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Tag: Classic Who

The Tedium of Peladon

Review of The Monster of Peladon (#73)
DVD Release Date: 04 May 10
Original Air Date: 23 Mar – 27 Apr 1974
Doctors/Companions: Three, Sarah Jane Smith
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Elisabeth Sladen
Preceding Story: Death to the Daleks (Three, Sarah Jane)
Succeeding Story: Planet of the Spiders (Three, Sarah Jane, the Brigadier)

For the last couple of years, as long-time readers may recall, I’ve been introducing my daughters to both modern and Classic Who. During one such spate of enthusiasm, they agreed to watch The Monster of Peladon with me.

I can’t remember now how exactly we landed on that selection. I’m pretty sure it had something to do with the girls wanting to see more Sarah Jane, and being enamored of the idea of hearing her “There’s nothing ‘only’ about being a girl, Your Majesty” speech. And to their credit, they actually enjoyed the adventure—and I didn’t hate it.

But I was not ready to come back to it so soon (relatively speaking). It’s not that it’s actively awful, despite its bottom 5% ranking in io9’s Best-to-Worst list (coming in at #243 of 254); it’s just kind of… boring. Although I should’ve known better, given that it’s a Pertwee-era story, I had forgotten it was six episodes long rather than four. There was some serious resigned sighing when I realized what lay in front of me for my re-watch.

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Terminal Boredom

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Review of Terminus (#126)
DVD Release Date: 10 Aug 09
Original Air Date: 15 – 23 Feb 1983
Doctors/Companions: Five, Nyssa, Tegan Jovanka, Vislor Turlough
Stars: Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton, Janet Fielding, Mark Strickson
Preceding Story: Mawdryn Undead (Five, Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough, the Brigadier)
Succeeding Story: Enlightenment (Five, Tegan, Turlough)

Terminus is one of several stories in this Bad Reputation™ series that had made very little impression on me. I had vague recollections of it being Nyssa’s farewell story, and little else. When I pulled out my DVD and looked at the cover I went, “Oh yeah—that furry critter. What was it called?”

Upon further reflection, I remembered a plague ship, Nyssa wearing a short skirt (and later disrobing), and some sort of off-limits space where the critter (for the record, it’s known as the Garm) resided. Anything else—save the presence of the rest of the main cast—was a blur.

As I began re-watching, I realized I wasn’t really going to be able to argue much with this story’s placement in io9’s Best-to-Worst ranking, where it came in at #229 of 254, putting it in the bottom 10%. While there’s nothing overtly bad about it, there’s also precious little that I’d consider good.

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A Circle of Disappointment

Review of The Stones of Blood (#101)
DVD Release Date: 01 Mar 09
Original Air Date: 28 Oct – 18 Nov 1978
Doctors/Companions: Four, Romana I
Stars: Tom Baker, Mary Tamm
Preceding Story: The Pirate Planet (Four, Romana I, K-9)
Succeeding Story: The Androids of Tara (Four, Romana I)

When I determined that this story was next up in my Bad Reputation series, I must admit I was a bit stumped. Despite its placement at #216 of 254 in io9’s Best-to-Worst ranking—putting it in the bottom 15%—I have always heard nothing but good things about this one.

Well, okay; maybe almost nothing but good things. Or maybe “enough” good things? Suffice to say, most of what I remembered before rewatching was the Ogri, a bad guy posing as a goddess (the Cailleach), and Amelia Rumford.

Going in, then, I was feeling pretty upbeat. The only “bad” part of the story I remembered was the horny campers who died stupidly at the hands of the Ogri (well, by their hands on the Ogri). But as I watched this time with a more critical eye, I found my estimation of the adventure dropping. I’m not sure I’ve ever come out of one of these Bad Reputation viewings with a lower opinion of the story than I went in, but that turned out to be the case this time.

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A Needle in a Schlock Stack

Review of Timelash (#141)
DVD Release Date: 09 Jul 07
Original Air Date: 09 – 16 Mar 1985
Doctors/Companions: Six, Perpugilliam “Peri” Brown
Stars: Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant
Preceding Story: The Two Doctors (Six, Two, Peri, Jamie)
Succeeding Story: Revelation of the Daleks (Six, Peri)

I may need to cross-file this under “Confessions,” but I should be up front on this: I don’t think I’ve ever truly given this story a fair shake. Even now, viewing it for the nominal purpose of assessing whether or not it deserves its bad reputation, I couldn’t quite divorce myself from my previous poor impressions.

To be fair, though, I’m not the only one who finds Timelash wanting. Aside from the (ableist) fan-epithet anagram I’ve heard used (Lamesh**), it came in dead last—#254 of 254—in the io9’s Best-to-Worst rankings I’ve been using as a loose gauge of quality for my Bad Reputation series.

Is it really that bad? Possibly not—but (as they say) lord, it ain’t good!

I knew I was in trouble when I got about 20 minutes into the story and all I could do was check the running time, waiting for the cliffhanger so I could fast forward through a few more minutes of credits and recap. Worse, by about 23 minutes, I realized to my horror that this was, in fact, from the era of two-parters. I would get no episode break until halfway into the entire hour-and-a-half-long adventure.

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A Not-Worth-the-Time Machine

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Review of The War Machines (#27)
DVD Release Date: 06 Jan 09
Original Air Date: 25 Jun – 16 Jul 1966
Doctors/Companions: One, Dodo Chaplet, Ben Jackson, Polly
Stars: William Hartnell, Jackie Lane, Michael Craze, Anneke Wills
Preceding Story: The Savages (One, Steven, Dodo)
Succeeding Story: The Smugglers (One, Ben, Polly)

The First Doctor is always going to be a hard sell for some fans. Even his stories of the objectively best quality would land near the bottom of the rankings for those who just can’t get past the peculiarities of the black-and-white era.

So when we come to The War Machines, which is one of the poorer options (coming in at #199 or 254 in io9’s Best-to-Worst ranking), I would be unsurprised if it was unfamiliar to First-Doctor agnostics (or outright haters). And while I can’t disagree that it probably belongs in that bottom ~20%, I don’t think it’s so much bad as pedestrian.

The plot is typical SF fare: a sentient computer wants to “help” by taking over for mankind, and sets out to subjugate humanity with a few ~ahem~ well-crafted war machines. There’s brainwashing and blatant disregard for human life and a creator turned into the tool/stooge of his creation. Classic stuff. But especially by today’s visual storytelling standards, the plot moves so slowly one wishes for a TARDIS to skip over all the middle bits.

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Do Androids Dream of Tin Dogs?

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Review of The Androids of Tara (#101)
DVD Release Date: 01 Mar 09
Original Air Date: 25 Nov – 16 Dec 1978
Doctors/Companions: Four, Romana I, K-9
Stars: Tom Baker, Mary Tamm, John Leeson
Preceding Story: The Stones of Blood (Four, Romana I)
Succeeding Story: The Power of Kroll (Four, Romana I)

When I decided on the next stories for the Bad Reputation™ series that I posted about last week, the four lowest-ranking Fourth Doctor selections in my spreadsheet surprised me. None of them struck me as particularly “bad,” and a couple I’d even go so far as to say I’m fond of.

Adding to the “hmm” factor, the first three of them were from the same season: The Key to Time (TKtT). So what gives?

The best I can figure is that when left to my own devices, I’ve already picked out both some of the very best and some of the very worst stories to talk about, leaving most of the “mid-range” adventures still in the queue. Even so, I don’t think I’d have predicted that The Androids of Tara, the fourth segment of TKtT, would fall in the bottom 15%. Yet in io9’s Best-to-Worst rankings, it came in at #217 of 254.

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Confession #123: I Messed Up

The first thing I have to confess today is that after Gallifrey One, I completely lost track of when I was supposed to be posting. What with my kids’ crazy spring schedule, the thirty-nine inches of snow we got in February that are now trying to melt off within a two-week span, and the siren call of my fiction writing, the blog simply fell off the radar.

It doesn’t help that I hadn’t put anything on my 2019 calendar that hadn’t dripped over from 2018 when I adjusted for my Series Eleven posts. Thus, here we are, a week late and a blog post short.

As I look ahead now, I realize that I’ve quite enjoyed the “Bad Reputation” series, and I’d like to continue it. So let me walk you through my decision-making process, and share what’s to come for the rest of the year.

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Dumpster of Fire

Review of Planet of Fire (#134)
DVD Release Date: 07 Sep 10
Original Air Date: 23 Feb – 02 Mar 1984
Doctors/Companions: Five, Vislor Turlough, Perpugilliam Brown
Stars: Peter Davison, Mark Strickson, Nicola Bryant
Preceding Story: Resurrection of the Daleks (Five, Tegan, Turlough)
Succeeding Story: The Caves of Androzani (Five, Peri)

For some reason, Planet of Fire has always sort of flown under my radar. In the back of my head, it had become “the story where both Mark Strickson and Nicola Bryant were scantily clad for their farewell/introduction, and there were volcanoes or something—oh yeah, and the Master.”

According to received fan wisdom (at least in the form of io9’s Best-to-Worst ranking, which puts PoF at #227 of 254), I can hardly be blamed. Even if I’d forgotten some of the key elements (the Master’s predicament, the final appearance of Kamelion, the revelation of Turlough’s secret past, and where all those intersect on a geologically active planet), there wasn’t much in any of it to endear it to viewers. (The exception, of course, is the aforementioned minimal costuming; I’ve heard at least one person say they learned something about themselves seeing Turlough in those shorts.)

Poor Kamelion stands out as one of the biggest problems. I’m sure the idea of a shape-changing robot sounded exciting to the writers (or JNT? I don’t know who’s responsible for Kamelion) when it was first proposed, but creating a plot that works well for such a character—and then realizing it satisfactorily on screen—appears to have been too difficult a task. (I did, however, once win a round of the Verity! Podcast “In Defense Of” game at Gallifrey One by successfully arguing for 60 seconds that “Kamelion is better than K-9,” using its role in helping to defeat the Master in PoF as one of my talking points.)

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Missing the Point

Review of Meglos (#110)
DVD Release Date: 11 Jan 11
Original Air Date: 27 Sep – 18 Oct 1980
Doctors/Companions: Four, Romana II, K-9
Stars: Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, John Leeson
Preceding Story: The Leisure Hive (Four, Romana II, K-9)
Succeeding Story: Full Circle (Four, Romana II, K-9, Adric)

Who doesn’t love a talking cactus? Or, better yet, a Doctor-shaped talking cactus with spine-covered skin? (If you guessed me, you’d be right.)

As with so many of the stories we’ve explored in this Bad Reputations series, there are some good ideas lurking at the heart of Meglos, but somehow they never come to fruition. The weirdly realized antagonist, its incoherent plan, and the heavy-handed religion-v-science subplot all contribute to an underwhelming product that lands at #200 of 254 on io9’s Best-to-Worst list.

Sometimes a rewatch helps me find something in a story that I hadn’t appreciated before. Usually, I find that my vague recollections only cover the surface of the plot or setting or characterization. To a certain extent that’s again true for Meglos, where Tom Baker’s cactus-y mien overshadowed all other memories such that even the identity of his Companion(s) had been lost to me. Realizing I got not only Jacqueline Hill (though not as Barbara) but also Lalla Ward’s Romana II was thus a delightful re-discovery.

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Marking the Unremarkable

Review of The Rescue (#11)
DVD Release Date: 07 Jul 09
Original Air Date: 02 – 09 Jan 1965
Doctors/Companions: One, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright, Vicki
Stars: William Hartnell, William Russell, Jacqueline Hill, Maureen O’Brien
Preceding Story: The Dalek Invasion of Earth (One, Susan, Ian, Barbara)
Succeeding Story: The Romans (One, Ian, Barbara, Vicki)

On this fourth Wednesday of December, when another regular blog post is due, we find ourselves in that liminal space between the end of Series 11 and the airing of the New Year’s special, looking for a bit of Who-ey goodness to tide us over. With such awkward placement on the calendar, what better choice for a post than another entry in our Bad Reputations series?

Percentage-wise, it was time to return to the First Doctor, but since there aren’t that many of his stories left that are both (a) still on my un-reviewed list and (b) extant, the selection is pretty minimal. That’s why we ended up with this little two-episode bonbon. While it’s the lowest-rated of my remaining First Doctor options on io9’s Best-to-Worst list, it’s only three quarters of the way to the bottom (#194 of 254).

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