Timelash

There are fans who defend Timelash. I wish I could do that, but I just don't enjoy Timelash enough to defend it. It's fun in places and has a cheerful pantomime feel that part of me wants to admire. It's also interesting that in some ways it functions as a sort of parody of bad Doctor Who, sharing many of its faults with countless other Doctor Who stories, for instance a planent with about six inhabitants. I don't think that redeems it though.

The plot is just bonkers. How did the Borad ever take over Karfel? Why does he chuck people down a time tunnel instead of just shooting them or even feeding them to the Morlocks? How are people actually able to climb into the time vortex? The Borad is visually interesting and everybody agrees this is a redeeming feature, but he feels like an awful lot of other Doctor Who villains.

The presence of HG Wells feels like an embarrassment, primarily because the writer don't seem to have done any research into what kind of person HG Wells actually was. There seems little resemblance between our Herbert and the historical figure.

There is a place for Doctor Who stories that are silly in a tongue-in-cheek way. I absolutely love Delta and the Bannermen. However, Delta and the Bannermen actually feels like an intelligent story. Timelash just feels lazy.

Season 22

It was certainly a mistake to introduce the Sixth Doctor at the end of the previous season instead of opening with his first story. It is just one of the many ways in which he was set up to fail, not least among them the hideous costume he was given.

After the grey darkness of the previous season, Season 22 has something of a more colourful look. For the most part, this is not accompanied by a more light-hearted tone. Season 22 is unrelentingly violent and full of some quite vicious characters. To my mind, the crushing of Lytton's hands in Attack of the Cybermen represents the heights of excessive violence in Doctor Who. Production values in this season are a mixed bag, with some great location work and a few good sets, but also some uninspired acting in some stories. The quality of script writing is rather underwhelming in Season 22.

There does seem to have been a genuine desire to challenge viewers and offer a fresh approach to Doctor Who, but it was too half-hearted. For all the attempt to make the Doctor scary and less clean-cut, like he had been in the Hartnell years, he was still presented as a nice guy deep down. The McCoy years would later succeed in making the Doctor seem genuinely scary and dangerous. The over reliance on past continuity, inherited from the previous seasons would also serve as a barrier to offering a fresh approach.

As with the previous season, there is a strong thematic connection between the serials of this season. There is an emphasis on consumption, lust and the body. Attack of the Cybermen has the Cybermen consuming human bodies, Vengeance on Varos has colonists who consume images of torture, Mark of the Rani has the Rani using human bodies as a source of chemicals and, of course, turning people into trees. The Two Doctors is all about eating the flesh of humans and aliens. Timelash has the Borad wanting to posses and change Peri's body. Revelation of the Daleks is about bodies being turned into food and also into Daleks. With some better writers, these scripts could have considerably enhanced the depth and strength of the stories.

Through it all, Colin Baker gave some pretty decent performances. As both the Doctor and as a real person he is very likable, but he was simply not given material that enabled him to shine. Nicola Bryant was also disadvantaged by being paired with a character with whom her character would inevitably clash. It can be fun watching the Sixth Doctor and Peri bicker, but through the whole season it became just a bit too much.


Attack of the Cybermen 3/10

Too much obsession with continuity, too much violence and shockingly weak Cybermen.

Vengeance on Varos 7/10

The makings of a great story, let down by lazy and careless script writing.

The Mark of the Rani 4/10

Why did they have to bring back the Master?

The Two Doctors 9/10

A very postmodern story that deconstructs our idea of the way the Doctor operates.

Timelash 3/10

Very silly, but still fun.

Revelation of the Daleks 9/10

Brilliantly directed with a great set of characters, but the Doctor is completely irrelevant to the plot.

Revelation of the Daleks

D.J. : Is that your real accent?
Peri: I should hope so!

Despite the title, it's not really about the Daleks, is it? It is a story about Davros, how he worms his way into an human society, manipulates others and attempts to build a new power base.

Revelation of the Daleks is a very good story that suffers from one major flaw; the fact that the Doctor plays so little part in the plot. All of the major events in the story would have happened without his being there. He is effectively reduced to being a bystander, much like in an Hartnell historical. In Caves of Androzani, the Doctor essentially took a passive role in the plot, getting captured, having to rescue Peri and then dying and regenerating. Nevertheless, he acted as a catalyst for the story. His mere arrival set in motion planet-shaking events. I think it is this irrelevance of the Doctor in Revelation of the Daleks that keeps it from being a classic like Caves of Androzani.

Despite this flaw, Revelation of the Daleks is a very good production. It evokes a very surreal, dream-like atmosphere. This is helped enormously by the snowy weather. This dreaminess makes the revelation of the mutant in the glass Dalek seem like the stuff of nightmares.

Like Snakedance before it, Revelation of the Daleks really creates the sense of an actual world inhabited by real people. The sets are a jumble of different styles, but this is much more true to life than the uniformity we usually see in Doctor Who sets. There is a sense of scale in the exterior shots of Tranquil Repose. We also get a bizarre cast of characters from all walks of life. The irrelevance of most of these to the plot about Davros and the Daleks makes this seem as though we are seeing a snapshot of the turbulent life in this future epoch. There is no real point to Davros' manipulating of Tasembeka and her subsequent murder of Jobel, except to provide an incredible piece of drama and a vision of a violent, nasty world.

William Gaunt plays the part of Orcini with an incredible stiffness and self-importance; yet this is so true to the character. His character evokes such a sense of world-weariness, yet he is resolved to the discipline of an inflexible code of honour. With his affectionate relationship with his squire, Bostock, he seems so much like a Robert Holmes creation. Or a character from a Shakespeare play. He is also really bad-ass with his leather outfit and casual flick knife killing of Kara. The faulty mechanical leg is a nice touch too!

Alexei Sayle comes across as quite deliberately annoying in his D.J. voice. What is clever about the character is the way that he is revealed to be a very shy, nervous chap. It is rather tragic the way he is shut up alone in his studio with only his records for company and then to die a tragic death. I was quite surprised at the quality of Sayle's acting after his quasi-standup performances in The Young Ones.

Terry Molloy really shines in this story. He gives a chilling performance as Davros that could rival that of Michael Wisher in Genesis of the Daleks. His moments with Tasembeka are particularly impressive. It is nice to see Eleanour Bron in Doctor Who again after her cameo appearance in City of Death. She is awfully good in the role of Kara. Does anybody else think her costume is awfully similar to that of Lady Adrasta in The Creature from the Pit?

I am not sure I like the idea of the Daleks being created from humans. Daleks are not Cybermen. The whole point of Daleks is that they are totally removed from any connection with humanity. I think Daleks created from human beings compromises this.

As with other Eric Saward stories there is an awful lot of violence in Revelation of the Daleks. I think he sometimes went too far and his habit of killing off nearly every non-regular character can get very irritating. However, I find the excessive violence in the Saward era easier to handle than the violence of the Hinchcliffe era. The violence of Saward stories might be more realistic but it is an essential part of his vision of a brutal, amoral cosmos in the far future. Saward was attempting to adopt a moral posture towards the violence in the show. On the other hand, Hincliffe seemed to include cruelty and death simply to arouse a morbid curiosity in the viewer. Hincliffe might not have gone so far in the realism, but he had a clear desire to shock and push the boundaries of what was acceptable. I find a lot of what Hinchcliffe introduced in Seventies Doctor Who to be rather tasteless. Doctor Who fans are far too quick to criticise Saward for excessive violence, while celebrating the torture and death in Hinchfliffe stories while sneering at Mary Whitehouse's sometimes legitimate criticisms.

Along with Earthshock, Revelation of the Daleks represents the best of Saward's script writing. I don't think it can called a classic, but it is undoubtedly one of the stronger stories of the Colin Baker period.

The Two Doctors

Flesh-eating Androgum Apocalypse.

This is a story that really divides fan opinion. Delta and the Bannermen also divides fan opinion, but not in the same way. Fans who don't like Delta and the Bannermen just dismiss it as rubbish, while fans who don't like The Two Doctors seemed to exhibit a real hatred towards this story. I think it's a shame because I think The Two Doctors is brilliant. It is the best story of the Colin Baker era and the best story between Caves of Androzani and Delta and the Bannermen. It is certainly better than the other multi-Doctor stories.

We might have expected The Two Doctors to be a self-congratulatory nostalgia trip like The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors, but instead, writer Robert Holmes serves us up a story that satirises key aspects of Doctor Who and completely defies the expectations of Doctor Who.




Given that Colin Baker was not a terribly popular Doctor, The Two Doctors could easily have made his position worse by bringing back the charming, delightful old Patrick Troughton. Instead, we are actually made to like the Sixth Doctor because the Second Doctor is presented as quite repulsive. Right from the beginning, we see the Second Doctor being obstinate, rude, bullying, arrogant and displaying an attitude that appears very much like racism. No doubt this is why a lot of traditionalist fans hate this story; instead of giving them the Doctor they love, the Second Doctor is shown up as an arrogant bully. Holmes completely sends up the rather lame idea of a multi-Doctor story and reminds us why it makes sense to have just one Doctor in a story. Amusingly, we are made to agree with the Colin Baker Doctor who says of his predeccessor "I liked you better as an Androgum."



Robert Holmes was never a writer of 'returning monster' stories; it was just not his style. He always worked best with human villains with plausible motives. In this story, Holmes got really clever and deconstructed the idea of the returning monster. Faced with writing a dull plodder about a fix with Sontarans, Holmes gives us another monster, the Androgums. As the Doctor is familiar with them, they are from his perspective a returning monster. The Sontarans in this story are deathly dull; yet the Androgums are a fascinating creation. The reason they are both fascinating and entertaining is that they are so human in manner and appearance; thus proving that actually the 'returning monster' idea is a bit naff.

Viewers of this story are often shocked by the violence of Colin Baker towards Shockeye the Androgum at the end of the story (violence which seems pretty justifiable in the circumstance). They are also shocked by the Doctor's hatred and apparent prejudice toward Androgums. Surely the Doctor would have a more 'progressive' attitude, as Dastari suggests he should? Again, Holmes is deconstructing the standard Dr. Who idea of the monster. Imagine a story in which a character suggests that Sontarans can be improved and taught to be 'nice.' We can well imagine the Doctor desperately trying to persuade this character that this is a hopeless venture and that the Sontarans are brutal and warlike to the core. We know that this is what the Doctor would do because we have such a similar story in Power of the Daleks. Because Sontarans are 'monsters' we are not shocked when the Doctor shows distrust towards them and we accept it perfectly when he deals out death and destruction towards them (as he does in this story). Our own racism is exposed when we find ourselves sympathizing with Androgums because they look like us.

Oscar's death is another satirical take on the Doctor Who format. Countless minor characters meet grisly deaths in this show. We do not bat an eyelid when five or six minor characters are killed off. Yet when Oscar's death is treated with real emotion (as well as an entertaining dose of black humour) fans are shocked and say that is is 'pointless and unnecessary.'

Doctor Who fans are often fascinated by the Time Lords and there has always been a hunger to see the Doctor's own people amongst fans. Thus, we are given stories like Deadly Assasin and Arc of Infinity where we get to see the Time Lords. There does seem to be a tendency of the Time Lords to disappoint when they appear. Holmes demonsrated this in The Two Doctors by giving the Time Lords an incredible presence in the story, without them ever actually appearing. We are very conscious that they are keeping a close eye on the proceedings, right from the first appearance of the Second Doctor as their errand boy. The unseen Time Lords of the The Two Doctors have a much greater impact as the guardians of time and space than the doddery old men of Deadly Assasin and Arc of Infinity.

The Two Doctors is the ultimate 'Rad' story; it is a serial in which the conventions of the show are turned on their head. The story also has a wonderful holiday feel, with it's Spanish location shooting, guitar music and bright mood. It shares a sense of the pastoral with the equally contentious Delta and the Bannermen. It has a delightfully witty script, together with superb performances from the regulars and guests. The only real fault with this story is the appallingly bad Sontaran costumes.

Robert Holmes intended this story to champion vegatarianism and show the evils of meat-eating. This agenda gives it a thematic depth that is very like the Sylvester McCoy era. I am afraid, as with the horizontally challenged Colin Baker himself, Holmes has not succeeded in winning me to his cause. Whenever I watch this story, all that talk of food always makes me ravenously hungry. I find it incredibly difficult to watch this story without tucking into some sort of snack, usually a massive bag of crisps or pork scratchings.

The Mark of the Rani

The Master, the Rani and the Sixth Doctor fall out with each other during the industrial revolution.

In its historical theme and more leisurely pace, this story is unusual for this era of Doctor Who. It also lacks the violence that characterised Colin Baker stories.

There are some historical inaccuracies, such as the fact Luddites never attacked pit machinery.

Colin Baker put in a splendid performance as the Sixth Doctor. Nicola Bryant puts in a depressingly moany performance as Peri.

Kate O'Mara really shines as the Rani and she has some of the best lines. The Rani is a much more interesting villain than the Master. It is a shame that we only got to see her again in the very underwhelming, Time and the Rani. Anthony Ainley also came across rather well.

Pip and Jane Baker's dialogue is a rather mixed bag, but it still allows the Doctor, the Master and the Rani to shine. The interplay between them is the best part of the story. The Rani mocks the Doctor and the Master's rivalry as though they were unruly schoolboys. I rather wished they had reminisced about their time at the academy; I can just imagine the Master pulling the Rani's pigtails!

Seeing the inside of the Rani's TARDIS is very cool. Shame about the dinosaur prop.

As much as the human trees looked really naff and rubbery, the idea of mines that turn the victim into trees is rather cool.

It has been suggested that the plot about the Rani would have come across better if the viewer was showed the planet that the Rani rules. However, Doctor Who has always relied on the imagination to carry such things. Had we seen the planet Miasimia Goria, it would inevitably have looked naff.

It is hard not to be disappointed by the fact that the one of the great inventors mentioned that we meet is George Stephenson. Wisely, Doctor Who tends to avoid showing historical characters, but Gawn Grainger does a good job of portraying the famous engineer.

All those Geordie accents are not very easy on the ear. The luddites in this story were a rather annoying lot.

Attack of the Cybermen

The Cybermen are messing about with time travel.

This story attempts to clear up some of the continuity and trace the history of the Cybermen, but it ends up causing even more confusion. Additionally,the writers have squeezed in as many gratuitous continuity references as possible, such as Totters Lane and the Chameleon Circuit. It is all a little too much.

The story is action-packed and fairly entertaining, but is absurdly complex. It is in severe need of a trimming.

Peri is dull and irritating in this story. Colin Baker puts in a good and typically pompous performance as the Sixth Doctor. He may irritate, but he is clearly our beloved Doctor.

The Cybermen in this story are pathetic. They are vulnerable to bullets and the Doctor's sonic lance. Their decaptitated heads also appear to be purely mechanical.

Why was it necessary for the original actor from Tomb of the Cybermen to play the Cybercontroller? His voice was not being used. With the advance of age, he simply too overweight for the role.

The Cryons are a well-conceived alien species, but it does seem odd that they got no mention in Tomb of the Cybermen, given that they were around all that time.

There is a lot of violence in this story. The crushing of Lytton's hands is particularly unpleasent and unnecessary.

With the emphasis on continuity, it is odd that the Doctor should know Lytton so well, as they never actually met in Resurrection of the Daleks. Perhpaps they met offscreen. It also seems strange that the Doctor believes he has misjudged Lytton when he finds out he is working for the Cryons. It is not like mercenaries only ever work for the bad guys!