Doctor Who Club of Australia

[Greg]

Here it is, the shortest month of the year - and I suddenly realise I forgot to include a poll of the month this month (oops!).

So, for the shortest month, what is your favourite story from the short reign of the 6th Doctor?

[dave]

For me, The Two Doctors, because of Pat. The sontarans in this story were woeful, but Shockeye was truly terrifying at times. However, Pat and Fraser steal the show.

[Speckled Jim]

Ah truly great, if short-lived, era of Dr Who - utterly bizarre and highly controversial. God, the scorn heaped upon the Baker era at the time....
Anyway, Two Doctors gets the vote from me mainly because it was so amazingly shocking at the time. Cannibalism was not a theme featured in most kids/adolescents' shows in 1985. And it had Sontarans, although they weren't as effectively used as in The Time Warrior or Sontaran Experiment.

[Sulp Niar]

This season's maligned so often, I almost wish I could vote for more than one story just to even out the odds.

But it's got to be 'Revelation of the Daleks'. I don't want to go into detail, because, er, it should be pretty obvious to fans what I'd rave on about. Characters, plot (overarching plot threads; I don't understand the "Doctor doesn't show up for ages!" criticism, myself), direction, dialogue... the only problem with this story is that it's a crap Dalek story, but that's only because the name makes you expect, well, a Dalek story. Which it isn't, it's a Davros story. And in that sense - it's excellent!

[Tom N.]

I voted for The Two Doctors. Even though Revelation is probably a "better" story, I find Two Docs a lot more entertaining. Pat Troughton, of course, is a delight - bit of a shame he didn't get more to do, but oh well.

Critics often say the overseas location was an unnecessary indulgence on JNT's part, but I think it works in the story's favour. I like the sunny Spanish setting, and have no problem with the "quick, we need to show off the local scenery" chase sequence. It's good to see somewhere outside the UK for a change, at any rate. (And as an aside, the Androgummified 2nd Doctor absolutely terrified this 8-year-old viewer! )

Hoourable mentions to: Revelation, Vengeance on Varos, and The Trial of a Time Lord (which I like, even if it is a bit of a mess )

[Speckled Jim]

[quote="Sulp Niar"]I find myself taking them more seriously than the Rutan in 'Horror of Fang Rock' - even though that's taken seriously for most of the story.[quote]

Hey, for a golf ball covered in string it was still pretty nasty.

[SharazJek]

Revelation is the story that got me back into Dr Who after a 'hiatus' of a few years. Ironic because as soon as this episode finished the show went into a hiatus of it's own.

This has got to be one of the most macabre stories ever done in Dr Who. That's why I love it. It's the best Davros story ever, and superbly sequelled by the Big Finish audio of the same name.

Two Docs has all the ingredients [pun intended] but they never quite gel together for me.

I also enjoyed Mark of the Rani more than ever before when i saw it again on DVD.

[Sulp Niar]

[uhumanite]

As I can not choose any of the wonderful BF's I'm going to go with Vengence on Varos.

Two Doctors gives us the last of the 2nd Doctor and the latter Dalek tale is wonderful for Davros's role, mark of the Rani gives us lovely sets and Kate Omara but no other story captures Colin's Doctor like Vengence.

Bar a tacky chair in the Tardis,slow patrols and some 80's hairstyles( its easy to find fault with any classic WHO in this era) I feel it stands up well as a partial satire of peoples views towards DR.WHO as a program at the time and Sil is by far one of the best monsters in a long while.

The "....and cut!" cliffhanger is the best in Colin's era and the show truly predates Big Brother.

An atmosphere extreme enough to fit Colin's coat!

[SharazJek]

[Sulp Niar]

Hooray! I'm helping!

[Greg]

Anything that leads to attention for the awful Revelation of the Daleks is nothing to cheer about.

Long term readers of this forum know my very peculiar hatred of this story. It's not the worst Colin Baker story, but it is a very lazily written story that shows just how much writer/script editor Eric Saward was unsuitable for either job.

I'm restraining myself from going into a full-fledged rant here...

[uhumanite]

The Twin Dilemma
Attack of the Cybermen
Time Lash

These are my list of what could have been great stories.

Twin- could have introduced 6 so well but apart from Colin's performance it is bogged down with slugs,eggs and 80's tac

Attack- a large budget but the script was so fanwanky it lost common sense for the average viewer. It even required a knowledge of the 10th Planet which is silly considering the last episode is missing. Needless references to the past shows a lack of original thought IMO.

Time Lash- A wonderful premise of a young H.G Welles learning about the unknown with The Doctor yet it is some how ruined with bland sets, SCIFI cheese and hardly any time for Welles to shine.

But I do enjoy the rest of Colin's stories and his BF audios put him as one of my fav Doctors.

[SharazJek]

[Greg]

In summary, then:

The Doctor has no role in the story. He spends much of the first half wandering through the snow. Even when he arrives, the main action of the story is carried out by other characters. The characters least essential to the plot are the Doctor and Peri, and their small amount of action could be reallocated to other characters without actually damaging the story.

There's a character called Davros who is nothing like Davros. His mysterious flying and lightning-bolt shooting abilities aside, there is no reference to the previous story, he cackles like an idiot, and he sadistically manipulates and punishes people for his own pleasure. This is, at best, Davros the Bond villain and, at worst, Davros preparing to match wits with Batman and Robin (as played by Adam West and Burt Ward).

The Daleks are generic creatures who coincidentally look like Daleks.

Effectively, if you replaced Davros and the Daleks with (say) the Spidron and the Sorsons (from the Tomorrow People), you wouldn't need to change much of the script.

The script blatantly lifts much of its content (and some of its characters) from The Loved One and the movie Soylent Green. Tranquil Repose is Whispering Glades, Mr Jobel is Mr Joyboy, but Tasambeker is the opposite of the beautiful Aimee Thanatos, and I can only imagine Saward thought this was a clever twist. Oh, and soylent green is people, don't you know.

While this is far from the first time that Doctor Who has borrowed from other sources, at least other examples generally took the basic concept and put it into a different setting. The lazy Saward is only a few steps short of plagiarism (with his next script being Slipback, which he tries to write like he's Douglas Adams - and fails miserably!).

For a series that is known for characters thinking their way out of problems, here's a story where the solution is shooting and blowing things up. It may as well have been the A-Team.

I shan't bother to detail my contempt for Orcini and Bostock, characters who should at best be villains but are somehow effectively cast the heroes (given that the Doctor and Peri are pushed to the sidelines). IN fact, Saward obviously thought that he could include a number of double-acts and hoped he'd get some sort of Robert Holmes effect - Orcini and Bostock, Kara and Vogel, Natasha and Grigory. (Kara and Vogel are a poor imitation of Morgus and Timmin from The Caves of Androzani.)

and so on.

Seriously, I think you could put this story on and let it run with me telling you why I hate it at the same time, the story would finish before I did.

It's an example of why a writer should not be the editor of his own work.

I'm aware that many people love this story. It bewilders me why this should be the case.

[uhumanite]

[Sulp Niar]

Righto. I'll do my best to vaguely sort of go against your points and try to push for why it's my favourite Colin story.

[SharazJek]

Good points from both sides.

One thing I didn't see mentioned though.

In both 'Love & Monsters' and 'Blink' the Doctor's involvement as the lead character is virtually non-existent. Arguably Blink is the cleverest script in series 3, possibly the entire series!

Although Revelation had no production reasons for keeping the Doctor and Peri out of the main plot for so long, perhaps the new series writers saw in this episode how it could be done and still make a great story.

But come to think of it, was the Doctor really out of the main plot? The whole point of him being on Necros in the first place was because Davros had lured him there.

[Davros]

I would have voted Revelation of the Daleks but I haven't ["exterminate me"] seen it yet so I voted The Mark of the Rani as the Master is in it and he's my second favorite villian!

[Sulp Niar]

Agreed on both points. For the latter, I suppose you could say that it's the first sign of Davros lowering his defences for the first time in ages and that leads to his downfall. Or it's just an amusing practical joke. I don't mind, both work for me, haha.

(Incidentally, that's something that always bugs me about 'The Mark of the Rani' - that criticism of, "Is it likely that three Time Lords end up in the same period of history accidentally?" Even the DWM review of the DVD took marks off for that. But uh, the Master chased the Rani, as he says, and he lured the Doctor in there, as he also says. So...?)

Yeah. I think the fact that 'Revelation' doesn't use the Doctor a lot - or indeed, the fact that you could argue that most of Season 22 doesn't use him a lot - and that being held against it, is strange. That's just a trend of this era, something that defines the stories; like how Ace is a big part of the plots of Season 26. It works for me, anyway.