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Doctor Merlin

Review of Battlefield (#152)

DVD Release Date: 29 Jul 20
Original Air Date: 06 – 27 Sep 1989
Doctors/Companions: Seven, Dorothy “Ace” McShane
Stars: Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred
Preceding Story: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (Seven, Ace)
Succeeding Story: Ghost Light (Seven, Ace)

Happy Doctor Who Day! Our show turns 59 today, and though we have to wait another year for any more new episodes—ugh—I’ve got a review for you today. Much like the rest of the Everything Else series, this story is one that I don’t think gets talked about enough.

It’s not like there isn’t a lot of action, or interesting characters and lore to be had in Battlefield. (And how can you not love seeing Jean Marsh back for a third guest role?) I have to admit, though, the thing I remembered most about this adventure before re-watching was the watertank accident in which Sophie Aldred narrowly escaped a potentially fatal situation (the DVD release even has a short extra about it).

However, the main conceit of the adventure may be the part that makes it most memorable overall: at some point in their personal history—though not before now—the Doctor was Merlin, and now Morgaine is back to take her revenge on him. The ensuing mashup of plate-armored knights with both swords and energy weapons pitted against UNIT soldiers, including both the now-retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Steward and the new Brigadier Bambera, makes for bonkers conflicts that couldn’t readily appear anywhere but Doctor Who.

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Really Creepy Soap Bubbles

Review of The Seeds of Death (#48)

DVD Release Date: 12 Jun 12
Original Air Date: 25 Jan – 01 Mar 1969
Doctors/Companions: Two, Jamie McCrimmon, Zoë Heriot
Stars: Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines, Wendy Padbury
Preceding Story: The Krotons (Two, Jamie, Zoë)
Succeeding Story: The Space Pirates (Two, Jamie, Zoë)

When I first decided to finish off the blog with the Everything Else category of reviews, I had The Seeds of Death scheduled for October 2022. However, since we had the delight of Whittaker’s final episode last month, my October review slot ended up being filled by that instead. As I had no desire to shift my entire posting schedule, and didn’t want either to skip Seeds of Death or to move it to the very end, this month you get a bonus review instead of a confession.

It turns out that the timing couldn’t have been better. This past week has been a bit rough for me on a personal level, and so the gentler pacing of a black-and-white era story ended up being exactly what I needed. Even with a high body count, this adventure was well paced enough to feel relatively calm to me.

The Doctor, Jaime, and Zoë arrive on Earth at a time where space exploration has been effectively halted, and transport of both people and goods is accomplished almost exclusively by T-MAT, a high-tech matter transmission system. But there are weaknesses in the system that an enemy can take advantage of, which is how the Ice Warriors end up making a play to take Earth for themselves.

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The Power of Fan Service

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Review of The Power of the Doctor
Warning: This review may contain episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

There was nothing subtle about The Power of the Doctor. It was pure fan service, from start to finish. Some of it we knew about beforehand, and some of it came as a surprise—again and again—but it was blatantly obvious that showrunner Chris Chibnall wanted to check off every single item on his bucket list on the way out.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2022 BBC

For the most part, I was happy to go along for the ride. Only in the final thirty seconds or so did I balk. (Yes, we’ll talk about that more, but under the cut.) It made me want to use my full-on Mom Voice: I’m not upset with you; just disappointed.

But let’s back up for a while, and leave that moment for later. First, let’s talk about the bonkers hour-and-a-half of Jodie Whittaker’s last episode in the lead role. This was Chris Chibnall’s ultimate fanfic moment; he threw in every plot thread and character he could think of (and book), and wrote a huge fix-it fic.

For those who may not be familiar with fanfic (I am only peripherally so, as I don’t read fic myself, though my kids do), the biggest purpose of the genre—as far as I can tell—is to tell the stories with beloved characters that the fan writer really wanted to see/read in the original media property, but was never given. (In other words, all of modern Who is basically fanfic of Classic Who, show-run by Classic fans.) And one sub-genre of fanfic is the “fix-it fic,” in which the fan writer fixes something that they felt was inherently wrong with the original.

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Confession #159: I Am Excite

It’s been a heckuva week! First, and relevant to the usual content here, Gallifrey One announced last Friday that their headline guest for the 2023 convention would be none other than Jodie Whittaker herself!

That’s quite the feather in Gally’s cap! Not only will it be Whittaker’s first-ever dedicated Doctor Who convention (we’re going to set her standards high), but it’s amazingly fast turn-around between final on-screen appearance and first convention appearance—less than four months! She’s also only the second modern-era Doctor to appear at Gally.

I had thought three years ago that I was getting spoiled by Gallifrey One’s excellent connections in the Doctor Who scene when they brought Christopher Eccleston to LA. (And, indeed, I was.) He had been notoriously hesitant to take part in the convention circuit at all, so when Gally brought not only its first modern-era Doctor, but a somewhat reluctant one at that, I didn’t think that feat could be topped.

But here we are.

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Standing the Test of Time

Review of The Time Warrior (#70)

DVD Release Date: 22 Dec 20
Original Air Date: 15 Dec 1973 – 05 Jan 1974
Doctors/Companions: Three, Sarah Jane Smith
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Elisabeth Sladen
Preceding Story: The Green Death (Three, Jo)
Succeeding Story: Invasion of the Dinosaurs (Three, Sarah Jane, the Brigadier)

Unlike most of the other entries in the Everything Else series, The Time Warrior is one about which I remembered quite a lot even before watching it again. Even though I’ve previously only covered it as a NuView (way back in the second month of the blog), it’s long been one of my favorite Third Doctor stories.

Among other things, it’s got a lot of firsts: the first Sarah Jane Smith story, the first appearance of a Sontaran, and the first ever mention of Gallifrey. It’s also got Jon Pertwee buckling some swash, scientists from the present day being used to nefarious purpose in the past, and an overall strong story that holds together well.

Almost as soon as I hit “Play,” further details came flooding back. To begin, writer Robert Holmes’s name showed up in the opening credits. “Ah yes,” I said to myself, “that explains the ‘strong story’ bit.”

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Confession #158: I Already Miss Jodie

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Although the exact date hasn’t yet been confirmed (to the best of my knowledge), we know that Jodie Whittaker’s final episode as the Doctor, one billed as a “centenary special” as part of the celebrations to honor a hundred years of the BBC, will air some time in October. Presumably she will regenerate at the end, or at least begin the process (maybe we’ll get that long-since-filmed sequence next year instead, at the official beginning of Ncuti Gatwa’s tenure), but we don’t even know that for sure.

What we do know is that in a matter of weeks, Whittaker will be gone, and fandom will be awaiting the reign of a new Doctor. (Although it’s probably both a bit on-the-nose and Too Soon™, saying “The Queen is dead; long live the King” here does seem to fit…) And I already miss her.

It’s strange the way human brains work. We have this amazing capacity to anticipate the future, which can be a fantastic advantage. But it can be problematic, too, because sometimes we spend far too much time either looking forward to or dreading things to come. And that’s exactly where I’m at in my current Doctor Who mindset.

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Two for Six

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Review of The Two Doctors (#140)

DVD Release Date: 29 Jul 20
Original Air Date: 16 Feb – 02 Mar 1985
Doctors/Companions: Six, Two, Perpugilliam Brown, Jamie McCrimmon
Stars: Colin Baker, Patrick Troughton, Nicola Bryant, Frazer Hines
Preceding Story: The Mark of the Rani (Six, Peri)
Succeeding Story: Timelash (Six, Peri)

Robert Holmes is among the most revered writers in Classic Who fandom (and rightfully so, imo), so when I fired up my DVD of The Two Doctors to refresh my memory for this review, I was utterly surprised to see his name in the credits. It’s not that I had remembered this serial as particularly bad, whereas most Holmes titles are distinctly among the good, but rather that I didn’t have a very strong sense of the story at all.

I always make a few notes for myself before a re-watch about what details of the particular adventure I actually recall, and they were pretty thin on the ground this time. Aside from the presence of the eponymous reincarnations—Two serving as support for Six—I remembered the Androgums (though not by name; all I could pull out was the final syllable), the location shooting in Spain, a lepidopterist, and Jaime trapped in some sort of matrix-y space.

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Confession #157: I Like a Silver Lining

My family recently had an experience that I think can safely be classified as a Major Bummer. Both of my kids had qualified for a state-level activity that involved a week-long summer camp where they would have the opportunity to train with top-level instructors and spend a lot of time making new friends and honing their skills. Unfortunately, when it was time to go, one of them had minor symptoms of illness.

While fortunately all home COVID testing has remained negative in our household, the organizers nevertheless made the difficult (but correct, in my opinion) decision per their policy, and erred on the side of caution. The symptomatic kid wasn’t allowed to attend camp; the asymptomatic one was.

I’m sure you can imagine how fraught such a situation could be, especially when there are twins involved. The non-participant kid had an especially hard time of it at the end, when families were invited in to watch the end-of-week performance, and she had to witness exactly what she’d missed. I don’t think it had really hit her fully until then.

However, there was still a bit of a silver lining.

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Image of Mediocrity

Review of Image of the Fendahl (#94)

DVD Release Date: 29 Jul 20
Original Air Date: 29 Oct – 19 Nov 1977
Doctors/Companions: Four, Leela
Stars: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson
Preceding Story: The Invisible Enemy (Four, Leela, K9)
Succeeding Story: The Sun Makers (Four, Leela)

Something I’ve noticed consistently as I’ve made my way through this Everything Else series, is that the stories that ended up here at the end of the line all have one thing in common: mediocrity.

That’s not to say they’re bad. Quite the opposite, in fact. They are perfectly serviceable, fine examples of the sort of thing Doctor Who is. They’re the workhorses of the series, the stories that neither soar nor stink. They’re just middling.

Since they don’t grab my attention from either a “wow, that’s good!” or a “wow, that’s bad!” perspective, they easily escape my memory. And since I also never reach for one of these middle-of-the-road stories when I’m introducing someone new to the show or just passing the time, the details of them don’t get reinforced, either, and I end up having little or no impression of them.

Case in point: before beginning my re-watch for this post, aside from the iconic image of the possessed woman on the DVD cover, the only details I could remember about Image of the Fendahl were that there was something about a cult, an old house, and a time loop. No wonder I hadn’t thought to watch it in years.

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Confession #156: I’ve Become a Neophile

Unlike some points in my life, it’s pretty rare when Doctor Who actually crosses my mind these days. I think about it when it’s time to make a blog post here, and when I listen to the weekly Verity! podcast episodes, but if I didn’t have those already-scheduled, regular reminders, I would hardly ever give it a thought right now.

There are so many other things vying for my attention: the state of the world weighs on me, I’m smack in the middle of that “sandwich generation” place between taking care of my kids and my parents, and I’m trying to get my fiction writing career off the ground. When I want to escape my cares and indulge in a story, more often than not it takes the form of either a recently released book I’ve been looking forward to or of an Asian drama I can binge over a matter of a week or more.

Frankly, Doctor Who has become familiar enough that I no longer naturally turn to it to unwind.

I didn’t used to think of myself as a neophile, always looking for something fresh and unexplored to amuse me, unsatisfied with revisiting old favorites. I can’t tell whether this current tendency is due to one of the particular stressors mentioned above (and Prime knows there are enough even just within the category of “state of the world” to choke a horse) or to some combination thereof, but the fact remains that this is where I’m at.

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