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Tag: Mel

Sheer Glee

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

I’m not sure I’ve ever come out of a Doctor Who episode feeling simultaneously so shocked and so delighted. I’m not entirely sure how he managed, it but RTD has broken everything we thought we knew about regeneration and made us love it. He has every right to feel smug about doing something unexpected.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2023 BBC

In case it’s not clear, I loved this episode. Probably my biggest point of contention with it is the title (which sounds ridiculous). It makes me feel almost apologetic to my readers, because I don’t think I’m going to be able to be even the slightest bit objective this time.

From the Doctor having a “team” again to the return of a Hartnell-era villain to That Plot Twist, I was an eager rider on this roller coaster. While several things settled into the back of my mind for further inspection, none of it spoiled my enjoyment.

Perhaps foremost in my mind is the presence of the Vlinx, the random alien working with UNIT. Everyone takes the Vlinx in stride—including the Doctor—and doesn’t bother to question the Zeedex that the Vlinx has provided to UNIT to combat the titular threat. Even when Kate Stewart rages against the Doctor’s alienness under the influence of “the spike,” no one bats an eyelash at the presence of the Vlinx. I can’t believe that won’t come back at some point in the upcoming series.

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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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Delta’s Variant

Review of Delta and the Bannermen (#150)

DVD Release Date: 01 Sep 09
Original Air Date: 02 – 16 Nov 1987
Doctors/Companions: Seven, Melanie Bush
Stars: Sylvester McCoy, Bonnie Langford
Preceding Story: Paradise Towers (Seven, Mel)
Succeeding Story: Dragonfire (Seven, Mel, Ace)

Before I sat down to rewatch Delta and the Bannermen for this month’s Highs & Lows installment, I wrote down a short list of what I could remember about it. Aside from a general sense of distaste and the firm knowledge this was one at the Lows end of the scale, there wasn’t much. At the same time, those few notes were surprisingly accurate: try-out for Mel’s replacement; space bees?; Welsh(?) holiday lodgings; space bus.

I’ll admit that I only remembered about the Shangri-La holiday camp (which is not a term commonly used by Americans, at least not where I’m from) when I looked at the DVD cover, but it ended up being perhaps the biggest highlight for me. And though I knew Ray had been a potential new Companion, I’d utterly forgotten that she had that lovely, Welsh lilt (an accent I originally learned thanks to Torchwood).

Both of those details go in my personal “pros” column not least because I’ve been learning Welsh on Duolingo for the last several years (along with a few other languages). Thus, the addition of local color to the story by having a couple of the characters use a few sentences of Welsh with each other (one or two of which I could actually parse) was a particular bonus for me. Sadly, that wasn’t enough to save the overall story.

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A Series of Unfortunate Events

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Review of The Ultimate Foe (#143d)
DVD Release Date: 10 Oct 08
Original Air Date: 29 Nov – 06 Dec 1986
Doctor/Companion: Six, Melanie “Mel” Bush
Stars: Colin Baker, Bonnie Langford
Preceding Story: Terror of the Vervoids (Six, Mel)
Succeeding Story: Time and the Rani (Seven, Mel)

The final (one might even say “ultimate”) story of the Sixth Doctor’s tenure was riddled with unfortunate circumstances. Perhaps most blatantly, writer Robert Holmes—widely considered one of the best of the Classic era, and the one who penned Episodes 1-4 of The Trial of a Time Lord (TToaTL)—took ill and died before completing Episode 13, forcing Script Editor Eric Saward to finish it off.

Making matters worse, BBC executives still weren’t seeing eye-to-eye with the Doctor Who team. The show had been put “on hiatus” between Season 22 and TToaTL (Season 23), and things were not really looking up despite the renewal. With producer John Nathan-Turner (JNT) also at odds with his script editor, it’s amazing anything ended up on screen at all.

Saward had agreed to write Episode 14 as well as finishing its predecessor, but things with JNT deteriorated enough that Saward eventually walked out, leaving JNT to do Saward’s script editing job while Pip and Jane Baker, who had written Episodes 9-12, stepped in to complete the season. No matter how many notes a writer leaves, no other writer can produce something that looks just like what the original creator had in their head. And to be blunt, Pip and Jane Baker are no Robert Holmes. The resulting episode is uninspiring at best.

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The Confusion of a Time Line

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Review of Terror of the Vervoids (#143c)
DVD Release Date: 10 Oct 08
Original Air Date: 01 – 22 Nov 1986
Doctor/Companion: Six, Melanie “Mel” Bush
Stars: Colin Baker, Bonnie Langford
Preceding Story: Mindwarp (Six, Peri)
Succeeding Story: The Ultimate Foe (Six, Mel)

Let me begin by acknowledging what a ridiculously suggestive (nigh pornographic) creature design this serial has. Wowzers. How that got past the censors/BBC high muckety-mucks/whoever screens this stuff, I’ll never understand. And now that that’s out of the way, we can talk about the rest of it.

While Terror of the Vervoids has never ranked high in my personal preference list of Doctor Who stories, it does have one particularly intriguing aspect that sets it apart from most other pre-Hiatus serials: it’s wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey.

Sadly this aspect isn’t pervasive; it only shows up when we cut back to the courtroom for the scenes that remind us the Doctor is on trial for his life. In order to find evidence to defend himself, though, the Doctor has had to dip into his own future, as recorded by the Matrix. Thus we get a bigger hiccup in his timeline than usual, which has an interesting and slightly maddening side effect: we never get a formal introduction to his next Companion.

We join the Doctor and Mel with their travels already in progress. There’s a distinct sense of familiarity between them that comes of a prolonged association with each other. In one way, I’m delighted by the cheekiness of this writing decision. We have just learned (along with the Doctor, because (a) his memory’s messed up and (b) he got pulled out of time before the events reputedly happened) that his previous Companion Peri has died due to his actions/inaction. Normally we’d expect an adventure where he meets a new friend and invites (in this case) her to travel with him.

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Absurdly Entertaining

Review of The One Doctor (#27)
Big Finish Release Date: Dec 2001
Doctor/Companion: Six and Mel
Stars: Colin Baker and Bonnie Langford
Preceding Story: Primeval (Five, Nyssa)
Succeeding Story: Invaders from Mars (Eight, Charley)

Big Finish (BF) has been really good for characters much maligned for their televised appearances. While Ol’ Sixie was the last incarnation to which I warmed (even before BF), Mel is one I’ve never quite managed to appreciate. Until now.

Last year I got my first taste of BF Mel, and while she didn’t instantaneously win me over, I found her a heck of a lot less grating than I’d ever found her on television. This time around, I actually quite liked her. Not only was she clever without being shrill, the dialogue even had her poking a bit of fun at herself: “Believe me, when I’m scared, I’ll scream the paint off the walls.”

Similarly, Ol’ Sixie was always the cleverest person in the room without being pompous or abrasive (as he often was in his televised adventures). He, too, was the butt of a gentle joke from time to time (references to his expanding girth, exercise regimen, and consumption of carrot juice all cropped up), but none of it ever felt mean-spirited or overdone.

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A Future Set in Ash

Review of The Fires of Vulcan (#12)
Big Finish Release Date: September 2000
Doctor/Companion: Seven and Mel
Stars: Sylvester McCoy and Bonnie Langford
Preceding Story: The Apocalypse Element (Six, Evelyn, Romana II)
Succeeding Story: The Shadow of the Scourge (Seven, Ace)

Although I’ve always had a soft spot for Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor (especially when he’s paired with Sophie Aldred’s Ace, my all-time favorite Companion), somehow in my explorations of audio adventures, I’d never sat down with one of his before. I’ve come close, in that I did once track down episodes of Death Comes to Time, a webcast from 2001-02, which had only limited visuals and relied heavily on the audio component to get the story across. As for Big Finish product, though, this was my first.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, especially given that The Fires of Vulcan co-stars Mel, of whom I’ve never been a fan. Although supposedly a bright woman—a computer programmer, no less—she seems to have been reduced on screen to an overly optimistic cheerleader to the Doctor and an epic screamer. I had been told she was much improved on audio, but I still winced a little at the prospect.

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Fire and Ace

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Review of Dragonfire (#151)
DVD Release Date:  08 May 12
Original Air Date:  23 Nov – 07 Dec 1987
Doctor/Companion:  Seven, Melanie Bush, Dorothy “Ace” McShane
Stars:  Sylvester McCoy, Bonnie Langford, Sophie Aldred
Preceding Story:  Delta and the Bannermen (Seven, Mel)
Succeeding Story:  Remembrance of the Daleks (Seven, Ace)

Since this month’s R1 releases included two Seven stories and a Four story, I was going to start with Nightmare of Eden and keep it chronological. After Simon Guerrier (a fellow panelist with me at Gally, and Whovian content creator in his own right) responded to one of my tweets essentially telling me I was slacking, I decided I had to start with Dragonfire.

To be honest, I was sort of looking for an excuse. I adore Ace, and have been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to see her introduction. Coming at it from the future, so to speak, was actually a tad unsettling. While the original audience was still reveling in a recognition-of-returning-character moment (Glitz!), I’d cut that moment short to squee that I’d just noticed Ace(!) quietly serving him a drink in the background. Almost from that point on, I have a hard time paying any attention to Mel. Maybe it’s that Ace is my all-time favorite Companion (yes, lately Rory’s been giving her a run for her money, but stepping back from the swirl of new episodes for a while, the cream rises, and Ace comes back out on top), maybe it’s that I know it’s Ace’s turn next, or maybe it’s just that the script seems to have more for Ace to do than for Mel. Whatever the case, it already feels like a Seven-and-Ace story to me instead of a Seven-and-Mel one.

And the script doesn’t waste any time developing her character, either. I mean, I love that our first proper look at Ace involves her chafing against authority. We get the whole sense of where she’s come from (though, seriously – how does a kid from Perivale know it was a “time storm” that swept her off to Iceworld?) and what her life on Earth was like, too. On the other hand, I was a tad taken aback that there’s never any explanation for why she chose to call the Doctor “Professor.” Oh well. I suppose that’s part of its charm.

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A Viewer’s Purgatory

Review of Paradise Towers (#149)

DVD Release Date:  09 Aug 11
Original Air Date:  05 – 26 Oct 1987
Doctor/Companion:  Seven, Mel
Stars:  Sylvester McCoy, Bonnie Langford
Preceding Story:  Time and the Rani (Seven, Mel)
Succeeding Story:  Delta and the Bannermen (Seven, Mel)

While I wouldn’t call Paradise Towers “awful,” it certainly wasn’t a scintillating piece of work, either. It suffers from a strong story concept poorly realized. Not all of that is due to the special effects (though they certainly contribute), but one wonders what could have been if there had been a bigger budget.

In the manner of a disclaimer, I suppose I should start by saying that Mel is among my least favorite Companions. Therefore, anything that starts with the Doctor pandering to Mel’s desire to go for a swim (because he’d jettisoned the pool from the TARDIS – something she’s obviously regrown since) and includes dialog with even a passing reference to one of her typically tragic outfits (as if we hadn’t been trying really hard to ignore it) is unlikely to yield an unequivocal thumbs-up from me.

The pool serves as a plot device to bring our heroes to Paradise Towers (a supposedly utopian high-rise presumably located on Earth, somewhen post-21st Century), though it’s a pretty thin one. I mean, when the pool appears inaccessible, Mel is ready to abandon the plan as well as the whole damn planet (“You don’t happen to know another planet with a swimming pool, do you?”). What – there’s only one pool left on the entire Earth? Get real…

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Pearls Before Time

Review of Time and the Rani (#145)

DVD Release Date:  14 Jun 11
Original Air Date:  07 – 28 Sep 1987
Doctor/Companion:  Seven, Melanie Bush
Stars:  Sylvester McCoy, Bonnie Langford
Preceding Story:  The Ultimate Foe (Trial of a Timelord) (Six, Mel)
Succeeding Story:  Paradise Towers (Seven, Mel)

It was with mixed trepidation and excitement that I awaited the release of this particular title. As a regeneration story, it ranked high in my want-to-see list, but knowing the history behind this particular change of Doctors (Colin Baker, who played Six, was canned – the scapegoat for falling ratings; unsurprisingly, he was none too keen to return to do a regeneration scene), I was wary of the event itself. Sadly, this is the one instance in which a YouTube viewing does not detract from the in-context regeneration. We get no more explanation than the TARDIS hurtling through space, with Companion Mel and the Doctor both unconscious on the floor of the control room. Upon landing, the Doctor is rolled over by a Tetrap minion, triggering the regeneration process. Even the magic of television can’t hide the fact that Six is just Seven in a bad wig and old costume. In that sense, this story starts out extremely disappointingly.

The rest of it, though, is surprisingly entertaining. I say “surprisingly” because, knowing ahead of time that the Rani (one of my all-time favorite foils for the Doctor) would be impersonating Mel, I was ready to cringe. However, even those sections came across relatively well. They were saved, of course, by the brilliance of Kate O’Mara (the Rani) and the perfect tone she kept while being simultaneously ingratiating and condescending (the unintentionally one-sided snarking between the Rani and the Doctor is great fun). Once she got out of Mel’s atrocious outfit (and the equally atrocious ginger wig), I was able to enjoy her performance fully.

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