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Tag: Six

Attack of the Mediocre

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Review of Attack of the Cybermen (#138)
DVD Release Date: 07 Jul 09 (Out of Print)
Original Air Date: 05 – 12 Jan 1985
Doctor/Companion: Six, Peri Brown
Stars: Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant
Preceding Story: The Twin Dilemma (Six, Peri)
Succeeding Story: Vengeance on Varos (Six, Peri)

After I posted my last review, which was for the Peter Davison audio adventure Spare Parts, one of my regular readers pointed out that I haven’t reviewed all of the televised adventures, and suggested I consider doing more. Given that my focus has generally been on the more-readily-agreed-to-be-canonical TV run, I thought that was a great idea—especially since it also makes it easier to come up with something to post about.

So I went and made a list of the DVD reviews I’ve already done, and the stories covered on in Nu-Views and Retro-Views, and proceeded to make a convoluted spreadsheet. I decided I should begin with ones I’ve never touched on at all, and try to even out the proportionality of reviews to available serials across all the pre-Hiatus/Classic Doctors.

Colin Baker turned out to be most slighted in this sense, in that only two of his eleven serials (counting the Trial of a Time Lord as four serials) have been reviewed, and one of those was a Nu-View. That means 82% of C. Baker’s run is untouched (T. Baker is at 62%, Davison 60%, McCoy 50%, Troughton 50% (of existing serials), Hartnell 47% (existing), and Pertwee 33%). I seemed obvious, then to start with Ol’ Sixie. But which serial?

It didn’t take long for me to pick one, and several to come after. Having just witnessed the ultimate beginning of the Cybermen last month, and realizing that three more Doctors also had unreviewed Cybermen stories, I settled on a theme. First up, then, is Six’s encounter in Attack of the Cybermen.

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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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Wholly Satisfactory

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Review of The Holy Terror (#14)
Big Finish Release Date: November 2000
Doctor/Companion: Six and Frobisher
Stars: Colin Baker and Robert Jezek
Preceding Story: The Shadow of the Scourge (Seven, Ace)
Succeeding Story: The Mutant Phase (Five, Nyssa)

When I realized the next audio on my list was the first one to include Frobisher the talking penguin (okay, he’s actually a Whifferdill; he just prefers the penguin shape), I was pretty psyched. I’d heard good things about the character and was looking forward to his introduction.

Alas, my limited experience with alternative media stories led me astray; as Frobisher was already an established character in comics (a fact which had somehow escaped me), Big Finish apparently felt he needed no introduction in the audio format. I had flashbacks to my first experience with Evelyn, which was frustrating; I’d been so pleased that I wouldn’t be jumping into the middle that way again. Unfortunately, the only way to get Frobisher’s whole story is to dig into yet another medium, which I am unlikely to do.

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Proven Formula

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Review of The Spectre of Lanyon Moor (#9)
Big Finish Release Date: June 2000
Doctor/Companion: Six and Evelyn Smythe
Stars: Colin Baker and Maggie Stables
Preceding Story: Red Dawn (Five, Peri)
Succeeding Story: Winter for the Adept (Five, Nyssa)

Storytelling in Doctor Who has several tried and true formulae (the most well known (at least by name) probably being “base under siege“), so it was almost comforting when I realized that The Spectre of Lanyon Moor was making use of one of them: the fantastical explanation for an Earth legend (see also The Dæmons, or the more recent (and extreme) example of Death in Heaven).

The exact details of how a 3-foot-high alien troll uses its psionic energy to further its own purposes, affecting the surrounding area in Cornwall of course take a full, convoluted four parts. But it only takes a few minutes to realize this creature is being presented as the basis of a great many stories and superstitions—most notably the existence of Cornish pixies. I found it reassuringly familiar.

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Starting Fresh

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Review of The Marian Conspiracy (#6)
Big Finish Release Date: March 2000
Doctor/Companion: Six and Evelyn Smythe
Stars: Colin Baker and Maggie Stables
Preceding Story: The Fearmonger (Seven, Ace)
Succeeding Story: The Genocide Machine (Seven, Ace)

Apparently I just needed to start in the right spot.

After my last experience with a Big Finish audio adventure, I was a little reluctant to dip my toe back into the pool. Although previous forays had been enjoyable, I didn’t get as much out of my first Sixth Doctor story as I’d hoped. (Actually, it was only the first full-length one; I’ve heard a couple of shorts in which Six teams up with Jago & Litefoot.) I wanted to be as enthusiastic about Six’s adventures as I’d been about Eight’s, but something just didn’t quite click.

Good thing I persevered.

Having come into the middle of Evelyn’s travels with the Doctor in The Apocalypse Element, I didn’t quite “get” their relationship. Starting at its beginning, though, I was immediately charmed by Evelyn’s manner with him, and her refusal to take any of his shit. As a 55-year-old woman, she’s well established in her life as a history professor and knows her own mind. She has no need to feel in awe of him, as so many of his (especially younger) Companions have initially been. The more mature give and take between them makes for a refreshing change of pace—not least because it shows him not to be the brusque boor he often was in the televised stories.

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The Element of Distraction

Review of The Apocalypse Element (#11)
Big Finish Release Date: August 2000
Doctor/Companion: Six, Evelyn Smythe, and Romana II
Stars: Colin Baker, Maggie Stables, and Lalla Ward
Preceding Story: Winter for the Adept (Five, Nyssa)
Succeeding Story: The Fires of Vulcan (Seven, Mel)

A few months ago when Big Finish was having a sale, I managed to snatch up a few audio adventures for a song. Now that I have a bit of vacation time coming, I thought I’d listen to a few of them. Starting with the earliest release I had in my downloads, then, I jumped into one with Ol’ Sixie.

Perhaps it was simply the rigors of preparing for the approaching holiday while caring for a sick child, or perhaps it really was something about the story itself, but for what may be the first time, I found myself unable to enjoy a Big Finish drama to its fullest extent.

The Apocalypse Element follows the Sixth Doctor and his Companion Evelyn as they find themselves pulled off course (surprise!), and subsequently arriving at a time travel conference, where various temporal powers have gathered—including some Time Lords.

Over the course of the play, we learn that Romana, now Lord President of Gallifrey, is missing (along with an entire planet) and that the Daleks are involved. Eventually it comes to light that control of the mysterious “Element,” and its use as a weapon of galactic-scale destruction, is the Daleks’ objective.

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Confession #71: I’m in Crossover Heaven

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As an American growing up in the 70s and 80s, my exposure to Doctor Who was, to say the least, limited. Although my home state has been broadcasting the show on public television since 1974, it never even made a blip on my mental radar until I got to college—and then it was more as an indicator of which weirdos to avoid.

Star Trek, on the other hand, was regular fare.

I still remember afternoons after school parked in front of our little TV watching Kirk, Spock, Bones, Sulu, Chekov, and Uhura (not to mention numerous redshirts) in action. My first specific memory is of captain and science officer in a jail with iron bars, and—I’m fairly certain—a comment about Spock’s green blood (probably from the episode “Patterns of Force“).

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Eighties Incarnate

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Review of The Doctors Revisited – Sixth Doctor

We’ve arrived at our median Doctor, by number the midpoint of his Regenerations to date. If you’re not familiar with “Old Sixie” (as his actor Colin Baker calls him now), you’re in for quite the ride.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2013 BBC

I think more than any other, Six is a break from what we’re used to associating with “the Doctor.” In stark contrast to his immediate predecessor—the mellow, folksy, human one—this Doctor epitomizes the alpha-male aspects of his personalities (brash, show-off, egotistical…). As Moffat (who is joined here by fellow interviewees Marcus Wilson, Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Bonnie Langford, Nicholas Briggs, and Dan Starkey) observed, Six cared about being paid attention to and about being listened to, but not about being liked (if you have any doubt, just look at that over-the-top, oh-so-’80s, coat of many colors). He would do what he felt he needed to do and not care one whit about whose feelings he might hurt along the way.

That’s not to say he didn’t care; he was actually quite compassionate. It’s simply that his definitions of right and wrong in a given situation don’t necessarily line up with what his Companion or the audience—humans, in other words—would think.

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Viewer, Rate Thyself

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Review of Vengeance on Varos: SE (#138)
DVD Release Date: 11 Sep 12
Original Air Date: 19 – 25 Jan 1985
Doctor/Companion: Six, Perpugilliam “Peri” Brown
Stars: Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant
Preceding Story: Attack of the Cybermen (Six, Peri)
Succeeding Story: The Mark of the Rani (Six, Peri)

Before watching this release, I’d seen Vengeance on Varos twice previously. The first time was when I was just getting started, watching as many pre-Hiatus stories as I could get my hands on, and the second was for my pre-Gally marathon last year. It has always been one of my least favorites.

Trying to give it a fair shake for this review, I did my best to throw all my preconceived notions – and the fiery passion with which I hate the character Sil – out the window. I think I was I was successful; I liked it more this time around.

Once I was able to get beyond (or put a mostly-effective mental block up against) Sil – a native of Thoros Beta, he is of a reptilian race that is sluglike and, at least in the instance of this individual, utterly disgusting to me – I could see there’s actually a pretty good story with some interesting social commentary here.

While the plot device that gets us to Varos in the first place feels utterly contrived (“This is the one problem the TARDIS cannot overcome…”), the twisted society that awaits the Doctor and Peri is thought-provoking. Because it was actually transmitted well before the “reality TV” rage of recent years, Vengeance feels, in retrospect, rather ahead of its time. It taps into the voyeurism and detachment from violence that we all know so well thanks to our own screens today.

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Abrasive and Melodramatic

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Review of the Sixth Doctor’s era

1984 – 1986
The Twin Dilemma* Attack of the Cybermen
Vengeance on Varos
The Mark of the Rani
The Two Doctors
Timelash
Revelation of the Daleks		 The Mysterious Planet
Mindwarp
Terror of the Vervoids
The Ultimate Foe**
  *This was the last story of Season 21. Nearly 10 months elapsed before his next appearance in Season 22.
**Collectively, Season 23 is known as Trial of a Timelord, and is sometimes counted as a single story.

As devotees (are there any?) of the blog will know, Six is ~ahem~ not my favorite Doctor. However, he has his own peculiar charms, as I’ve come to appreciate over time, and I have to give Colin Baker props for doing as good a job as he did whilst getting shafted simultaneously by writers and by higher-ups at the Beeb.

Among the more objectionable characteristics of the Regeneration in my mind are his brash tone – he tends to repeat comments made to him incredulously to show his disagreement (reminiscent of Four, actually) – and his tendency to talk down to his Companions, particularly Peri. The poor thing gets told things like, “Do use your brain, my girl. Small though it is, the human brain can be quite effective when used properly” on a fairly regular basis. Pompous much?

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