing something meaningful. The Nazis, on the other hand, seem to just wander off to the Safari Park. Genuinely, when the Cybermen’s ship gets blown up, we see the reaction of De Flores and he just happens to be stood around, without any purpose. They haven’t thought of using their bit of Validium to track down the rest (probably for the best, since the Doctor’s stolen it without them noticing), but have just taken a stroll. Speaking of which, you’ve then got Lady Peinforte and Richard, who wander down the high street and get caught up in a little side plot with some skinheads.

There just doesn’t seem to be any real sense of urgency to the proceedings here. The Doctor is written as though he’s desperately trying to catch up with events that have started to spiral out of his control, but then we get scenes of him laying in the grass with Ace as they listen to Jazz (it doesn’t matter that said Jazz is being used to block signals from the Cyberfleet - that could be done on the move, too), or lounging around on top of fallen trees while he has a think about what’s going on. He then seems surprised by the sudden realisation that there’s an entire fleet of Cybermen out there, when the implication up to even a few seconds before the revelation is that he knows this!

Oh, but there’s a lot to enjoy about this episode, too, when it’s actually going somewhere. I love the Doctor’s discussion with Ace about the nature of the Validium - and I’m especially keen on the way that it takes the similar conversation from Remembrance of the Daleks and manages to move it on a bit. In that story, the Doctor made a slight slip up, possibly revealing too much. Here, Ace is actively digging for the information;

DOCTOR

Validium was created as the ultimate defence for Gallifrey, back in early times.

ACE

Created by Omega?

DOCTOR

Yes.

ACE

And?

DOCTOR

Rassilon.

ACE

And?

DOCTOR

And none of it should have left Gallifrey. But, as always with these things, some of it did.

I know there’s even more padding to come in the next episode, with the arrival of Mrs Remington, so I’m hoping that the nice mythic bits of the story outweigh the filler elements that are currently threatening to dominate…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 707: Silver Nemesis, Episode One

Dear diary,

Silver Nemesis is something of a black sheep in Season Twenty-Five, isn’t it? Among out-and-out classics like Remembrance of the Daleks, and stories that have gone on to be re-evaluated as the years have gone by, this one has always been seen as the eek link in this run of episodes. And yet, I’ve never been able to do anything but love it.

Oh, I mean, come on! Imagine how exciting this story sounded to me when I was first learning about it! Not only is it my favourite monsters, but it’s also the official anniversary story, there’s a witch, some Nazis, the Doctor working on another plan involving an ancient Gallifreyan relic… it just sounds really exciting! All that said, there is a lot crammed in to these first 24-or-so minutes. You’re almost left a bit confused because you go so quickly through events - there’s a comet approaching the Earth, this woman is trying to get to the future, the Forth Reich is being born, the Doctor and Ace are enjoying a jazz concert, then they’re under attack from gunmen, then they’re at Windsor castle, then they’re at the witch woman’s house, then they’re back at Windsor castle… it just never lets up!

Somehow, though, there’s quite a leisurely pace to the proceedings. We’re given a chance to watch the Doctor and Ace enjoy themselves at the concert (again, this pair just look so comfortable together doing this. It’s rare that we get to see a TARDIS team simply enjoying their travels in this way. I said during Remembrance of the Daleks that I thought maybe six months had already passed for the pair since they departed together in Dragonfire, and I think I’m willing to say that another six months could have passed before this point - we’re a far cry from the Peter Davison years, when every story very rigidly led us in to the next…). It’s perhaps because so much time is given over to savouring things like this that it all gets a bit convoluted later on. When the TARDIS is shuttling back and forth all over the place, it quickly becomes very difficult to keep track of everything that’s happening.

But there’s so many lovely little touches to this episode which perfectly sets it up as being the story to celebrate a half century of the programme, and makes it just so right for airing on November 23rd. Leslie French is perhaps the actor that I’ve been enjoying the most in this one - he was originally considered for the role of the Doctor right back when the programme started, and he’s playing his role here as very much the way I remember the First Doctor being, especially around Season Two. I can’t tell if he’s been specifically asked to play it in this way (though I imagine he has), or if it’s just a nice coincidence, but it’s lovely all the same. The only downside, perhaps, is that it makes me long to see some old black-and-white episodes again! I also didn’t realise that Fiona Walker (here as Lady Peinforte) had been in Doctor Who before - way back in The Keys of Marinus! Before starting out on this story, to try and keep up with the celebratory spirit, I re-watched the ‘making of’ documentary from the Silver Nemesis VHS, and when Fiona pointed out that she’d been in the very first series, I really had to wrack my brain to think of who she could have played (and then gave up and checked Wikipedia, instead!). You’ve also got cameo appearances from several other Who alumni, including Nicholas Courtney, John Leeson, Fiona Cumming, Andrew Morgan, and Peter Moffat.

It’s also very fitting that this story - sitting at the half-way mark in terms of the stretch of this marathon from An Unearthly Child in 1963 to The Time of the Doctor in 2013 - should have some notable firsts and lasts involved. It’s the last use of the programme’s original home, Lime Grove, which is used for some sound recording, but it’s also the first time that the programme has used on-screen captions to tell us where and when we are, and the first time that the TARDIS blows up a wind as it materialises - things which will become more frequent in the 21st century version of the series.

So once again, Happy Birthday Doctor Who. I’m glad you threw a bit of a party to celebrate turning 25!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 706: The Happiness Patrol, Episode Three

Dear diary,

One of the things that comes up most about The Happiness Patrol, at least in fan circles, has to be the Kandy Man. Oh, god, the ridicule that’s been poured at that poor candy creation over the years! I can sort of see why, if I’m honest - I mean, for starters, it’s a Doctor Who villain in the shape of Bertie Bassett - but I also have to confess that I rather like him! 

There’s something so wonderful about the fact that a big pile of sweets can be made to be in any way threatening, and it’s largely down to the performance that David John Pope gives in the role. It’s played as childlike but sinister - and that’s a combination that’s always been effective. I also love the way that even the Doctor and Ace make fun of the character; a particular highlight being a scene in which the Doctor sticks his foe to the floor with Lemonade… Frees him… and then sticks him to the floor again! For all my talk of the Seventh Doctor’s scheming persona, and I’m sure there’ll be more of that to come in the next season, this is the most fun that his trickery ever comes across!

It also helps that the Kandy Man isn’t really the villain of the piece. In that time-honoured Doctor Who tradition, he’s simply a monster for the younger members of the audience to look at, while everyone else follows along with a pastiche of Thatcherism elsewhere in the story. A few years ago, this was picked up by Newsnight as though someone had just unearthed this hidden subtext in the story after all these years, but it’s fairly plain to see even if you’re not looking for it! I’ll not be delving too deeply into any of that, though, because there’s people far better suited to giving a proper in-depth look at the subject than I am - I’m more suited to discussing the Kandy Man! 

On the whole, I’ve rather liked The Happiness Patrol. It’s been the story that really solidified Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor in my mind, and that’s always a good thing. I’ve spent years knowing how much I enjoy him as a Doctor, but worried that Season Twenty-Four had proven me wrong. Here’s hoping that as we move towards the end of the ‘classic’ run, the great feeling in evidence production-wise throughout this story continues - letting us go out on a high.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 705: The Happiness Patrol, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Oh, you know, I’ve been dying to type these words. I’ve been hovering over them for a couple of weeks but wanted to save it for something special - and we certainly got that in today’s episode. So…

Sylvester McCoy is bloody good, isn’t he?

Hooray! Woo! Canned audience cheers in the background. Oh, of course I knew that Sylv was great. Of course he’s great, but you know Season Twenty-Four really threw me. The performance he’s giving in those four stories just isn’t right for him, and I love that he comes back and really decides to do it the way he feels is right in this season. He’s brilliant right from the start of Remembrance of the Daleks, but it’s when you get a scene like today’s ‘gun’ exchange that you really appreciate just how brilliant he can be. I try to only quote little bits here and there in The 50 Year Diary, but this really needs to be done as a longer excerpt;

DOCTOR

You like guns, don't you.

ALEX

He'll kill you.

DOCTOR

Of course he will. That's what guns are for. Pull the trigger, end a life. Simple, isn't it.

DAVID

Yes.

DOCTOR

Makes sense, doesn't it.

DAVID

Yes.

DOCTOR

A life killing life.

ALEX

Who are you?

DOCTOR

Shut up. Why don't you do it then? Look me in the eye, pull the trigger, end my life. Why not?

DAVID

I can't.

DOCTOR

Why not?

DAVID

I don't know.

DOCTOR

No, you don't, do you. [He take’s DAVID’s gun away from him, and indicates ALEX] Throw away your gun. [ALEX does so.]

It’s not only a triumph of acting, it’s also such a beautiful scene - possibly the best writing that the programme has seen in a long time. There’s something about it which so perfectly encapsulates Doctor Who, and really sells the concept that he’s a hero who needn’t resort to violence, and although I’m starting to actually bang on about it, McCoy pitches it perfectly. Can you imagine the way he’d turn out this sequence in his Season Twenty-Four persona? No, me neither, because I’m actively trying not to. What we get here is glorious.

As is the sequence with Trevor Sigma, where he turns the questioning on its head. A lot of the dialogue here seems to be lifted from McCoy’s audition scene (as, indeed, is the idea of a villain based upon Margaret Thatcher - with Janet Fielding there filling in as ‘the Iron Woman’), but there’s a marked step-up in terms of performance. You really *do* get the impression that McCoy has had the chance to sit down, think things through, and really choose what he wants to do.

I think there’s an element of ‘cutting the apron strings’ in all of this - and I don’t just mean with McCoy. John Nathan-Turner has always been described as being very hands on and insistent on what he wanted from every bit of the programme (there are stories that the character of Mel was created simply because JN-T walked in to the office one day demanding that the next companion have red hair - though I’m not sure how true that may be). It feels often, though, that in the programme’s final years, Nathan-Turner was willing to sit back a little and let other people do their thing. Andrew Cartmel shapes the show at least as much as JN-T does in this period - and I’d argue moreso. Season Twenty-Five feels like the first opportunity of the show just ‘getting on with it’ and I think it’s working all the better for it.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 704: The Happiness Patrol, Episode One

Dear diary,

For a long time, I didn’t really know what the general opinion was towards The Happiness Patrol. It’s one of those stories that never managed to sit at the very top of many people’s list of favourites, but it was rarely right down the other end of those lists, either. Five or so years ago, it was the final McCoy story that I needed to see - I watched this one immediately after The Greatest Show in the Galaxy with a friend, and these three episodes were the last bits of Seventh Doctor that he had to experience, too. Truth be told, I can’t remember a great deal of my own thoughts on the story, either. A quick look at the Doctor Who Magazine poll from earlier this year reveals that it placed in position 172 of 241 - which putting it at the lower end of ‘average’ territory.

I think that’s a placement that I’d agree with, based on this first episode. There’s certainly a lot in this episode to interest me, but it doesn’t particularly stand out from the crowd at all. I have a feeling that in another six months’ time, after this marathon is over, I’ll be back in that same position of not really knowing how I felt about this one. I think what makes it all the more frustrating, and something which I hope improves as time goes by, is that there’s some real flashes of genius on display. I’m talking largely here about the direction in this one - there are bits of the episode being shot like an old movie, with dutch camera angles and some fantastically artistic lighting. I’d love love see more of this as the story goes on, because it’s that kind of visual flare that could really help this story sing.

As I’ve said, though, there’s plenty to keep me interested, and it’s mostly to do with the ideas in the script. It would be easy to talk about Helen A’s characterisation and compare her to the then Prime Minister, or to talk about the Kandyman in the kitchen (both of which I’m sure I’ll do in the next couple of days), but it’s really the ideas of the world that are appealing to me. I simply love the whole sequence in the ‘waiting area’, where the Doctor is told that this absolutely isn’t a prison, because such a place wouldn’t at all fit with the ethos of this world… but then it’s made very sure that he - and we - understand that actually, of course it’s a prison. That whole sequence is wonderful, and it’s one that feels entirely at home here in the late-1980s era of the programme. I think we’re at a point now, past the half-way mark for another Doctor, where you can really feel Andrew Cartmel’s influence in the stories, because he’s very much the hand steering the show at this point.

I also love that, once again, the Doctor is here for his own reasons. He tells Ace that he’s heard some nasty rumours about the things happening in this colony and he’s decided to check them out. It’s not often before this season that we’ve seen a Doctor so determined to go where and when he’s needed, and I’m really enjoying it as a new approach to the character. I’m also surprised, at the end of Season Twenty-Five, just how much he’s doing things like this. I’ve always thought of the ‘manipulative’, ‘scheming’ version of the Seventh Doctor as only really being apparent in the final season of the show, with only the odd hint towards that side of his nature before then. Actually, though, it’s been a plot point in all of this season’s stories, and I’d argue that it’s easily read in to the stories of the previous season, too (indeed, I did read that in to them). We’re really seeing the way he’s using Ace now, too, in the way they emerge from the TARDIS and he probes to find out what she senses about this place. We’re about to enter a period where she’s very much his litmus paper going in to adventures, so this is a nice thing to see… 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 703: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, Episode Four

Dear diary,

This episode is home to not one, but two shots which I think so perfectly encapsulate the Sylvester McCoy era of the programme. The first comes when he’s in the ring, facing down the Gods of Ragnarok, and he turns on the spot, transforming his sword into the trademark umbrella. The second, of course, is the Doctor walking away from the Psychic Circus as an enormous explosion rips through the tent behind him. It’s become something of a legend within fandom that McCoy doesn’t even flinch when this explosion goes off - he does, and now I can’t unsee it - but he does look incredibly powerful regaining himself half a second later and continuing to strut. The story has been told a thousand times over the years that the explosion wasn’t supposed to be so large, but the fact that it is really helps to make this one of the most defining shots of the late 1980s.

The Doctor’s confrontation with the Gods here is somewhat wonderful, and it’s the first time in a long while that we’ve seen the Doctor square up to such a supposedly powerful being. We got hints of it a few days ago with his speech to Davros, but here we’ve got him properly face-to-face with his enemy in the same way we’ll get to see with Fenric in a couple of week’s time. The whole sequence is perfectly keyed to Sylvester McCoy, giving him a chance to clown around and do the kind of acts that he was best known for while also delivering some wonderful speeches to the ‘monsters’ as he brings their world crumbling down around them. It’s also interesting to note that he claims to have fought the Gods of Ragnarok ‘all through time’… presumably in adventures that we didn’t see? Or does he just mean that he;s fought gods like them, meaning the Animus, and the Great Intelligence? Still, it’s good to see the continuing trend of this incarnation specifically going after his enemies instead of just bumbling in on another of their evil schemes. By the time that the story is over, there’s no doubt left in my mind that the Doctor has orchestrated this whole thing.

I’m also rather keen on just how cleverly Captain Cook has been played throughout this story. He starts off as such an obvious parody of the Doctor (complete with companion), then comes back from the dead - how very like a Time Lord - and in this episode he also makes a point of announcing that he hasn’t come to this world simply by chance. He knows what’s going on here, and he’s here because of it all. I’d not noticed quite how well done this was the last time I watched the story, so I’m glad to have seen it now, because it’s a whole other layer that helps make the story all the richer.

On the whole, I’ve been left a bit mixed with The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. I’ve enjoyed it, largely, but I don’t think I’ll be rushing to watch it again any time soon, in the way that some other stories are already at the top of the list for seeing again when this marathon is over. One thing I will say, though - in the special features on this DVD, lots of people complain about how the title was given to them by John Nathan-Turner, and they all say how awful it is… but I love it! 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 702: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, Episode Three

Dear diary,

While I’ve never been actively afraid of clowns, I can certainly see why people can be scared of them. There’s something innately un-nerving about them, isn’t there? Maybe it’s the constant fixed smiles? Truth be told, I’m not sure, but watching this episode if you’re not a clown fan must be an un-nerving experience, because the ones on display here are downright creepy. Led by Ian Reddington as the Chief Clown, our troupe of circus performers manage to walk a nice line in this story - at once being this unstoppable force which has been stalking after the other characters from the opening moments, while also being just that bit useless. Ace has escaped capture by them on more than one occasion now, for example, and they’ve killed the one man who can repair them when they break!

What’s rather nice, though, is that while the clowns certainly fill the role of ‘monster’ for this story - up to now, at least - they’re not the actual threat of the piece. That comes more just in the sense that something is wrong, and the flows are really just a distraction while the Doctor puts all the pieces together. I know where this one is going, and who the true ‘villains’ of the piece are, but I’m rather impressed that we’ve managed to go three episodes with a lot of tension and worry without even revealing them properly yet. The story is absolutely packed to the rafters with elements, and there’s so much to follow that the episodes feel incredibly rich. Of course, the danger of this comes on the flip side - there’s so much going on that it can at times be tricky to actually follow everything that’s happening inside the tent. I can’t remember the last time we had a cast with this many characters each taking ownership of their own strand in the narrative.

Thankfully, all of these characters are without exception being played by rather fantastic performers. I’ve already touched on Ian Reddington’s Chief Clown, with that wonderful hand movement (I’ve been replicating it for a few days now while talking to Emma, and singing the ‘Psychic Circus’ theme tune, too), but then you’ve also got T. P. McKenna who is absolutely perfectly cast as Captain Cook (and who reminds me more and more with each episode of Mark Gatiss), and Jessica Martin making the perfect companion for him, and managing to be actually somewhat scary during her werewolf transformation in today’s cliffhanger. In the first episode, we had Peggy Mount as the stallslady (and you can see exactly why they’ve used her for the part), Daniel Peacock’s Nord, Christopher Guard as Bellboy… I could really list everyone in the cast, because they’re uniformly great in this one. All the ‘making of’ features on the DVD present us with people who’s memories of making this story - despite the troubles that the production ran in to - are only positive, and of a well-oiled team working together to make something in adversity.

I also need to touch on Gian Sammarco as Whizz Kid. It’s one of those things again that you’re just aware of as a Doctor Who fan - that Whizz Kid is meant to be a commentary on Doctor Who fans. I’ve always thought that it’s just something we’ve kind of projected on to the character over the years, but it’s pretty strong on screen, isn’t it? I think it’s more a view on fans of anything, because the same trends do seem to crop up time and time again. Still it’s hard not to listen to a line like this one;

WHIZZ KID

Although I never got to see the early days, I know it's not as good as it used to be but I'm still terribly interested.

and not compare it to the clip of John Nathan-Turner on Open Air in 1987, when he provided his famous ‘the memory cheats’ remark!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 701: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, Episode Two

Dear diary,

It’s long fascinated me that The Greatest Show in the Galaxy almost went the route of becoming a Shada for the late 1980s - a programme which could have been part-way through production before everything ground to a halt. Having finished all the location filming for the serial, the cast and crew returned to Television Centre to record all the interior segments… only to find that the studios had been closed to have asbestos removed. Schedule in tatters, nothing to be done. It’s this particular behind-the-scenes story which people tend to agree most represented John Nathan-Turner rising higher than ever before. He found ways to work around the BBC’s temporary rules and regulations for completing programmes during this period, had a large marquee erected in the car park at Elstree, and they finished the production in there. The behind the scenes documentary on this DVD has some great anecdotes about an almost war-time spirit that everyone had in making sure that the story could be finished. It’s also pointed out that they’re lucky that this was the story caught up in these events, because it’s the only one this season (indeed, the only one from this decade, I’d argue, if not even longer) which could actively benefit from such a move!

All the scenes inside the circus tent look fantastic - and far more real than if they’d been shot in a mocked-up ‘big top’ in the studios. The same can be said for the great corridors that our cast are asked to run up and down today - the billowing white sheets that form the sides make the shots stand out as being quite unlike any other corridor chase in Doctor Who, and they look wonderful. I think the only disappointment with all of this is that the series has switched to shooting all on video - because I’d have loved to see all these sequences shot out on film, as was the case when a somewhat similar problem struck the production of Spearhead From Space almost twenty years earlier.

Everything has combined together to make this story stand out visually as being very different to anything else around it, and that really does help. Even if this story had ended up being shot in the studio, though, how beautiful is the location filming? It’s all been shot down in a Dorset quarry, and yet it doesn’t look like any of the other quarries that the TARDIS has ever pitched up in. There’s a feeling to this of an alien world that’s far more considered and developed than I’m used to from the programme. It even takes some of the tricks they employed for stories like Mindwarp and adapt them for use here, too - specifically the planet in the sky, which is nicer here because it’s done more subtly, without trying to draw attention to it. The shots of the circus tent from the exterior are beautiful, too, and I’m always a little bit floored by the fact that it was part model, part full-size construct, and just a bit of clever camera trickery to join everything up.

As for the story itself… I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. I think I’m enjoying it, and I’ve certainly been far more drawn in to this episode than I was yesterday, partly because the majority of the characters have now been introduced, and drawn well enough that I can quite happily go along with them. But then I’m not completely sure where things are going, and if I’m honest, my main concern is the running time. Because we’re in the era of three-part stories mingling quite freely with the four-parters now, I’m more acutely aware of the fact that I’m only half-way through this tale, and I’m not sure if there’s enough plot left to fill out almost another hour (I’ve seen the story before, so I know broadly where it’s going, but not the specifics). I think I’m just hoping that I’ll continue the trend of these last two days, and find each successive episode slightly better than the last!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 700: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, Episode One

^NB: I’m watching the McCoy stories in a slightly altered sequence. See HERE for my explanation and reasoning.

Dear diary,

It’s perhaps fitting that a story titled ‘The Greatest Show in the Galaxy’ should begin on Day 700 of The 50 Year Diary, because I love it when I reach these ‘century’ days in the marathon. They’re a great opportunity to take stock of the experiment, and to see just how much the programme has evolved since the last one. It’s not even something that I really talk about in writing up these entries, just something I do for myself every hundred days. The series as it is here, for example, in Season Twenty-Five with the Seventh Doctor and Ace is a world away from the show I was watching 100 days ago (Day 600 was the first episode of Earthshock), and that iteration of the programme was just as different from the one I was watching on Day 500 (The Invasion of Time, Episode Six), and Day 400 (Planet of Spiders, Episode Six). You get the picture. It’s the perfect way of tracking just how much Doctor Who evolves and changes throughout its lifetime, because I really don’t notice it all that much when watching day-to-day - it feels like such a natural progression, that it’s only changes like Seasons Six to Seven, or Seventeen to Eighteen, which feel like real shifts.

I think it’s also probably a good thing that on the 700th day of doing this marathon, the programme is still able to flag up episodes that feel quite unlike anything that we’ve had before. Last season, I complained that Delta and the Bannermen didn’t really know what to do with its three-episode structure, but then Dragonfire fitted it perfectly. It didn’t feel as though we’d had to rush everything to fit it in to less episodes, but equally, I can’t imagine how you’d pad it out to fill another. We then moved on to Remembrance of the Daleks, back to the more familiar four-episode format, and again, it filled its running time amply, not feeling too drawn out (although, the more I think about it, the less sure I am why the Doctor herded everyone across to the Dalek shuttle with him aside from filling some screen time…). We’re sticking with four episodes today - indeed that’s the reason that the story was swapped round on original broadcast, because they were keen for Silver Nemesis to air from the anniversary date - and it’s using this first 25 minutes to simply introduce us to all the characters.

The pace is somewhat leisurely, allowing the Doctor and Ace to spend time in the TARDIS, and on the side of a road eating alien fruit, but there’s also a hell of a lot packed in here, with two killer robots, some sinister clowns, a couple on the run, and the introduction of just about every character under the bloody sun! By my count, we’ve got nine key parts introduced: The Ring Master, the Stallslady, Nord, Bellboy, Flowerchild, Captain Cook, Mags, Whizz Kid, and The Chief Clown. That’s not including other characters who appear but aren’t really given a major introduction, like other assorted circus folk. Now, this probably isn’t unusual for a first episode - Paradise Towers had lots of characters introduced in the first 25 minutes, for example - but what sets this apart is the way that every one is introduced to us with their own set piece, really making sure that you take note of who they are, and what they’re up to. It feels really very strange, and I’m not suite sure what to make of it. Coupled with the bizarre cliffhanger, this feels more like a prelude to the main story, which I’m guessing will kick off from tomorrow.

Something I did want to touch on with this episode is the way that the Doctor’s behaving. I’ve seen it suggested that this isn’t just a chance visit to the Psychic Circus spurred on by some junk-mail arriving in the TARDIS, but rather something set up by the Doctor. I’ve always thought of it as an interesting fan-theory, but actually seeing this episode again after so many years… it’s pretty hard to ignore, isn’t it? The junk-mail arrives in the TARDIS and we’re told that it’s ‘extraordinary’ (indeed, the only other things that have managed to arrive in the TARDIS like this before are Sutekh - a god of unimaginable power - the Keeper of Traken - who has the minds of the Traken Union and the power of the Source propelling him through - and arguably Veena in Timelash, though she just happens to pass through via the Vortex as opposed to actively materialising). When Ace announces that she’d rather not go along to the circus because she’s scared of clowns, and the junk mail starts to taunt her about it, just look at the Doctor’s face. He’s studying her reactions - he’s set all of this up as one of those tests he’s so keen on inflicting in Season Twenty-Six. Just like facing her fears in Gabriel Chase, this is a test for Ace that the Doctor has arranged. I’m sure later on the Doctor makes a comment about having fought the Gods of Ragnarok before, so it fits in with his style of setting up his enemies to be defeated, too, just like in the last story (and the next!)

It helps that the Doctor and Ace really are comfortable with each other here. When we join them in the TARDIS - the Doctor teaching himself to juggle, and Ace rummaging through the wardrobe - it has that same ‘lazy Sunday afternoon’ feeling that we saw with the regulars back in The Chase. This is a Doctor and companion who are comfortable with each other, and have been travelling for some time. I think I’m still willing to stick to my estimate of six months for the pair up to now, because it’s never felt as much like there’s unseen adventures for a Doctor and a companion as it does here! 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 700: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, Episode One

^NB: I’m watching the McCoy stories in a slightly altered sequence. See HERE for my explanation and reasoning.

Dear diary,

It’s perhaps fitting that a story titled ‘The Greatest Show in the Galaxy’ should begin on Day 700 of The 50 Year Diary, because I love it when I reach these ‘century’ days in the marathon. They’re a great opportunity to take stock of the experiment, and to see just how much the programme has evolved since the last one. It’s not even something that I really talk about in writing up these entries, just something I do for myself every hundred days. The series as it is here, for example, in Season Twenty-Five with the Seventh Doctor and Ace is a world away from the show I was watching 100 days ago (Day 600 was the first episode of Earthshock), and that iteration of the programme was just as different from the one I was watching on Day 500 (The Invasion of Time, Episode Six), and Day 400 (Planet of Spiders, Episode Six). You get the picture. It’s the perfect way of tracking just how much Doctor Who evolves and changes throughout its lifetime, because I really don’t notice it all that much when watching day-to-day - it feels like such a natural progression, that it’s only changes like Seasons Six to Seven, or Seventeen to Eighteen, which feel like real shifts.

I think it’s also probably a good thing that on the 700th day of doing this marathon, the programme is still able to flag up episodes that feel quite unlike anything that we’ve had before. Last season, I complained that Delta and the Bannermen didn’t really know what to do with its three-episode structure, but then Dragonfire fitted it perfectly. It didn’t feel as though we’d had to rush everything to fit it in to less episodes, but equally, I can’t imagine how you’d pad it out to fill another. We then moved on to Remembrance of the Daleks, back to the more familiar four-episode format, and again, it filled its running time amply, not feeling too drawn out (although, the more I think about it, the less sure I am why the Doctor herded everyone across to the Dalek shuttle with him aside from filling some screen time…). We’re sticking with four episodes today - indeed that’s the reason that the story was swapped round on original broadcast, because they were keen for Silver Nemesis to air from the anniversary date - and it’s using this first 25 minutes to simply introduce us to all the characters.

The pace is somewhat leisurely, allowing the Doctor and Ace to spend time in the TARDIS, and on the side of a road eating alien fruit, but there’s also a hell of a lot packed in here, with two killer robots, some sinister clowns, a couple on the run, and the introduction of just about every character under the bloody sun! By my count, we’ve got nine key parts introduced: The Ring Master, the Stallslady, Nord, Bellboy, Flowerchild, Captain Cook, Mags, Whizz Kid, and The Chief Clown. That’s not including other characters who appear but aren’t really given a major introduction, like other assorted circus folk. Now, this probably isn’t unusual for a first episode - Paradise Towers had lots of characters introduced in the first 25 minutes, for example - but what sets this apart is the way that every one is introduced to us with their own set piece, really making sure that you take note of who they are, and what they’re up to. It feels really very strange, and I’m not suite sure what to make of it. Coupled with the bizarre cliffhanger, this feels more like a prelude to the main story, which I’m guessing will kick off from tomorrow.

Something I did want to touch on with this episode is the way that the Doctor’s behaving. I’ve seen it suggested that this isn’t just a chance visit to the Psychic Circus spurred on by some junk-mail arriving in the TARDIS, but rather something set up by the Doctor. I’ve always thought of it as an interesting fan-theory, but actually seeing this episode again after so many years… it’s pretty hard to ignore, isn’t it? The junk-mail arrives in the TARDIS and we’re told that it’s ‘extraordinary’ (indeed, the only other things that have managed to arrive in the TARDIS like this before are Sutekh - a god of unimaginable power - the Keeper of Traken - who has the minds of the Traken Union and the power of the Source propelling him through - and arguably Veena in Timelash, though she just happens to pass through via the Vortex as opposed to actively materialising). When Ace announces that she’d rather not go along to the circus because she’s scared of clowns, and the junk mail starts to taunt her about it, just look at the Doctor’s face. He’s studying her reactions - he’s set all of this up as one of those tests he’s so keen on inflicting in Season Twenty-Six. Just like facing her fears in Gabriel Chase, this is a test for Ace that the Doctor has arranged. I’m sure later on the Doctor makes a comment about having fought the Gods of Ragnarok before, so it fits in with his style of setting up his enemies to be defeated, too, just like in the last story (and the next!)

It helps that the Doctor and Ace really are comfortable with each other here. When we join them in the TARDIS - the Doctor teaching himself to juggle, and Ace rummaging through the wardrobe - it has that same ‘lazy Sunday afternoon’ feeling that we saw with the regulars back in The Chase. This is a Doctor and companion who are comfortable with each other, and have been travelling for some time. I think I’m still willing to stick to my estimate of six months for the pair up to now, because it’s never felt as much like there’s unseen adventures for a Doctor and a companion as it does here! 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 699: Remembrance of the Daleks, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Ladies and gentlemen, we are at war!

Those of you who’ve been reading along with my marathon for a while will know that I’ve been tracking the evolution of the Time War (sometimes in very spurious ways) for quite some time now. It’s largely because after 50-odd years of Doctor Who, things don’t always hang together all that neatly. Different producers, script editors, writers, and directors have all brought their own things to the programme over the years, and altered the mythos as they go. The Time Lords change on screen - from the immensely powerful god-like beings of The War Games to the asinine bureaucrats of The Deadly Assassin and beyond (though I still maintain that it’s the difference in seeing them through Jamie and Zoe’s eyes in that first story, and the Doctor’s view of them later on). The process of regeneration is made up when the need arises to allow the lead actor to leave the show. A decade later, that ability is capped at a set number of regenerations. At one point, we even see lots of the Doctor’s previous incarnations, meaning that he really should have died with Davison (‘is this death?’).

That’s why I can’t help but love the Time War. It’s big, and it’s mythic. The programme goes off the air for sixteen years - save for a one night fling with Paul McGann in the mid-1990s - and when it returns, everything has changed. The Doctor’s not been having adventures on our TV screens each Saturday night, because he’s been busy, off fighting a bigger war between his own people and his greatest enemies. It almost justifies the fact that there’s such a big gap in the broadcast of the show, and I love that idea. And yet… it’s all right here, being built up in the narrative of the ‘classic’ series for ages. When the Doctor first encounters the Daleks on Skaro, they’re just the week’s evil alien baddies to be stopped. By the time they return the following year, though, they’ve become the catalyst for the biggest change in the Doctor’s personality. Do you remember, back in those early days, how I used to track the Doctor’s evolution from the man we met in the junkyard through to the man he would then become? Fittingly, we’ve returned to that junkyard with this story, because this tale is unambiguously a major early strike in the Time War.

You don’t even have to try to shoe-horn it in. This isn’t like my argument that The Invasion of Time is a part of the war (I’m still convinced that it is), but it’s absolutely a part of it. Going back half the programme’s life time from here, The Genesis of the Daleks is also 100% a part of the Time War - it’s the Time Lords taking that very first strike. All these different production teams coming in and imposing their very different wills on the programme over the years, and yet when this major upheaval comes in - the Doctor becoming the last surviving member of his race - it’s perfectly in keeping with everything we’ve seen before, and retroactively looks like a great big game. I love that, and I think that’s even gone so far as to help up this story a little in my estimations.

Not that it needs that, of course, because Remembrance of the Daleks is simply a brilliant piece of Doctor Who. I think, if anything, it’s suffered slightly from how little I enjoyed Season Twenty-Four (I know, I promised not to bring it up again, but bear with me. I’ll not mention it for at least the rest of this season, promise). Because I became so used to handing out 3/10 and 4/10, suddenly having a story like this, which is such a leap in quality, throws me a bit. Had I been bobbing along with episodes at around 7/10, then this story would likely have rated a bit higher, because it’s so head-and-shoulders above the rest. It’s almost as thug hI’ve rated it down a little bit because I’ve been expecting the worst for a while.

I’m not going to really discuss today’s episode in a great deal of detail, because it seriously runs the risk of just me gushing over everything again. The guest cast on top form, the sets and locations looking lovely. The special effects (that Dalek battle under the bridge!) are fab. Sylvester McCoy is finally proving that he’s the right man for the job and a brilliant Doctor… Really, I’m going to sound ridiculous if I carry on. I think I’m just pleased that this is the final Dalek story of the ‘classic’ run, because it’s such a grand way to see them out - a real return to form, and easily their best outing since Genesis of the Daleks. I think this is probably the one I’d want to show new fans looking to get in to the classic series with a Dalek tale - because it sets everything up really nicely, and all that Time War stuff I’ve been banging on about is an easy bridge from the modern stuff, too.

The one thing I do want to draw attention to, though, is the way that this story uses Davros - because it’s the only one since Genesis to really get it right. Davros here is used sparingly. Really sparingly. He doesn’t turn up until this episode (or, rather, he’s not actually revealed - we see the ‘Emperor’ in Episode Three, too), but the whole story plays on your expectation that he’ll arrive. Because Terry Nation insisted on the character being in all Dalek stories from Genesis on, you reach points like Revelation of the Daleks, which seem to have Davros there just for the sake of bringing the character back. Hello, Doctor, I’ve lured you here to taunt a bit and stop my evil plans, etc.

Here, we’re built up to believe that the creature in Ratcliffe’s office could be Davros - it looks and sounds like him, after all, before we’re shocked with the reveal of the little girl plugged in to a Dalek Battle Computer. Just when you think we could be having a Davros-free story, the Emperor’s casing flips open and there he is! It’s a great moment, and I love that he’s so completely encased in the machine. From here in the audios, he returns in Terror Firma, where he’s become even more of a ‘Dalek’, and that really does feel like a natural evolution from this point. I just think that this is such a clever way of playing with your expectations of a Dalek story, and then doing something entirely different with it.

Oh, and it gives us the ‘unlimited rice pudding’ line, which is always sure to raise a smile! 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 698: Remembrance of the Daleks, Episode Three

Dear diary,

In the series of About Time books, each story gets a ‘critique’, and I often go back to catch up on what was said there to see how it tallies with my own thoughts on a serial. The critique for this story, though, has always stuck in the mind because it says something that I can’t help but feeling is exactly right: ‘Looked at now, it’s amazing that so few people saw it on first broadcast. Had the BBC got behind this series, episodes like these would have won it a whole new audience’. The more this story goes on, the more I think it’s a pity that the McCoy era of the programme is looked down upon by so many - especially within fandom. This is one of the greatest stories ever, and there’s no doubt that stuff like this would have gotten the public talking about Doctor Who again (there’s also mention in the About Time critique of Dragonfire that had more people been watching when that story went out, there would have been a flurry of complaints about Kane’s death. As it is, the whole sequence passed by under the radar).

This is really me struggling to find another way of saying ‘I’m still really enjoying Remembrance of the Daleks’. It’s almost the complete opposite of Revelation of the Daleks, in which there was absolutely no need for the Daleks to be there, because here we’ve got a story that’s about the pepper pots. We’ve got a manipulative Doctor trying to play his intergalactic game of chess, making sure that the right Daleks get hold of the right Gallifreyan super weapon at the right time, and there’s always something fun about watching so many of the creatures get blown up!

Because I didn’t really talk about the Daleks all that much during their last appearance, I’ve not had a chance properly yet to say just how much I love the white-and-gold versions of the creatures. It’s suck a lovely design, sleek and elegant, and they look so much nicer than the drab grey ones that have become so common throughout the colour years of the programme. The design of the Emperor is rather lovely, too, and their spaceship! Oh! There’s lots of photographs that show off the set here, but none of them capture quite how good it looks on screen. During our first trip aboard, there’s a lovely camera movement that pans around the room while a Dalek is busy shouting it’s… Dalek things, and it really shows the design off beautifully.

Indeed, the direction of the whole serial is rather nice, and it’s hard to believe that it’s by Andrew Morgan - the same man who gave us Time and the Rani! In that story, I complained lots about the way that the production had been put together (by all departments, from costumes through to lighting), but here we’ve been given something much stronger. I think, on reflection, that less blame should be placed at Morgan’s door for Time and the Rani than I did, because it ended up becoming an edict for the entire season, not just that story. Unshackled from that light-hearted style, which sat so at odds with the regular tone of the programme, Morgan has crafted something really rather wonderful this time around.

And then there’s the guest cast of characters. For a few years, now, Big Finish have produced a spin-off from this story, featuring Gilmore, Rachel, and Alison setting up the Countermeasures Intrusion Group in the months following this story. I’ve been listening to the series since it was first released, but at that point it had been a while since I’d last seen these four episodes. I’m glad, then, to see that the characters we get in the spin-off are very much drawn from what we’re given on screen here, and I’m looking forward to a re-listen with this story fresher in the mind. I’ve vaguely touched on it before, but these characters do feel so much more rounded than others we’ve had recently, and I can’t fail to get caught up in their world.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 697: Remembrance of the Daleks, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Because I didn’t fully embrace my love of Doctor Who until the 21st century revival really booted me in to action, I’ve always been used to Daleks who are fairly powerful. As far as I’m concerned, they’ve been able to fly for as long as I can remember, and for a brief while they were even able to swing their mid sections around for full 360-degree action, and melt bullets as they were directed towards them. In short, they’ve always been a fairly unstoppable force. It doesn’t make the cliffhanger to yesterday’s episode any less exciting, though. It’s been almost two years since I started out on this marathon, so I’ve become very used to the ‘classic’ type of Dalek, which is usually a bit rubbish. We’ve seen them levitate before, of course (In The Chase, one rises from the sand, and in Revelation of the Daleks they’re seen to hover, but it’s done somewhat clumsily there, so you don’t really notice…), but seeing the way that this one approaches the stairs and just casually continues on the advance is great - and the Doctor’s reaction to it helps to sell the threat, too. Even he’s surprised by this development! This story also marks the first time that you see a skeleton as the Dalek bolt strikes someone - it feels like we’re moving ever closer towards the modern version of the show, and it’s interesting seeing the pieces start to fall in to place.

I’m surprised, too, just how excited I am to have the Daleks back here. Like the comings and goings of the different Doctors in this period of the programme, Dalek tales seem to come around really fast now (this is the third since September, whereas before that they’d been fairly paced out for a long time), and when they cropped up again in Revelation of the Daleks only a season on from Resurrection… I didn’t really care all that much. You might notice that I barely mention the Daleks in that story, and that’s because they were by far one of the least interesting parts of the narrative. Here, though, for some reason, I’m really pleased to have another Dalek tale. I wonder if it’s because this time, we’ve very much got the two sets of Daleks squaring up against each other (a plot thread introduced very late in to the last story), and I know that this is about to turn full-on into being the start of the Time War? It’s something I’ve been tracking for most of 2014, from the Doctor’s mission in Genesis of the Daleks and then on through various spurious links, so it’s quite exciting to have finally reached this point.

And the Doctor has now gone completely into his manipulative mode! Throughout the last season, I was tracking the little moments that seemed to point towards the character becoming manipulative and scheming, but I’d really forgotten just how blatant it becomes from this story onwards. I’d long thought of it as being something that was somewhat underlying in the show, and only really brought to the fore later on in the books, but here we’ve got the Doctor expecting the Daleks to turn up, and being somewhat unsettled when it’s the wrong faction that arrive on the scene (at least initially). By today’s episode, he’s already thinking that he may have made an error (it’s a lovely continuation of that great cliffhanger in Delta and the Bannermen, where he realises he may have bitten off more than he can chew), and I’m really enjoying that. There’s also the mystery of just when he started setting all of this up. At the undertakers, the ‘Doctor’ who left the casket with them in 1963 is described as being an older chap with long white hair - a pretty good description of the First Doctor, which would make sense given the trappings of Coal Hill School, Totter’s Lane, and November 1963 in the story - but this opens up a whole can of worms about the way the Doctor acts in The Daleks. There, it seems to be his first meeting with the creatures, but is there perhaps more to it than we ever realised? It’s not something I’ve ever really considered in a great deal of depth before, but I’m quite keen to watch that story again now and see exactly how he actually reacts to them…

I can’t let this episode pass by without bringing up the Doctor’s speech about making a difference. It’s lovely, and very fitting for this incarnation who’ll be plotting his way through the next eight stories. Another example of Sylvester McCoy simply getting the Doctor this season. You can really sense that both he and Andrew Cartmel have taken some time to sit down and really work out what they want to do with both the character and the series. I’ve said it before (and I’ll try to make this the last time, I promise), but there’s such a shift in quality between Season Twenty-Four and this story, that you can really sense just how much work has gone in to getting it right. I’ve often defended this period of the programme to people who claim it’s rubbish by saying how much the show found its feet again in the final two years, and this is the perfect story to demonstrate that.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 696: Remembrance of the Daleks, Episode One

Dear diary,

For the last fortnight, while I’ve not been enjoying Season Twenty-Four, Remembrance of the Daleks has been the light at the end of the tunnel. I could remember liking it from previous viewings (it’s one of the few stories I’d actually watched a few times before replacing it with the special edition), and the more I thought about little elements of the story, the more it seemed to be the absolute antithesis of everything that I perceived as being ‘wrong’ with Doctor Who as broadcast in 1987.

It’s nice, then, that this episode is pretty much everything that I wanted it to be. Let’s start with the thing that most relates to my complaints about areas of the last season - this story is set in the real world. When we join the Doctor and Ace in the adventure, they’re walking away from the TARDIS, which is parked down a side street. They’re out in real London streets, or in playgrounds, or junkyards. A large proportion of this serial is shot out on location - which helps - and everything feels much more solid than it did in Season Twenty-Four. These locations (and even the sets) don’t feels as ‘plastic’ or ‘comic book’, and it really does make a massive difference to things. By that same token, the fact that we see Ace go to get food in a regular cafe - as opposed to the version we saw in Dragonfire - grounds everything in reality much more. You can see where Russell T Davies was coming from when he chose to ground the 2005 revival in a council estate, with shops, and flats, and real people, because it has the same effect there that it does here, of making everything feel just that bit more natural.

Speaking of which, McCoy’s performance has jumped up tenfold from where it was last season, and he feels very natural here, too. He’s playing everything a little bit quieter, and even largely underplaying his lines, in a way that we didn’t really get to see a lot of in his first four adventures. I was trying yesterday to find a way of describing the differences in his performance, but it struck me almost instantly when he papered today - it simply is that everything is much calmer here - more calculated, and yet it comes across as less of a performance.

Take, for example, the moment when he stands with Ace, looking out over the scorch marks on the playground. He makes reference to both Terror of the Zygons and The Web of Fear, and plays the line beautifully. It’s the ultimate example of him underplaying a scene, when I know that his Season Twenty-Four performance would have gone to great lengths to really over-do the point. Having just come from two weeks of that style, I can picture exactly how that would have gone. I’m so glad, because I came to this period of the marathon knowing how much I like McCoy’s Doctor, but by the end of Dragonfire, I was almost beginning to doubt myself!

I discussed this with my friend Nick this evening. He acts as a nice counterbalance to me at this stage, because while he admits that Season Twenty-Four has its faults, he doesn’t dislike it to quite the extent that I do. He’s a bit more willing to accept that it’s the programme trying something different that doesn’t really work, but then it comes back this year and tries another direction. He’s right when he says that McCoy was pitching his performance last season to fit the ‘comic book’ style that they were going for - try to play the Doctor in Time and the Rani the way he does here and it would fall absolutely flat on its face.

That said, everything is pulling together here to help this new performance. Remember during Delta and the Bannermen, I complained that all the supporting characters just went along with the Doctor because the plot required them to do so, and it came across as rushed and false. Here, characters effectively do the same thing… but you get the sense that the Doctor has given them reason to go along with him. I think it’s in Silver Nemesis where he describes his usual tactic as simply acting like he owns the place, and it’s absolutely true of what happens here. When he climbs in to the van and Rachel questions his presence, he simply goes on with the rest of the conversation. Similarly, when they reach Totters’ Yard, he takes charge of the situation, and ends up being the one who takes out the Dalek, while the myriad of soldiers are largely ineffective against it. Here, even after one episode, I completely buy that everyone will go along with what he says, because he’s given me every reason to believe it. That’s much stronger scripting and performance than we’ve had before in this period.

While I’m on the subject, what’s the general thinking in terms of how long he’s been travelling with Ace at this point? There’s lots of little hints in this episode that seem to suggest they’ve spent a while together since Dragonfire (and I’d say that Sophie Aldred has been made up to look older than she was in that story), and that this pair are fairly comfortable together. Certainly, this isn’t the first place they’ve been to since Ice World. Equally, they’ve not been anywhere where Ace has needed to drive, because the Doctor has to ask if she can. I think I’m plumping for a period of maybe six months for them by now - long enough to go around and have several adventures, and to get comfortable together before they touch down here to sort out the Daleks (the Doctor is clearly here specifically for the Daleks, and I’d imagine he’d want to make sure Ace is up to the challenge before setting the coordinates). Does anyone else have a theory on how long they’ve been together already? 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 695: Dragonfire, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I was surprised, watching the ‘making of’ documentary on this DVD today, to hear that Andrew Cartmel and Ian Briggs weren’t all that keen on the final scene with Mel in this episode. It seems to be the case that it’s adapted from part of McCoy’s audition scene, which he’d been repeatedly trying to get in to the series for a while, and ended up just putting in almost without actually telling anyone! It surprised me because it’s such a beautiful goodbye, and for me it’s the highlight of the story (and, if I’m honest, of the season!)

DOCTOR

That's right, yes, you're going. Been gone for ages. Already gone, still here, just arrived, haven't even met you yet. It all depends on who you are and how you look at it. Strange business, time.

MEL

Goodbye, Doctor.

DOCTOR

I'm sorry, Mel. Think about me when you're living your life one day after another, all in a neat pattern. Think about the homeless traveller and his old police box, with his days like crazy paving.

MEL

Who said anything about home? I've got much more crazy things to do yet…

I think it’s fair to say that this is by far the best performance that we’ve seen Sylvester McCoy give all season - and it’s much closer to the way that he’ll be handling the part from now on - and there’s something rather beautifully melancholic about the whole scene. It fits quite nicely with the fact that he ended up meeting Mel out of order (even if we didn’t see this so much on screen, but it’s been explored in audios like The Wrong Doctors), and serves as a rather nice cap to their time together. It then moves on to be a brilliant introduction to Ace aboard the TARDIS. Thinking back to the Fourth Doctor’s words in Logopolis, when he claims to have never chosen his own company aboard the TARDIS, This may be the first time, really, since Vicki* that we’ve seen the Doctor actively ask someone to come with him because he wants them to.

I’ve never noticed before just how well it melds with the story arc that’s still to come surrounding Ace’s character. By the time we reach The Curse of Fenric - more on which in a moment - the Doctor is claiming to have sensed the deliberate alteration to Ace’s life even at this stage, thus choosing to take her along with him. It becomes a bit vague, I teem to recall, just how much he’s saying to break her confidence, and how much is the truth, but I think it’s very easy to read all of that into this final scene. It would especially explain why he’s so distracted as Mel tries to make her goodbyes, and even why she so suddenly decides that this is the end of the road for her time in the TARDIS (she clearly hasn’t even mentioned to Glitz that she’s planning to go with him). I think I’m right in saying that the New Adventures novels in the 1990s revealed that the Doctor mentally forced her to leave here, because he knew of the role Ace would go on to play, and needed Mel out of the way and back to safety while he concentrated on the new girl. I don’t think that’s a leap from what we’re given on screen at all, and indeed, I really prefer to think of it like that. It also works as a nice capstone to the building up of this Doctor’s ‘meddling’ personality that I’ve been spuriously tracking over the last two weeks…

As we move in to the final two seasons of the programme’s original run, a brief word on the order in which I’ll be watching the stories. For the first time in The 50 Year Diary, I’m completely breaking with broadcast order and doing it my own way. The reasons are simple: a few stories in the next few years were swapped around between production and broadcast, and work better if watched in the order they were intended for. Thus, I’ll be watching Season Twenty-Five as Remembrance of the Daleks - The Greatest Show in the Galaxy - The Happiness Patrol - Silver Nemesis, and then Season Twenty-Six as The Curse of Fenric - Battlefield - Ghost Light - Survival. I’ve never been overboard with trying to remain 100% accurate with this marathon, hence side-steps in to things like Farewell, Great Macedon, and Doctor Who and the Pescatons, and I think I’ll get more from the next eight stories in this order!

*Yes, I know, Harry, but he’s really only asking him aboard the ship so that he can show off a bit.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 694: Dragonfire, Episode Two

Dear diary,

During Time and the Rani, I said that the McCoy era was home to some of the best monster designs and costumes that the programme has ever seen - and yes, I did mean the Tetraps! Oh hush, I like them. Today’s episode is another great example with the dragon itself - there’s something really nice about the whole creature, and I even think the fact that the body is so spindly and hymn works, which is the one thing that I’d always been put off by. The actual head design is absolutely gorgeous, and I’d completely forgotten that it opened up to reveal the Dragonfire inside - I think I’d convinced myself that we simply saw it overlaid or something. I’m also fond of the fact that it’s a nice ‘monster’ - it feels like a while since we had one of those (yeah, yeah, the Navarinos in Delta and the Bannermen were friendly, but they were presented as aliens rather than monsters - the same can be said of the Lakertians at the start of the season).

Indeed, I’m rather liking the design on this story as a whole, I think. There are some seasons which seem to have their own very distinct ‘visual identity’ - Season Twenty-One is the most recent that comes to mind before this one - whereby you could show assorted screen captures of the episodes to people who don’t know which seasons they’re from, and they’d likely be able to group them together just by style. That’s been very true of Season Twenty-Four, which I’ve continually referred to as being a bit ‘comic book’. I don’t necessarily mean that in a negative way, it’s just the dest description I can find for the look of this season - very bright, and artificial.

Because I’ve not been enjoying Season Twenty-Four all that much on the whole, I’ve been thinking of Remembrance of the Daleks as something of a light at the end of the tunnel. As strange as it may sound, it’s the thought of grimy brick walls, and roads, and playgrounds that makes it feel better- something real and tangible. I know Delta and the Bannermen was set in Earth’s recent history, but the holiday camp setting and the way the whole piece came together still gave it more of that ‘Season Twenty-Four’ artifice than I’d have liked!

All that said, Ice World manages to fit the visual style of this year’s stories perfectly, but also look rather good on its own merits. I recently had to put together a kind of ‘ice world’ for a design commission, and found myself automatically trying to replicate the style of the walls seen in this story - though I didn’t immediately realise that this was where the inspiration was drawn from! The various corridors look lovely, and Kane’s lair works simply because of the size of the set, and the various levels and platforms (long-term readers will know that I’m a sucker for a set with levels!) The only slight let down is that McCoy is really trying to sell the ‘ice’ factor of these sets, slipping and sliding around on the floor as though it’s near impossible to remain upright… while no one else really bothers to do the same. Sophie Aldred has some nice moments of watching her feet and carefully choosing her steps, but then slips back into the way that Tony Selby and Bonnie Langford are playing it - as if there’s no ice at all!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 693: Dragonfire, Episode One

Dear diary,

It’s funny, isn’t it, how some Doctors just have that one companion that ‘defines’ them. For some, like the Second Doctor and Jamie, or the Fifth Doctor and Tegan, it’s because they travel together for such a long period of time (there’s only a single Second Doctor adventure without Jamie in, and only two Fifth Doctor stories missing Tegan). For others, it’s just because they work together so well. I think that’s the case for the Seventh Doctor and Ace (a pairing who do travel together for much of this era, but I think the shortened seasons means that there’s less of an impact to it). I’ve been waiting for this story to come along, because having struggled to find my feet with the Seventh Doctor so far, the arrival of Sophie Aldred and Ace to the series really feels like the missing piece of the puzzle being slotted in to place.

Surprising, then, is the fact that the Doctor and Ace really don’t get to spend that much time together in this episode! They talk for a little while in the cafe, while the Doctor muses on wasting to go and see the dragons, but then it’s really Mel who gets paired off with the newbie, so that we can find out all about her. Within these first 25 minutes, I already feel like I know Ace better than I ever have with Mel - and I think it’s helped by the fact that the information is being fed to us naturally, with Ace telling us her life story. When Mel was introduced in the latter stages of The Trial of a Time Lord, we were given occasional info dumps about her (‘this is nothing like Pease Pottage, Mell, you know, where you lived before we travelled together? And you worked there as a computer programmer? And you’re a health and fitness fanatic? Eh? Eh? EH?’), but with Ace, you get a real sense that everything we’re told - blowing up the art classroom, and whipping up a time storm - can have really happened for this character. It bodes well for her at this early stage!

The Doctor is instead paired off with Sabalom Glitz, another character I’ve been waiting to see. He was such good fun last season, and the chance for one more story with him here has been a little light at the end of the tunnel while not enjoying Season Twenty-Four. I’m enjoying him here - his interactions with the Doctor and Mel in the cafe are particularly fun - but you really can tell that he’s not being written by Robert Holmes any more. He’s still funny, but a lot of the wit and charm that made him so enjoyable in The Mysterious Planet just isn’t there anymore.

I’d also like to use today as another example of the Doctor’s ‘planning’ personality starting to shine through. He tells Mel early on that he’s been picking up a signal from Ice World ‘for some time’, and has now decided to check it out. We’ve had plenty of occasions in the past where the TARDIS has received a distress call, and the Doctor has hurried off to investigate, but I don’t think we’ve ever had a situation before where he’s been actively monitoring a signal for some time before choosing to follow up on it and find out what’s going on. Later on, Mel realises that the Doctor has brought them here because he wanted to see the dragons - though he omitted to tell her that fact! This is probably a clearer sign of the Seventh Doctor’s evolution than any of the little hints I’ve pointed out before, and I like it, especially when balanced with the Doctor’s sadness when he thinks he may not get the chance to go and see dragons after all!

What do you mean you were expecting me to mention the cliffhanger? There’s nothing to say, is there? It’s just your average, Doctor Who cliffhanger… 

…oh, all right. This episode is home to perhaps the programme’s most pointless cliffhanger, in which the Doctor gets to a fork in the road, with a path leading off to the left and the right… but instead he chooses to climb over the railings and dangle over an ice chasm via his umbrella. I’ve been a Doctor Who fan long enough to know that the intention is that he needs to go down to the next level, and misjudges the diastase he’ll need to drop (I think the novelisation restores this version of events), but the way it’s been staged on screen is awful. Here, he seems to climb the railings for no good reason whatsoever! I think, though, that this might be one of those times where the programme has done something so bad, that I can’t help but love it!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 692: Delta and the Bannermen, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I’ve been looking forward to this one, because it’s the first ‘real’ three-part Doctor Who adventure. Planet of Giants in Season Two was recorded as four parts, but later cut down, and The Two Doctors was shown in three parts, but was the length of six, but Delta and the Bannermen is three episodes of regular-length, planned from the start as a three-part story. This thought has been exciting me, because I’ve said several times across this marathon that three episodes is really the perfect length for the programme, cutting out all of that running around and getting captured in the third quarter, and helping to tighten everything up, which should in theory help the stories.

It’s a pity, then, that the format is used to badly in this story! The pacing is all over the place, and I’m not really sure that they’ve gotten the hang of it yet. I’d say that the first episode was more or less spot on, introducing the story, the characters, and the location, before ending with a cliffhanger that moves the narrative along. Episode Two then does up the stakes, before this final episode is just a bit of a mess. There’s so many characters, and everything’s been escalating so quickly - it’s another way of looking at the point I made yesterday, about the way that everyone just goes along with the Doctor, even though he’s given no one any real reason to do so, and Billy instantly accepts Delta’s situation, even going as far as to try and change his biology and fly away with her in a spaceship at the end, completely unfazed by events!

There’s not been enough time spent introducing us to these people as a group, so we’ve simply got bland ciphers doing whatever the story requires of them. Right up to the goodbye scene at the end, it doesn’t feel like anyone is a believable person here. When Ray says goodbye to the Doctor and rides off on the bike, it feels completely wrong - she got to see inside his spaceship, remember, the boy she loves has just flown off with another woman, and she’s filled the role of the Doctor’s companion for the entire story… she should at least ask to see another planet, before swanning off. This kind of thing also means that the tone is still wrong right across this episode - there’s not a single mention of the tourists who got blown up in their bus yesterday, because the plot was finished with them, and doesn’t even think to bring it up again. I’d at least expect the doctor to say something a little bit poignant about the situation.

I’m a little bit gutted about all this to be honest, because that first episode really did show an awful lot of promise, and I was looking so forward to seeing the programme attempt this type of format. We’ve got another three part story coming up next, so I’m keen to see if they’ll be any better at managing the pacing issues in that one, or if - like the rest of Season Twenty-Four - it’s all something of a failed experiment. 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 691: Delta and the Bannermen, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I really can’t make up my mind with the Seventh Doctor so far. In Time and the Rani and Paradise Towers, I veered from thinking ‘he’s not got this at all’ to ‘ah, now he feels like the Doctor’ and back again (sometimes within the same scene), but I’m starting to think that by the time Delta and the Bannermen went in to production, he’s sort of picked a direction that I’m liking. Put simply: while I’m not sure he’s quite the Doctor that I’m waiting for (I’m becoming ever more convinced that I’ll have to wait for next season for that), there’s a version of the character shining through in this story that I’m really warming to. It’s present in the way that he takes instantly to Ray, and goes to comfort her after the dance, asking for her life to be spared, and generally ditching Mel for this story to hang out with someone cooler! I’m not sure if I like how quickly everyone is taking to the Doctor here, though, with people following his every whim and order without much question - at least the camp Major has to have a look inside the TARDIS before he’ll start to believe in what he’s being told!

It’s been a while since I had the chance to track any kind of story arc in the programme, and I think I may have found another (very) tenuous one forming here in regards to the Seventh Doctor’s persona. He’s often thought of as the arch manipulator, the one who goes in to his adventures with a plan in mind, and is working to a greater scheme that we can’t really see. It’s most prevalent in the books, but will start to come to the fore with Remembrance of the Daleks and Silver Nemesis in Season Twenty-Five, and then even stronger through Season Twenty-Six, in regards to Ace. I’m wondering if we might be seeing the very beginnings of that character starting to develop here.

I’m thinking specifically of the last story, in which the Doctor initially claimed to know very little about the Great Architect and Paradise Towers in General, but when things started heating up, he was suddenly all-knowing, and keen to make sure that the Architect really had been destroyed. In the cliffhanger to today’s episode, we get to see McCoy deliver the first of his big speeches - the kind of thing that he’ll face off against the likes of Davros and Fenric with later in his life - and then muse that he may have gone too far. It feels as though, early in to his new body, he’s flexing his muscles, and trying to see how he can handle events. What better way to test it than with a war over the final two members of a species? Go big or go home, I guess!

The one other thing that I’m struggling with in this story, and it’s related in a way to the fact that everyone just goes along with the Doctor and accepts everything he says, is the fact that Billy is so accepting of Delta’s situation! He spots her at a dance, takes a bit of a shine to her, pops round with some flowers, and then is told that she’s in fact an alien queen, and this is her child, and it’ll grow up incredibly fast, and there’s an army on the way to kill them all. His reaction to all of this? He takes her out on a date! With child in tow! Doesn’t bat an eyelid. I know he’s grown up in South Wales, with the Cardiff Rift nearby (I did wonder when Goronwy mentioned all the weird lights in the sky, if it could retroactively be thought of as the result of the Rift), but surely he shouldn’t be quite this accepting of the situation?

Several times over the last few days, I’ve mused that Season Twenty-Four has amore lightweight, ‘comic book’ feel to it than other Doctor Who seasons. It’s still in evidence here, with the bright colours of the camp and many of the supporting characters, but sometimes the tone does veer off the path somewhat, and leave you with an uncomfortable clash of styles. It worked very well yesterday when the Tollmaster was shot in the back, but here we see the entire tour bus of characters blown up! Mel then points out that all those innocent people have died! It should be a massive shock to the system because it really shows off the might of the Bannermen, and makes them unpredictable cold killers, but it just completely jars with everything else in the episode.

Instead, it shocks you because it’s not played quite right, and you’re left with a bit of a sour taste. If I’m honest, I had to skip back a minute or two to make sure that it had really happened, and that they didn’t manage to escape in the final seconds! I’m somewhat resigned to the programme having such an ‘off’ tone this year, and I can’t quite decide if it’s the result of there being a new script editor finding his feet in the show, or John Nathan-Turner coming to the season late (having assumed that he’d be allowed to move on), or simply that they’ve over-reacted to the criticisms of the programme a season late. A pity, because there’s still lots of ideas that I’m loving - as I say, the death of the passengers could be great - but it’s just not coming together for me! 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 690: Delta and the Bannermen, Episode One

Dear diary,

Today feels like an appropriate time to return to the subject of ‘stunt casting’ in Doctor Who. Ken Dodd’s appearance as the Toll Master in Delta and the Bannermen is often singled out as an example of John Nathan-Turner completely missing the point and casting light entertainment figures in the programme, but it’s an example that I think proves he knew what he was doing! Quite apart from the fact that Dodd fits the ‘comic book’ version of Doctor Who that we’re being given with Season Twenty-Four, he’s actually really good in the part, and his slightly zany antics (and very zany costume) work wonderfully in context, offset nicely against the run-down backdrop of the toll port.

Dodd’s character doesn’t make it out of the episode alive, and there’s something that really works in watching him die - throughout the scene I continually flip-flopped between thinking he was going to snuff it and thinking that he’d be spared, but I’m so glad they killed him off. It’s the perfect way to highlight Gavrok’s character, and having him shot in the back as he tries to get to freedom is just delicious. It always hurts that little bit more when a character dies who you rather like ,and who hasn’t done anything wrong.

You may have noticed from that opening paragraph that I’ve been a bit finder of today’s episode than either of the last two stories fared. There’s just so much to like here. Right from the off, we’re set down in to the middle of an alien battlefield, with a distinctive blue hue which really sets off the explosions. There’s little green army men (what a fantastic idea for a design - I’m almost surprised that the programme has taken this long to do it - one of those ideas that just feels perfectly ‘Doctor Who’), and alien princess, an evil villain and his army on the attack… it’s more action that the programme has seen in a while, and it’s rather nicely done! Even the shot of the space ship taking off to flee from the battle is something different- even though I’m sure it was achieved simply.

And then the whole idea of the story, well that’s another thing that’s pure Doctor Who! A spaceship, disguised as a bus, taking a tour group of aliens to visit Disneyland in the 1950s. It’s a great concept, and again I think it’s perfectly suited to this particular season of the programme. I can’t imagine it working at any point prior to this (and not really any point afterwards, either, though I think the Eleventh Doctor could just about fit in to this adventure), but it’s just so right for this season, and especially for Mel.

She looks so right sat on the bus, singing along with all the other passengers. It’s just a shame that she reverts to being a bit wet afterwards, though. There’s some nice character moments in her room with Delta - sympathising with the poor woman and trying to help where she can - but then as soon as she sees the alien egg, she bursts into a scream… before anything has even happened! Delta shows her a christmas decoration, and Mel screams at it! I’m surprised that she didn’t simply pass out when the little green creature emerged from inside!

The actual effect of the baby… thing coming out of the egg is lovely, and one of the best we’ve had in a long time. It looks genuinely creepy, and it’s enough to leave an impact for the week until the next episode. It’s not the only decent effects shot in here, either, and I was rather impressed by the TARDIS model as it followed the bus through space. The programme has been doing TARDIS models for ages by this point - decades! - but it’s always nice when they do it well, and having not seen many of them recently!

One last thing, though. Weismuller, one of the Americans pulls up to a police box and puts in a call to the States. He claims to be calling from ‘Wales in England’. I’ve lived in Cardiff long enough by now to know that they really don’t like it when you say things like that (we’re also not allowed to question the dual language on all the signs)!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 689: Paradise Towers, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Somehow, I’ve managed to make it through this entire story without making mention of Richard Briers’ performance as the Chief Caretaker. I think I’m right in saying that Briers once told an interviewer that he’d taken a part in Doctor Who as an excuse to ‘act badly’, and I think you can see that throughout appearance in this episode, because his performance is appalling…

…and completely right for the tone of the story! It works brilliantly, and I can’t help but fall in love with it. It’s so over the top that it’s almost grotesque, and it fits the slightly ‘comic book’ theme of this season particularly well. He’s been playing the part in a particularly bizarre way throughout (though, again, it’s fitted the story), but it’s really once his mind has been taken over that things really work for me.

It means that I’m also wondering if maybe I’ve been approaching Season Twenty-Four from slightly the wrong angle. I’ve spoken in the last week about how disappointed I am with the programme all of a sudden, shifting its tone from being television for children to strictly being ‘kids telly’, but with concepts and ideas that go beyond that area. I wonder if maybe I should have been looking at Time and the Rani and this story with a mind more willing to enjoy them on their own merits, including the ‘comic book’ tone that the programme has currently adopted. In the Last Chance Saloon feature on the Time and the Rani DVD, John Nathan-Turner comments that they were asked again to tone down the violence, and that they replaced it with more humour. I think that’s been very evident so far, and I’m looking forward to them managing to strike that right balance of violence and humour in the programme again.

All that said, I’ve still not really enjoyed this episode. There is - as usual - lots of little bits that I rather like, but they simply don’t add up to a satisfying whole for me. I’m thinking that this may be another story to add to my ‘must watch again’ pile (there’s at least one in every era), because taking a different approach may help. Today’s episode also isn’t helped by the inclusion of something that was so ridiculous that I couldn’t help but be put right off by it. The Doctor has brought Mel to Paradise Towers because she’s desperate to go swimming. Fine. Before they make it to the swimming pool, they get caught up in an adventure. Fine. During this adventure, Mel gets set upon by cannibals, and then screams for her life when she thinks she’s stuck in the basement. Fine. Mere minutes later, they arrive at the pool, so she decides to forget the events of the last few hours and take a dip! No! What the hell were they thinking? Does she think that now she’s found the swimming pool, all the dangers have gone? That she can simply abandon the adventure? What on Earth is she doing?

I think this is all part of my continuing dislike of Mel - and that’s not helping the season in my estimations much, either! Bonnie Langford isn’t actually bad in the role, but the problem is that she’s only as good as the material she’s being given. Mel is the absolute stereotype of a Doctor Who companion, screaming and asking questions, and getting in to trouble. She’s not in any way believable for me as a character, and I don’t think it helps that I know Ace is coming up soon; a character I’ve always liked. We’re shifting format to three parters for the next few stories - the format I’ve often claimed in this marathon to be the perfect length for a Who story - so I’m hoping it might help to give me a bit of a shot in the arm, because I really don’t like not enjoying the series!