Gavin Winters“…and that concludes the evidence for the defence, in which I committed genocide against an entire species.”
“You did WHAT!”
“Oh bugger…”
The Ultimate Foe: for a story half-written by #DoctorWho’s most revered writer (Holmes) and half by its most reviled (the Bakers), with the differing styles being clear, this ends up working incredibly well.
And given all that was happening behind the scenes, miraculously well.
The way that the revelation of the Valeyard’s true nature is delivered as a casual aside by the Master means that the first time you hear it you have the same reaction as the Doctor: “Did he say what I think he just said?!?” #DoctorWho
These are the best ever Matrix scenes, with the creepy Victorian setting overdubbed with ghostly music, voices and laughter.
Shame Mel’s still not written very well, and as this was recorded first, Bonnie’s still finding her way and playing it very theatrically. #DoctorWho
(Me watching this in 1986)
“What’s that weird stuff behind him, if he’s in his TARDIS?”
(Me watching this in 2023)
“Oh, he’s got a funky Zoom background.”
Is the trial being broadcast on live TV? Hence the report of Gallifrey “descending into chaos” and the High Council being deposed immediately after their crimes have been exposed.
Maybe Runcible survived The Deadly Assassin after all… #DoctorWho
And that’s it. A sad ending for Colin, who’s run was plagued with problems and setbacks throughout, but struggled on regardless. Never mind Col, Big Finish beckons!
“Carrot juice, carrot juice, carrot juice…” #DoctorWho
Time And The Rani: yikes. Well, on the positive side, it’s a slightly better debut than The Twin Dilemma. But still, the “pantomime” criticisms are not unfounded. Too much clowning, too much pratfalling, too much of Mel bloody screaming while rooted to the spot. 🙄 #DoctorWho
The early-CGI title sequence might seem a bit dated now, but I think it should be commended for trying something a bit different from the standard ‘flying through time vortex/starfield’ format that all the others broadly fall into. #DoctorWho
It’s weird how Sylvester somehow manages to pull off ‘that’ outfit better than Colin did. No easy task! #DoctorWho
That idea they had of getting the Seventh Doctor to jumble up famous phrases as part of his new character starts to get old reeeeeallly fast. 🙄 At least it’s dropped pretty soon. #DoctorWho
There was a real sense at this point of #DoctorWho now being completely out of touch, both with its own fans and the general TV audience. Stuck in a niche of JNT campness.
Thankfully Andrew Cartmel has arrived to start dragging it back down to Earth (literally and figuratively).
For no particular reason, here’s a photo from this story that you might like to see. #DoctorWho
Paradise Towers: this is like a strange hybrid of JNT’s camper vision of #DoctorWho and the influences Cartmel was trying to bring in - e.g. contemporary sci-fi novels and comic books.
And its style has echoes in the modern series. A clear ancestor of episodes like Gridlock.
What lets down so much of this season is the design work. So many props and sets have a cheap, plasticky, artificial look to them that makes everything seem like a CBBC production. It’s hard to see past that to the interesting story ideas underneath. #DoctorWho
Richard Briers also seems to think he’s in a production aimed at very young kids, especially once he becomes zombified in part four.
McCoy on the other hand has improved a lot from the previous story and is now playing the Doctor as he will for the rest of his run. #DoctorWho
I like all the effort that went into working out the Kangs lingo - carrydoors and brainquarters and so on, which all makes perfect sense as well as giving a clear impression of how they’ve grown up in this self-contained world. #DoctorWho
I can never decide if the bit where the Doctor escapes by quoting the rule book at the caretakers is either a genius bit of Doctorishness (especially suited to the Seventh)… or too silly for words! #DoctorWho
And finally, a very controversial #DoctorWho opinion… Blue Kangs are best!
Delta And The Bannermen: probably the best of season 24, a rip-roaring fun little adventure that zips along at a very modern pace. Seven’s era has fully arrived now. You can imagine Colin in Time And The Rani… possibly in Paradise Towers, but this is the Real McCoy.🙂 #DoctorWho
Does the TARDIS really need to pass through a toll port in space and pay a fee? Couldn’t it just, you know… dematerialise? 🤷🏻♂️
In fact you’d think most regular spaceships could avoid it too. They don’t really dwell on the logic of how they’d enforce the rule! #DoctorWho
The love triangle between Ray, Billy and Delta is sketched in very quickly and economically, so you know where you are with all three characters after just a few brief scenes in episode one. #DoctorWho
The bounty hunter guy knowing who the Doctor is is like the last lingering element of the previous era, where absolutely bloody everybody knew of the Time Lords and Gallifrey, making for a very small and cramped universe. #DoctorWho
Killing Murray and all the other Navarinos is the one major mis-step. I know we’re supposed to see Gavrok as a ruthless bastard but it feels tonally wrong compared to the rest of the story. #DoctorWho
Goronwy must be the most chilled out character in all of #DoctorWho, completely unphased by a growing alien baby, and not at all bothered by his house being wrecked or his life’s work collecting thousands of jars of honey being destroyed!
Dragonfire: by this point you had the first generation of writers who’d not only grown up with #DoctorWho, but were also influenced by movies of the 70s/80s.
So we get budget versions of the Star Wars cantina… Terminator (Ace’s nitro)… Alien… Raiders for Kane’s melting face…
The Alien(s) pastiche in particular, with the motion detectors strapped to the guns, is perhaps something to NOT attempt with studio lighting brighter than the sun, killing any potential atmosphere or suspense… #DoctorWho
But anyway… Ace! 😃
I like the relationship between those two, especially when she brings out the nitro-flinging anarchist in Mel. Makes me wish Mel had stayed for a longer crossover period between them.
Not something I ever thought I’d say back in 1987! 😆 #DoctorWho
That cliffhanger of the Doctor climbing over the rail and dangling from the umbrella is even more of an odd choice when you think that, at the same time, Ace and Mel are being threatened by the first appearance of the Dragon. A perfectly good cliffhanger right there! #DoctorWho
I love the philosophical guard: “What do you think of the assertion that the semiotic thickness of a performed text varies according to the redundancy of auxiliary performance codes?”
(Yes, I’m sad enough to have typed that from memory!) #DoctorWho
Mel gets the weirdest departure ever, leaving for… no reason whatsoever. Just as well they diluted Glitz from the psychopath he was meant to be in his first episodes, or she’d be out the nearest airlock.
Oh well, RTD will be along soon with some decent writing Mel! #DoctorWho
The obliviousness of the little girl’s mother is completely stupid. She didn’t notice the massacre or wonder where everyone else had gone? And where exactly are they both going to go now that the colony/spaceship has taken off and is flying through space? #DoctorWho
Remembrance Of The Daleks: after all the minor niggles and flaws of recent seasons, it’s a relief to again have a story where everything just *works*.
All the set pieces are great. A Dalek going up stairs(!). Ace and the baseball bat. The shuttle landing. Top stuff. 😍#DoctorWho
This must be one of the most influential #DoctorWho stories ever, not just in how it inspired the whole character of the Doctor in the New Adventures novels, but also extending its reach up to the modern series.
As RTD said, blowing up Skaro was the first act in the Time War…
Even in the excessively fan-pleasing 1980s version of #DoctorWho, this is particularly continuity heavy, but Ben Aaronovitch handles it deftly, weaving in lots of past history of Daleks and Time Lords without anything being too confusing for the casual viewer.
The junkyard in Totter’s lane is suddenly bigger on the inside. 😳
Honestly, it’s *massive* here compared to how it was even in Attack Of The Cybermen. #DoctorWho
The Special Weapons Dalek! What a lad! Someone bring him back in the modern series, please? And I mean properly back, blowing shit up and being an unstoppable bastard, not just lurking in the background. (side-eyes Moffat 👀) #DoctorWho
Hands up if you paused your VHS recording at this point to try and copy down every detail.
✋
The Happiness Patrol: like a lot of fans who were young when this was first broadcast, I’ve grown to appreciate it more as I’ve got older. I couldn’t see past the (deliberately) tacky look to get what it was trying to say. #DoctorWho
Though I still think there were too many of what JNT called “oddball” stories in this era. If this was in a longer season, with more stories in the style of Remembrance, it would have been more obvious what they were trying to do with the unique approach of this one. #DoctorWho
Hmm, the Kandyman…😬 He’s a memorable villain, granted, but even after all this time and all the various defences and justifications I’ve read of it, I’m still not okay with the costume. Wish they’d done the original idea of him looking like a scientist in a lab coat. #DoctorWho
As a teen I got that Helen A was a Thatcher parody, even if I didn’t pick up on the deeper themes.
Her final scene with the Doctor is a highlight, and it’s a testament to Sheila Hancock’s acting that she manages to wring emotion out of the death of the Fifi puppet. #DoctorWho
Silver Nemesis: not the greatest story ever, but I feel it’s been very unfairly maligned. A lot of the usually criticised parts, such as JNT’s indulgence in giving that “Hollywood star” (🤷🏻♂️) a cameo, are hardly so bad as to ruin things. #DoctorWho
The Doctor in a fez is an amusingly unintentional link to the modern series.
Moffat must have taken inspiration from this in other ways for the 50th and Day Of The Doctor - the different time zones, an ancient Gallifreyan artefact, a Queen Elizabeth… #DoctorWho
There is something quite funny about a bunch of neo-Nazis, fully armed and in camouflage gear, trying to start “the Fourth Reich” while driving round Windsor in a transit van… 😄 #DoctorWho
Honestly the Cybermen are the weakest part, being pathetically easy to dodge or kill.
The use of gold against them has lazily declined from how it previously needed to be grated into their chest units. Now it just needs a touch and they practically explode. 🙄#DoctorWho
And their lack of interest in “the secrets of the Time Lords” is baffling.
Plus the way their defeat is basically a re-run of Remembrance (acknowledged in the dialogue!) doesn’t help. This would probably be improved a lot with a different alien threat. #DoctorWho
Lady Peinforte’s hint that the Doctor’s not a Time Lord… added to Pertwee’s slip of being “thousands” of years old, plus the Morbius faces… and you see this idea has been bubbling under for decades.
Anyone who thinks Chibnall “retconned” #DoctorWho history is talking nonsense.
The Greatest Show In The Galaxy: this is another of the so-called “oddball” stories, with a very comic book sensibility to it. A lot of the characters feel like they’ve stepped straight from the pages of a DWM strip. It’s one of those ‘only in #DoctorWho ‘ type stories.
I like the idea that the Gods of Ragnarok represent the BBC, judging #DoctorWho on how entertaining it still is, with Captain Cook being the alternative, namely Star Trek.
Though I think people who subscribe to that theory are stretching it a bit with ‘Deadbeat = Blake’s 7’. Eh?
Ace’s fear of clowns was the first time I’d ever seen that portrayed in media, in fact the first time I’d ever heard of the concept! I swear that absolutely nobody had such a phobia before Stephen King wrote ‘It’… 🤡 #DoctorWho
Mags’ werewolf transformation is not exactly An American Werewolf In London. More comical than terrifying. Lycanthropy through the medium of interpretive dance. #DoctorWho
“I know it’s not as good as it used to be, but I’m still terribly interested!”
Subtle. 😄 #DoctorWho
McCoy doing the ‘cool guys don’t look at explosions’ act at the end is *slightly* spoiled by the fact that he does, barely, flinch at the BOOM moment. #DoctorWho
Jon Hancock@gavinwinters @Binder If the stories about the unexpected size of the explosion are true then it's a wonder he didn't fling himself to the ground.
Metebelis Two Podcast@gavinwinters Flinch? To me, it seems more like McCoy merely blinked… and no where near as obvious as Nick Courtney was when The Brig fired his sidearm.
Battlefield: into the final classic season (😨), but with an encore for the Brig! By now fans had built him up into this legendary figure, and as such this story thoroughly celebrates him.
And UNIT gets a bit of a makeover, with a more international flavour to it. #DoctorWho
So often in this era you have ambitious new writers with wildly imaginative ideas… that just can’t be effectively conveyed given the available time and budget.
The Target novelisation clarifies everything (especially Morgaine and Mordred’s universe) immeasurably. #DoctorWho
Sad to see the reduced circumstances of the classic TARDIS interior in its final appearance. Just the console and a few fake walls in shadow.
“Oh shame!”, as Bambera would say (ah, the momentary shock in 1989 when we all thought she was about to say shit! 😆) #DoctorWho
Unfortunately not the best story when it comes to Sylvester’s acting skills. Too much shouting, too much gurning, and that final confrontation with Morgaine over the nuclear missile… oh dear. 😬 #DoctorWho
Ace letting slip a couple of racist comments to Shou Yuing when Morgaine gets into their heads is much more shocking now than at the time. Is that really what Ace subconsciously thinks? #DoctorWho
SweetAI Belle 
@gavinwinters
Because the explosion went off too early, and his back is literally on fire, IIRC...
Because the explosion went off too early, and his back is literally on fire, IIRC...
Jan@gavinwinters Greatest Show in the Galaxy is one of my favourite McCoy stories! A bit odd but nicely showcases Seven's "scheming bastard"-qualities :D