Serial 79: Revenge of the Cybermen

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companion: Sarah Jane, Harry

Written by: Gerry Davis
Directed by: Michael Briant

Background & Significance: Now that we're really rapidly approaching the home stretch of this blog, I think it's become terribly clear which eras of Doctor Who I enjoy and which I do not. I've come to find the Pertwee era one of the most fun eras while I've really come to dislike a vast majority of Troughton due to its lack of both ambition and originality (which is unfortunate, because I love his Doctor). But the era that I have to always mention right up front is the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era. I went into it initally with my arms crossed and without any real desire to partake. "I'd like the comedy", I thought. "I have no taste for horror."

I was wrong about that. Hinchcliffe/Holmes is almost definitely my favorite era in Classic Who. I'm always in the mood for one of their stories because they're just so damn enjoyable (if not flawless) and it really is one of the most consistent runs of Doctor Who in terms of sheer quality. The run of stories from "Robot" to "Horror of Fang Rock" is one of the most outstanding runs in all of Doctor Who history where the lows are more than watchable and the highs are nigh untouchable and some of the best Doctor Who ever produced. What's here is the stuff of legend, and regardless of quality I'm always eager to jump back in whenever I need a Doctor Who fix because what's here is so good, if nothing else than aesthetically. Fortunately there's usually a bit more to go on than pure aesthetics more often than not, but other times? Shrug. That's what you got.

With all that in mind let's talk about "Revenge of the Cybermen".

"Revenge of the Cybermen" is the black sheep of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era. It's widely regarded as their weakest story and "a mess" to put it mildly. But why is this one singled out when "Android Invasion" is an equally impressive candidate? My guess is "Android Invasion" benefits from being buried in the middle of its season, in between two dynamite Robert Holmes stories whereas this story is tacked on at the end of a very strong season, estranged from everything else by what's been called the best Dalek story of all time. That's to say nothing of the pressure of giving the Cybermen a return after a six and a half year absence, nor the pressure of making it something of an informal sequel to "The Ark in Space". Of course, this pressure was only magnified by the return of former script editor and co-creator of the Cybermen Gerry Davis coming back after seven and a half years to pen their return.

Throw in a production haunted by a curse from a petrified witch and you've got yourselves a ball game.

So let's get to it.

Serial 76: The Ark in Space

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companion: Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan

Written by: Robert Holmes (and John Lucarotti)
Directed by: Rodney Bennett

A note: Hey everyone! So, as you probably know if you're reading this, it's March, which means that I've been doing this blog for a whole year (also, Cassandra! Hi, Cassandra! (She helped)). Haven't missed a week (miraculously), so I think it's time for an anniversary celebration. To kick things off, I'm talking about the real start to the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era with a Robert Holmes story, but the fun doesn't stop there! We've got Troughton next week, the story that started it all the week after that, and then a regeneration trilogy I've been looking forward to talking about for a long time. Thanks for all your support over the past twelve months, thanks for sticking around in the tickling of my fancy, and most of all, thanks for reading. Means the world.

Background & Significance: If you were to ever talk about Tom Baker, you'd almost have to start here.

While "Robot" started off Tom Baker's first season and kicked off his seven year run, it still doesn't have the feeling of awesome that is the legendary Gothic Era under Phillip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes. I talked about this back when I reviewed the story, but "Robot" is a very different story in terms of tone and feature. It's a UNIT story, it's a little silly-goofy, it's very much got the silly campy feel of the Pertwee era, etc. etc. Sure, there's the script editing of Robert Holmes, but the story was still being guided by the influence of producer Barry Letts and it's written by Terrance Dicks, who had just overseen five years of UNIT stories, so the formula was in-built.

It only makes sense, then, that the next story, the first one overseen by Phillip Hinchcliffe, is where the era really starts.

"The Ark in Space" came from an idea by John Lucarotti, who had previously written such widely acclaimed historical Doctor Who stories such as "The Aztecs" and "Marco Polo". He'd been away from the show since the Hartnell era (that's almost ten years) and Holmes invited him back on the recommendation of outgoing script editor Terrance Dicks. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the script came out less well than Holmes had hoped and (due to Lucarotti's living on a houseboat and problems with the postal service (both of which were, admittedly, beyond the show's control)), the script became unusable. Because they were set to wheels up on filming soon, Holmes scrapped Lucarotti's drafts and most of his ideas (excepting that of the titular "Ark in Space") and set about writing the damn thing himself because he just couldn't wait anymore.

He wrote the whole four-part story in eighteen days.

Magic. Serious magic. And to see this thing turn into a pretty stunning story is pretty awesome. It's also a wonderful tonal and thematic gateway into what would be a staple of Hinchcliffe/Holmes Doctor Who: great scifi ideas, heavy horror, thematic darkness. It's certainly not as much as the show would get in just a few stories, but their era certainly starts here. Even coming off of "Robot", this story is so different, different from anything seen on the show in about five years. It's one of the all-time classics and it's become a cornerstone of Doctor Who's overarching mythology; even Starship UK and Liz X are byproducts of the solar flares devastating Earth.

Not only that, but it's because of the absolute quality of this story that Holmes gets such free reign later on. Hinchcliffe (very famously) trusted Holmes's style and sensibilities and often encouraged Holmes to do page-one rewrites if he thought the story not up to snuff. This, of course, wasn't very popular with the BBC, which discouraged script editors from writing for their own show. Hinchcliffe, however, eventually fought for and won Holmes's right to write two stories per season. And without that, we wouldn't have "The Deadly Assassin" or "The Talons of Weng-Chiang".

Without those (or the other stories Holmes wrote or re-wrote from top to bottom), this era wouldn't be nearly the era that it was. And that would be sad. But that all comes from this. And thank goodness for that.

So let's get to it!

Serial 77: The Sontaran Experiment

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companion: Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan

Written by: Bob Baker & Dave Martin
Directed by: Rodney Bennett

Background & Significance: Oh hey look! I'm back for another epic Baker/Martin romp! Isn't that bloody exciting? We had a really great time last time with their "Invisible Enemy", so let's try and hit the gold again here.

Actually, irony of ironies? For not being a fan of most of their other work, I really liked this one.

See, the Sontaran Experiment is unique for two reasons. 1) It's the only two-part Doctor Who story between 1964 and 1982 (we're currently in 1975) and 2) It's shot entirely on location. So that's fun, and really it just exposes how overly long every other classic Who story we talk about can be. It's fun, it's fast, it's early Tom Baker (*love* his first season) and things are happening in a very adventure setting.

Most interesting, perhaps, is the fact that it's a revival of the Sontarans and we see them much as they were portrayed in "The Time Warrior", and it's a nice little in-between betwixt "The Ark in Space" (talking about that next year) and "Genesis of the Daleks", which is the next little story.

Strangely enough, by following directly off the events of the previous story (as all of The Fourth Doctor's adventures in this, his first season, linked one right into the other) this story functions as an almost supplementary parts five and six to the first four parts of "The Ark in Space", so if you've never seen that (which I hadn't before seeing this for the first time), this is actually a little confusing in the outset because it really hits the ground running and with little explanation as to what's going on.

Granted, this is a bit of a dated complaint. The people who were watching Doctor Who at the time totally remembered what was going on with The Doctor and co as they had just seen it the week before. In that, I'm sad that I wasn't able to watch this one right after "Ark in Space" and before "Genesis of the Daleks", but them's the breaks. I know I plan to watch this entire season in order when I go back through and pick and choose, cuz it'll play out most wonderfully, I think.

Oh, and apparently Tom Baker jacked up his collar bone while making this story. Lucky for him and everyone else, he was bundled in a coat and a jacket and a scarf and was able to hide it. But sometimes he looks bulky. And it's amusing.

So let's get to it!

Serial 75: Robot

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companion: Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan

Written by: Terrance Dicks
Directed by: Christopher Barry

Background & Significance: Jon Pertwee left the role of The Doctor after five solid years of stories. Again, he left a void, one to be filled by incoming producer Phillip Hinchcliffe and story editor Robert Holmes.

Hinchcliffe's vision of the show saw a departure from much of his predecessor, Barry Letts, who had relegated The Doctor to UNIT and Earth-based stories for about five years. Hinchcliffe (and his co-brain, Holmes) wanted The Doctor to get back to his pre-exile roots: as a traveling wanderer on the search for the next cool thing to see.

Also wanting to depart from Pertwee's Scientist/Man-of-Action interpretation, Hinchcliffe sought to change his focus on The Doctor, making him a peculiar alien traveler with a silly alien mind that works in silly alien ways. This saw the casting of Tom Baker as The Doctor, kicking off seven long years of Tom Baker stories.

Interestingly enough, Tom Baker's kickoff story is not "Gothic horror" in the way the first three seasons under Hinchcliffe/Holmes are "Gothic". Outgoing script editor Terrance Dicks penned the story (under Robert Holmes's script editing) and - because Doctor Who was filmed in "production blocks", with the last story filmed in a given season's production blog being the first story broadcast for the next season - the story itself still fell under the production purview of Barry Letts before Hinchcliffe's assumption of the role, meaning that what we get is essentially a traditional UNIT story with Tom Baker as The Doctor.

Which is weird.

But we get to see what it's like when Tom Baker picks up his role as The Doctor, bringing as much energy and strength to the role as he ever did, long before he became complacent and began going through the motions (which you can definitely see in the post-Hinchcliffe era when he starts, for lack of better term, phoning it in).

No. Each decision here is specific and well performed and well thought out. And it's damn good Tom Baker. Damn good. Probably my favourite of his so far.

So let's get to it!

Serial 78: Genesis of the Daleks

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companions: Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan


Written by: Terry Nation
Directed by: David Maloney

Background and Significance: When Jon Pertwee abdicated his role as The Doctor after five seasons, he did it having the longest run as the character by at least two years. (Honestly, I find it incredibly cool that he was on the show for about the average length of a fairly successful TV show.) He left the show as a serviceable Doctor, his era coming with some new innovations (color, more action, more and cooler special effects) and a long, healthy run some very good Doctor Who stories and some new innovations (not the least of which was the introduction of The Master).

And then he got replaced.

Not only that, but the run of his replacement, Tom Baker, would be nothing short of positively legendary. Playing The Doctor for seven years (two years longer than Pertwee, and more than Hartnell and Troughton combined), he is an incredibly iconic Doctor, from costume to mannerisms, and the show was never more popular in its original run. Tom Baker's Doctor is widely considered to be the best and most widely known (although David Tennant fans might disagree) of all time, and with seven years under his belt, it's very easy to see why.

With the Fourth Doctor, the show became nothing short of a phenomenon and incredibly exciting as this goofy looking chap with a giant scarf and a silly mish-mash of clothes took center stage and showed the world what Doctor Who was really capable of.

But enough of that, what about this episode?

This episode, "The Genesis of the Daleks," is one of only two times The Fourth Doctor went up against his greatest foe. Shocking as that might sound, especially given the rampant popularity of The Doctor before and since, it's a mark of Baker's era that he wasn't *crutched* by Daleks and they weren't a foe for The Doctor to fall back on.

"Genesis of the Daleks," however, is perhaps most notable because it is the introduction of the incredibly iconic creator of The Daleks.

Davros

And really, that's the entire reason I wanted so desperately to see this episode. I loved him in the most recent series when The Tenth Doctor and his multitude of Companions ran up against him in "Stolen Earth/Journey's End," and the appearance of Davros and the backstory that comes with him is the thing that really grabbed me and sucked me into wanting to watch "The Old Stuff", which means it's really his fault that I'm doing this blog in the first place.

So I owe it to the Daleks' creator to talk about his introduction.

Oh. And it's about the creation of the Daleks. Who doesn't love that?

Let's get to it!