Gavin WintersIt’s been funny watching this story, with all its royal pomp and coronation sequence, straight after the real one yesterday. But that one didn’t have someone grabbing the sceptre and bashing robot-Camilla’s head in. That’s why #DoctorWho’s version of events is always better. 😄
The Power Of Kroll: hmm, there’s nothing particularly terrible about this one, but nothing hugely exciting either. The least interesting story of the Key To Time season. Bob Holmes must have been having a bit of an off day. #DoctorWho
You have to feel sorry for all those poor extras, painted green and dancing around in loincloths in the middle of the night.
Fair play to John Abineri’s performance as Ranquin though, being totally committed to the part while looking ridiculous. #DoctorWho
I like the knowing-wink-to-the-audience gag of the first “monster” we see turning out to be just a man in a costume. “Perhaps he looked more convincing from the front!” #DoctorWho
Poor old Rohm-Dutt: the moment his role in the story is finished and he’s surplus to requirements he’s *instantly* killed by Kroll, and his death gets barely an “oh well!” from the Doctor and Romana, who just carry on. Ruthless! 😆 #DoctorWho
Yikes - the bit with Tom on the ladder in the rocket silo… 😬
The ladder, the rocket, even the sodding wall behind him ALL wobble, a unique achievement in the annals of wobbly set history! #DoctorWho
The Armageddon Factor: the opening ‘soap opera’ scene, with its cheesy melodrama and bad acting, is both funny in and of itself as well as then being an effective contrast in the pull-back-and-reveal of dying people in a war zone. #DoctorWho
Radiation… two races engaged in a bitter nuclear war…underground bunkers… TARDIS covered in rubble… are we sure Terry Nation didn’t write this??
(And the extreme radiation in the transmat room gets quickly forgotten, with everyone wandering in and out of there) #DoctorWho
After a season of entertaining villains, the Shadow is a bit rubbish. Would’ve been better if it was the Master working for the Black Guardian.
And why is his domain called a ‘planet’, full of underground tunnels… yet seen from outside looks like a space station? #DoctorWho
The budget always gets a bit stretched by the time we get to the last story of the season, so endlessly reusing that time-looped clip of the Marshal yelling “Fire!” probably saved a few quid. #DoctorWho
The final two episodes could have been just a boring runaround in dark tunnels, but the arrival of Drax perks things up. Nice for once to meet another renegade Time Lord who *isn’t* completely mad and evil.
And a Time Lord with a cockney accent! Whatever next… #DoctorWho
The ending is a bit muddled, with the Key getting scattered again without apparently being used.
The novelisation had to clarify that the White Guardian had used it during the time the Doctor had it assembled. Good old Terrance Dicks! #DoctorWho
Destiny Of The Daleks: straight after the previous story we again have a post-nuclear-war planet, with radiation, underground bunkers, the TARDIS covered in rubble… only this time it really is a Terry Nation script, bringing back all his familiar tropes. #DoctorWho
You totally accept Lalla Ward as the new Romana as she slips easily into the role, but it’s fun to imagine the wacky parallel universes where one of the alternative incarnations became the main one…
Um, yes… crikey! 😳 #DoctorWho
There are some poorly-directed extras in the scene where the Doctor orders the slaves freed. One minute they all look bored and don’t react while being exterminated one by one… then they’re all full of huge grins while carrying their dead friends’ corpses away. 🤷🏻♂️#DoctorWho
There’s good parts to this but it’s a bit let down by some shabby production values, like the patched-up Dalek props, or David Gooderson trying his best but struggling with the old Davros mask.
And what’s this crap about the Daleks suddenly being robots?? FFS Terry! #DoctorWho
City Of Death: well, what can you say? Still brilliant. Still stands up as an absolute jewel in the crown of this era, if not #DoctorWho as a whole.
And it’s got Dudley Simpson’s most memorable score. Go on, you’re all humming it now while looking at this image, aren’t you?
The Randomiser’s supposed to make the TARDIS’s flight completely unpredictable, so it could end up anywhere in the universe, untraceable by the Black Guardian…
And since it’s been installed we’ve been to those rarely-seen locations of Skaro and 20th-century Earth…😄 #DoctorWho
I often wonder if the “going to lunch” joke still comes across to modern viewers, as it’s a phrase that’s completely fallen out of usage nowadays. #DoctorWho
A very timely conversation between the Doctor and Romana about the value of art created by humans versus that created by computer.
As an experiment I prompted an AI to create this. You decide! #DoctorWho
Duggan is one of the all time great supporting characters, who kind of makes me wish he’d been a companion for a bit.
Or alternatively, if, say, Harry Sullivan had been written more like this and was constantly thumping people, to the Doctor’s annoyance. #DoctorWho
And of course it’s impossible not to speculate about the exact nature of the Count and Countess’s marriage…
I mean, unless that fake skin went over his entire body and was *very* realistic… 👀 #DoctorWho
Creature From The Pit: it was always going to be a hard act to follow City Of Death, but this is quite decent. It has a bit of a poor reputation due to the depiction of the monster, but everything else is okay. And another jungle set that looks great when shot on film. #DoctorWho
K9’s back after being absent for the last couple of stories, and with a new voice. John Leeson may be the definitive K9, but David Brierley’s slightly more snooty and irritable version is perfectly acceptable. #DoctorWho
They really fully raided the BBC’s wig and beard department for the look of the bandits in this story. #DoctorWho
“Time Lords have 90 lives!”
“How many have you got through so far?”
“Oh, about 130!”
*a young Chris Chibnall furiously scribbles notes* #DoctorWho
Nightmare Of Eden: this is full of great concepts but we’re back to things looking cheap again, with bright overlit spaceship sets revealing too much, especially when it comes to the monster costumes with their zips up the back (!) #DoctorWho
I don’t think there’s been anything as self-consciously camp in #DoctorWho up to this point as the costume design on display here. Everybody’s uniforms have sparkly glitter sewn into them, even the ‘space cops’ who turn up. We’re truly in the era of disco.
It’s such a weird contrast to have the subplot about drug addiction (and the captain’s withdrawal leading to his desperate pleas to Romana) within this wacky story full of lumbering monsters and spandex. But maybe that’s just #DoctorWho for you. 🤷🏻♂️
The Horns Of Nimon: hmm, that’s two low-budget outer space stories in a row. And this one looks particularly cheap. This era would have looked a lot better if they’d mixed things up a bit. A couple more Earthbound stories, maybe even the odd historical setting. #DoctorWho
There’s some funny bits (Teka’s blind faith that Seth will defeat the Nimon) and some unintentionally funny - the co-pilot splitting his trousers as he dies and the poor Nimon actors trying to chase people in their enormous platform boots. #DoctorWho
The silliness gets a *teeny* bit over-indulgent when the TARDIS console goes haywire and suddenly makes all those wacky cartoon noises… 😐 #DoctorWho
At least Romana gets a lot to do during bits when the Doctor is stuck elsewhere - striding about, taking command, brandishing her own sonic screwdriver. And in the process setting the seeds for the idea of a female Doctor. #DoctorWho
Congratulations to Graham Crowden for being the only actor in the seven-year run of the Fourth Doctor who manages to give a performance even more bonkers and over-the-top than Tom himself.
“MY DREEEEEAMS OF CONQUEST…!!” 😄 #DoctorWho
Shada: possibly not the long-lost all-time classic of legend, but this is still very good, and a natural partner to City Of Death. Such a shame it was never completed, as it would’ve made a great bookend to the Williams/Adams era. #DoctorWho
The punting footage is so familiar from The Five Doctors that it’s impossible to watch it and not expect that the time scoop is about to appear in the sky above Tom. #DoctorWho
Chronotis is such a brilliant creation. Like an older, more befuddled Troughton.
Another for the long list of ‘Bring them back in the modern series!’ He can just have regenerated. #DoctorWho
Why is every renegade Time Lord in #DoctorWho obsessed with reading The Time Machine by H.G. Wells? I’m surprised we didn’t see the War Chief browsing through it in between bouts of bitching at the Security Chief.
It’s one thing to have a character dressed like this striding about on an alien planet or wherever, but it suddenly becomes very funny when they’re walking the streets of contemporary Earth looking camper than Christmas. #DoctorWho
Right, next up - the 1980s! Neon! Synth music! Rubik cubes! Flock-of-Seagulls haircuts!
(Yes, I know technically we reached the 80s during Horns Of Nimon but you know what I mean.) #DoctorWho
The move to colour in 1970 hit you like a slap in the face, but JNT’s 1980s makeover hits you like a ten ton truck.
But here comes Bidmead to drain all the joy and life and fun out of the show, and turn it into a Very Serious Programme, for Very Serious Fans. Sigh. 🙄 #DoctorWho
Riley@gavinwinters (I think they work out a lot of growing pains by the time Season 19 gets rolling)
To be fair, some of the excesses of the previous era did need curbing, but there’s a lot of throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. What’s the point of having Tom Baker as your leading man if you’re going to mute and subdue his style of performance so much? #DoctorWho
The highly stylised direction, with lots of extreme closeups, means at times it’s bloody difficult to know what the hell is going on.
The Foamasi cutting into the Hive from outside is muddled enough, but the cliffhanger across episodes 3/4 is utterly unfathomable. #DoctorWho
The Foamasi in their human skinsuit disguises (that mysteriously make them smaller and thinner) must have been an influence on RTD when he came up with the Slitheen.
Not to mention we have a villain who gets regressed to a baby… #DoctorWho
I think I agree with Lalla Ward, who said that her first season was aimed at everyone, but her second season narrowed its appeal to “14 year old boys who were into maths and science and computers”.
Real-life Adrics, basically! #DoctorWho
Meglos:
Space Babs! 😃
I hope there’s a Space Ian too, in case any other Tigellan tries to chat her up and he’s ready to punch their lights out. #DoctorWho
Meglos can create a time loop to trap a TARDIS, which is an amazing level of technology for a cactus.
That’s not a sentence I ever expected to write… 😐#DoctorWho
Young and foxy Lalla Ward in a story featuring a ‘science vs religion’ debate. No wonder Richard Dawkins said he was fond of this era… #DoctorWho
Not really a good idea to have the Doctor and Romana stuck in the TARDIS for the whole of part one.
In fact with the episodes being so short, with long recaps, and that repeated time loop clip… there must be only about an hour of footage across this whole story. #DoctorWho
Full Circle: the location filming in part one all looks very lavish and expensive, and with loads of extras it helps to make a convincing alien society.
And with a story full of original ideas, it’s very impressive to think this was written by an 18 year old. #DoctorWho
The Outlers are a wet bunch but Jesus, any of them would have been a better choice for a new companion than Adric. His brother Varsh is a vastly better actor. Kill off Adric and bring him instead! #DoctorWho
Poor old K9 is removed from the action yet again, this time by being decapitated! And just as they were starting to sort out his motors so he quietly glides across the studio floor too. #DoctorWho
The Sea Devils is remembered as “The one where the monsters come out of the sea” but this story is equally deserving of that title. Arguably done better in fact, and with more realistic masks. #DoctorWho
State Of Decay: well thank goodness for Terrance Dicks, who in a season of experimental oddities gives us a proper straightforward traditional story, with Bidmead’s high-concept sci-fi gubbins about CVEs or tachyons or whatever kept to a minimum. #DoctorWho
It’s a very #DoctorWho-y twist to give us what initially appears to be a medieval society, only for someone to then pull out a hidden communicator that’s clearly hi-tech.
The text on the knackered old display screen in the rebels base looks like Ceefax. 😄
Plus it appears to give the date the Hydrax left Earth as 1998(!) Let’s just put that down to it being ancient and broken and the digits messing up. #DoctorWho
Zargo kills Tarak and Camilla *instantly* complains that his blood will now be stale because he’s dead.
He’s still warm love, have a nibble. 🧛♀️ #DoctorWho
Gaia@gavinwinters Theres a space/Tigellan everyone. WAIT HOW ABOUT #GANATUS SINCE THALS ALSO HAVE WHITE HAIR! Actually, it should’ve been #RomanaII regenerating into #RomanaIII and traveling with #LexaofTigella !
Metebelis Two Podcast@gavinwinters Part of JN-T's plan to encourage Tom to move on?
Luke Miller@gavinwinters It's one of the best seasons!
@upmultimedia There’s lots of individual good bits in it, but it’s not really representative of Tom’s era. Not one I’d recommend for newbies.