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Tag: Six

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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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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A Victim of Regeneration

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Review of The Twin Dilemma (#137)

DVD Release Date: 05 Jan 10
Original Air Date: 22 – 30 Mar 1984
Doctors/Companions: Six, Perpugilliam Brown
Stars: Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant
Preceding Story: The Caves of Androzani (Five, Peri)
Succeeding Story: Attack of the Cybermen (Six, Peri)

We’ve rolled back around to a Low for this month’s entry in this year’s series of Highs and Lows, and it is definitely one you’ll see on a lot of fans’ s***-lists. Although the list I keep coming back to only ranks it at 222 of 254 (roughly at the bottom 1/8), list author Charlie Jane Anders mentions that it’s not really all that bad. I find I have to agree with her.

Note that I’m not saying it’s a good story, but it’s not as bad as I remembered. As I watched it again, I started to develop some hypotheses about why it has such a poor reputation in the fandom, and I think I’ve got some solid working ones.

Before I get into the details of that analysis, though, I want to talk about what I remembered about the story before I started my re-watch. It wasn’t a whole heck of a lot, to be honest. First and foremost, I remembered the closing line, because it so clearly breaks the fourth wall. Although nominally talking to Peri, the Doctor turns almost straight to camera and says, “I am the Doctor. Whether you like it or not.”

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Tranquil Rewatch

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Review of Revelation of the Daleks (#142)
DVD Release Date: 06 Jun 06
Original Air Date: 23 – 30 Mar 1985
Doctors/Companions: Six, Perpugilliam “Peri” Brown
Stars: Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant
Preceding Story: Timelash (Six, Peri)
Succeeding Story: The Mysterious Planet (Six, Peri)

Circumstances conspired against me again, and I was in no mood to appreciate even a Hidden Gem like Revelation of the Daleks when I sat down to rewatch it. Although I’ve come to appreciate Ol’ Sixie, he’s still among my least favorite Doctors to watch; I’ve gotten pretty tired of Daleks over the years; and to top it all off, I was fighting off a fever and sore throat.

Nevertheless, as the fog of obligation retreats, and I can reflect on it from the other side of that viewing, I find there are plenty of things to recommend Revelation. On a purely superficial level, for example, we have the Doctor’s coat-of-many-colors covered for most of the first 45-minute episode by a lovely blue cloak.

I’d also forgotten that this was Peri’s introduction to the Daleks. When she sees one roll past, then, she doesn’t immediately warn the Doctor of the danger; she merely calls out with startlement about “some sort of machinery.” To his credit, the Doctor doesn’t chastise her; he merely goes to investigate.

That point, in fact, is probably one of the best parts of the entire adventure, and one that didn’t even register as I was watching (a sure sign that I was not giving it my full attention—or at least not what would’ve been my full attention pre-pandemic). One of the most difficult things about the early parts of Colin Baker’s run is the way the writers had the Doctor and Peri at each other’s throats all the time. One of the reasons I love Mark of the Rani so much (aside from the Rani herself) is that the TARDIS team acts like they actually have affection for each other.

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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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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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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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Stomachturn

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Review of Mindwarp (#143b)
DVD Release Date: 10 Oct 08
Original Air Date: 04 – 25 Oct 1986
Doctor/Companion: Six, Perpugilliam “Peri” Brown
Stars: Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant
Preceding Story: The Mysterious Planet (Six, Peri)
Succeeding Story: Terror of the Vervoids (Six, Mel)

I will admit, dear readers, that I cringed at the thought of needing to rewatch Mindwarp for this review. Parts Five through Eight of The Trial of a Time Lord (TToaTL) have always ranked high in my personal list of regrettable Doctor Who stories, and I’m afraid nothing changed this time around.

There are a few things that stand out in my memory about Mindwarp, no matter how long it’s been since my last viewing: the way Peri gets so thoroughly screwed over; Brian Blessed’s sheer, scenery-chewing volume; and the return of Sil, perhaps my most hated antagonist ever. None of these key traits serve to recommend the adventure, nor are they improved on repeated viewing.

While I’ve never particularly cared for Peri, no one deserves the shitty treatment—especially in a farewell appearance—that she gets here*. Even before the Doctor goes off the deep end (and he does, though neither we nor the Doctor himself, as evidenced by his reactions back in the courtroom on Gallifrey, really know why), he is truly horrible to his Companion. The prime example ties into another of my dislikes about Mindwarp: Sil.

Given the way Sil made my skin crawl (and not in a “love to hate” way) in his first appearance, I—like poor Peri—have no desire to be anywhere near him, even narratively. When she discovers Sil is on Thoros Beta with them, and that it is in fact his home planet (a detail the Doctor neglected to mention), she tells the Doctor outright that she wants to leave. Sil tortured her the last time they met, and she has been understandably traumatized by the experience.

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A Mysterious Plan

Review of The Mysterious Planet (#143a)
DVD Release Date: 10 Oct 08
Original Air Date: 06 – 27 Sep 1986
Doctor/Companion: Six, Perpugilliam “Peri” Brown
Stars: Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant
Preceding Story: Revelation of the Daleks (Six, Peri)
Succeeding Story: Mindwarp (Six, Peri)

Today I start a new review series, with an arc I’ve long avoided here. The Trial of a Time Lord (ToaTL) is, depending on who you ask, either a season-long, fourteen-part story or four, two- or four-part stories connected into a season arc. It comprises approximately half of the Sixth Doctors televised tenure in the role, and thus looms larger in my mental landscape than perhaps it should.

So because my reviews over the years have been particularly shy of Sixth Doctor adventures (at least the televised ones), I decided I’d finally tackle ToaTL for the first part of 2017 (with a Dalek breakaway—see what I did there?—for Power in February) before Series Ten begins.

As we begin this season, then, we see the TARDIS being pulled into a large structure in space, and the Doctor steps out—alone—into a darkened hallway. The room he enters is also darkened until, with some vaguely ominous words, someone eventually identified as “the Valeyard”—the person who is to become his major adversary over the coming episodes—reveals that they are in a Time Lord courtroom.

The Doctor is the subject of a hearing to determine whether or not he is truly guilty of “conduct unbecoming of a Time Lord.” As part of his protest, the Doctor claims he can’t be put on trial because he’s Lord President of Gallifrey (Oh, Doctor… You sound unpleasantly like the new POTUS…), but is told that as a result of his neglect for his duties, he’s been deposed.

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