Serial 135: The Caves of Androzani

Doctor: Peter Davison (5th Doctor)
Companion: Peri

Written by: Robert Holmes
Directed by: Graeme Harper

Background & Significance: Robert Holmes is one of the three greatest Doctor Who writers of all time, which is rather fortunate because he also happens to be the most prolific, writing seventy two of the Classic series' original almost-seven-hundred episode run (which, by the way, is over ten percent of all Classic episodes). Throw in the lot that he oversaw as script editor and that number balloons to one hundred forty four (which is almost 20% of all Doctor Who episodes ever produced). His run was so long and prolific, in fact, it can be broken down into stages: two Troughton era stories (where he got his feet wet), to four classic Pertwee stories (which allowed him playing ground to experiment with different types of stories) to his run at script editor when he shaped and created (in a sense) Tom Baker's Doctor (during which he wrote five stories), to his few dabbles in the post-him Tom Baker era, to his long break where he didn't write any Doctor Who stories for five years, to his triumphant return with "The Caves of Androzani" and his final Colin Baker stories, which were landmarks and such. In a lot of ways, he reminds me of The Modern Era's Steven Moffat in that Moffat got his feet wet during Eccleston, played around with different stories during Tennant, and then took over the show for a new Doctor when Tennant left. Both men created/are creating classic, popular foes that are known for being scary, wrote tremendously famous/popular stories, and they both are proven to be idea factories through and through.

But "The Caves of Androzani" is his unabashed masterpiece.

We've been talking about Holmes a lot lately. Hell, this is the fourth story penned by Holmes in the past two months, but this is one that's... special. It's the only time Holmes ever wrote for the 5th Doctor and it was his last opportunity to because this is Holmes's opportunity to write a Doctor's regeneration story. Indeed, it really brings him full circle because his bursting onto the scene happened in Jon Pertwee's first story (so he did a post-regen story) after two stories of warm-up. And this is his last story before (essentially) two stories of cool-down (if you count "Trial" as one big monolithic story). It also makes Holmes relatively unique, as he's one of only three other writers (Terrence Dicks, Christopher Bidmead, and Russell T. Davies) to write both a regeneration story (that is, a story that ends in regeneration) and a post-regeneration story (that is, a story that picks up immediately after The Doctor's regeneration).

"Androzani" came about because Eric Saward (having gone back through the Doctor Who archives) became enamored with Holmes and looked for a way to get Holmes back to write a story for Doctor Who again. Somehow Holmes (who apparently thought he'd been away for long enough) and Nathan-Turner (who disliked bringing in people who had been around on the program longer than him and who could thus undermine his authority) both got on board and there was an attempt to get Holmes to write the 20th Anniversary special (what eventually became "The Five Doctors"). Holmes found the laundry list of things to include (Cybermen, a Dalek, Time Lords, Gallifrey, The Master, and Five Doctors) untenable and stepped down from scripting duties. But Saward, not wanting to let go of a good thing and desperate to get Holmes's quality into his own run on the show, managed to persuade Nathan-Turner to bring Holmes in for a different story. That story became, eventually, "The Caves of Androzani", The 5th Doctor's final story.

It's not all about Holmes, though. This story also marks the first behind-the-camera effort for Graeme Harper, who is, for my money, the best Doctor Who director of all time, and this is the first thing he'd ever directed. Ever. He'd been around the show (and other shows) as an assistant at various levels (working under Douglas Camfield at one point). If you know the name, you know for a fact this is not the last thing he directed either and that he went on to do not only "Revelation of the Daleks" but a number of stories during the David Tennant years (including the Cybermen stories in series two, "Utopia" in series three, series four's finale of "Stolen Earth/Journey's End", the exquisite "Waters of Mars", and a bunch of other programs like the BBC's most recent adaptation of Robin Hood.

But this is the first thing he ever directed, so I guess it's worth seeing if he puts his back into it and if there's any hints of a great director in here who might one day blossom into someone fantastic amazing.

I suppose I should also mention that in that Doctor Who Mighty 200 poll this came out at the very very top. So it is considered (at least as of 2009) as the fan-consensus greatest Doctor Who story ever produced. So no pressure there. That poll is basically just saying that this story is better than every single other Doctor Who story we've ever yet talked about. That's a tall order and with fifty years of television stories I'd say... well... it's worth discussing whether or not this is the best Doctor Who story ever. Granted, I know my own thoughts based on the one previous time I've watched this. I'm just wondering if this will confirm or adjust them.

So let's get to it!

Serial 140: The Two Doctors

Doctor: Colin Baker (6th Doctor), Patrick Troughton (2nd Doctor)
Companion: Peri Brown, Jamie McCrimmon

Written by: Robert Holmes
Directed by: Peter Moffat

Background & Significance: In 1985 Doctor Who turned twenty two. So it was a few years past the 20th and still a few years from the 25th. Other than that, it's not really that remarkable. Sure, I suppose it's the sole season featuring Colin Baker as The Doctor. Compared to the previous twenty two, his twenty third is positively abbreviated, so it's hard to count that in my head. This was his first proper season. Other than that, there's nothing special or remarkable about it, is there?

And yet here we are talking about a multi-Doctor crossover.

Given the rousing success with which Robert Holmes had written "The Caves of Androzani", Eric Saward was quick to hire him back for another go at some Doctor Who. John Nathan-Turner (capable of knowing how good "Androzani" was and being not unintelligent) was quick to acquiesce to the idea. So we have the return of Robert Holmes offering one of his last stories for one of the most... marmite seasons of Doctor Who ever. And he was given a laundry list of things to do: bring in the 2nd Doctor. And Jamie. And Sontarans. Oh and set it in America. We're thinking New Orleans, because that lines up with your desire to do a story about food.

It was soon changed from Seville from New Orleans because the location filming fell through. And honestly, why not Spain?

But the point stands that this story had a laundry list of things to accomplish and Holmes had three whole episodes (the equivalent of a six parter in the old, 25-minute episode days) with which to incorporate all his ideas. And is it too much? Perhaps? How does Holmes react to the violence and intensity that he helped usher in with "Androzani"? How does he handle all of these elements and how does Colin Baker do? So many thoughts. I mean, well, we haven't talked about C. Baker in a god damn age. And it'll be the last time we talk about him. Sad.

So let's get to it!

Serial 136: The Twin Dilemma

Doctor: Colin Baker (6th Doctor)
Companion: Peri Brown

Written by: Anthony Steven
Directed by: Peter Moffat

Background & Significance: Of all the stories we've thus far reviewed on this blog, none have I been more scared of discussing than "The Twin Dilemma". It's not without reason. In a Doctor Who Magazine Poll in 2009 (in which all the readers ranked every TV story ever), "The Twin Dilemma" came dead last, lower even than "Timelash" and "Time and the Rani" (which, to date are bottom of the barrel, for me anyways). As a slight aside to this, "The Twin Dilemma" is the lowest rated story on this poll, while the story that came before it ("The Caves of Androzani") was ranked the best Doctor Who story of all time. The disparity, to me, is stark. It's weird that what's considered the best Doctor Who story of all time aired finished airing just five days before what is considered the worst.

Me? Yeah. Let's go with "worst".

"The Twin Dilemma" is terribly not good. More than anything (as with, it seems, the entire Colin Baker era) there are a series of huge mistakes and truly, truly bizarre choices that do nothing but hurt not just this serial, but the era.

One of the weird choices that deserves mentioning here, because we probably won't have space to do it later: Airing this story as the final story of Davison's final season, instead of ending it with "Caves of Androzani". The intial idea, of course, was to use this story to tease the viewership with a Doctor and get them excited and talking about that Doctor in the nine month wait for the next series. They had successfully overturned the madness of Tom Baker, and now they would show you where they were going with Colin Baker. Now you'd get excited and get buzzing and talking about it and you'd come back.

That is, of course, assuming that everyone is crazy excited about this new Doctor, which we all know, in retrospect, was not the case at all.

Most tragic, perhaps, is, of course, Colin Baker. We'll talk about it more later, but going into this, I'm going to remind you, again, that Colin Baker WANTED to be The Doctor. He wanted to be awesome. He wanted to outlast Tom Baker. To add to the tragic, he wanted people to come to their love of The Doctor. He wanted to earn it, but the thought was always on his mind. It's when you hear about the fact that he specifically went for extremely elevated diction in an effort to encourage children to expand their vocabulary by looking up the words at home that just... Yeah. That sorta thing just breaks me.

But then... you watch this. And you just... you can read the writing on the wall. You can just... it feels like a joke. Surely this isn't and can't be real. I mean, they made every single wrong decision they could possibly make. They didn't honestly think this would work. Did they?

Hang on. You'll see what I mean. Because I'm not wrong. There's a lot of lessons both in this and that we should come out learning. This is the story that started the epic and tragic fall of the classic run of Doctor Who. And it's heartbreaking to watch.

So let's get to it!

Serial 142: Revelation of the Daleks

Doctor: Colin Baker (6th Doctor)
Companion: Peri Brown


Written by: Eric Saward
Directed by: Graeme Harper

Background & Significance: In a lot of ways, "Revelation of the Daleks" represents the end to a number of eras in Doctor Who. Coming at the end of Colin Baker's initial season (which is problematic, to say the very least), this story really signified an ending to the first twenty two years of Doctor Who. From here on out, Doctor Who would be on borrowed time, always under the threat of cancellation. Always with a far abbreviated season than what it was typically used to.

It's also the end culmination of four years of Eric Saward as script editor. How fitting, then, that he should be the fellow to write it.

Because the Daleks always elevated the show's ratings, Producer John Nathan-Turner sought to bring them back for another season after their success in the previous one. Despite the fact that script editors weren't allowed to commission themselves to write for their own show, Saward somehow managed to wriggle his way around the legal workings of this by writing the scripts in the six weeks leading up to the renewal of his contract as script editor for the next round of Doctor Who. It's underhanded, sure. But he wanted to write The Daleks and Davros, and he'd be damned if he'd let any other "unexperienced" writers go out and write them in his stead.

To direct, the production team brought back the excellent Graeme Harper to handle the proceedings. So that's a plus.

But really, it's just the end result of the show's direction over the course of the previous four years. It effectively kills Colin Baker as The Doctor and is his last proper televisual adventure ("Trial" is a more complicated animal and not exactly the most proper of adventures where every "week" he's somewhere new) and is the last time location shooting for the show was shot on film. Location shooting in the future would all be shot on video tape. It's also the last script written by Eric Saward and is very... Sawardian in all its proper respects. As I'm so wont to say, Doctor Who writers only ever seem to get more themier (Moffat only seems to get Moffatier just as Davies only ever seemed to get more Daviesier) and "Revelation" proves itself to be the Sawardiest script of all the scripts he ever wrote for the show.

Wonder how that'll turn out.

So let's get to it!

Serial 141: Timelash

Doctor: Colin Baker (6th Doctor)
Companion: Peri Brown


Written by: Glen McCoy
Directed by: Pennant Roberts

Editor's Note: Hello, gentle friends! Matt here saying that I have the week off but Cassandra has the unfortunate task of talking about Timelash, so I'd like to right-off-the-bat apologize to her (seriously, there's anger coming) because... well... I told her I'd give her two Colin Bakers, but by the time I realized I was doing that, this was the only one left. I'M SORRY. But that's okay, She'll be getting plenty of other good stories coming up as we continue this downhill race towards the end of this blog (which will be a sad but relieving day). No seriously, she has one in April that is just not fair. You don't even know how tempted I am to steal it from her. Or better yet I'll just blog it myself because I don't think I'd be able to resist it. And then I'll never release it. Because... I won't.

Anyways, enough blither blather. Cassandra needs to talk so she can get done with it so I'll toss the reins to her and then promise to come back next week with talk of regeneration next week with some post-regen in two. At least those are always good to talk about. I hope..



Background & Significance: So.... This story is pretty terrible. No, really, it consistently lands at the bottom of most fan polls, and if nearly everyone you talk to about it agrees that it's awful? You're probably in a lot of trouble.

The fact that it's written by a fairly new TV writer and rewritten from what was supposed to be a Dalek story doesn't help matters either. Since the parts turned out lopsided and part one ran too long with part two running too short, Eric Saward stepped in to help tweak things, and you can definitely see his handiwork all over this story (which isn't a good thing in this case).

"Timelash" is writer Glen McCoy's first and only Doctor Who story (with good reason) and director Pennant Roberts' second; Roberts previously directed "Warriors of the Deep" and the eventually-abandoned "Shada" prior to this, and Jonathan Nathan-Turner hoped that pairing together a seasoned director with the offerings of a novice writer would help improve the story, but that didn't really happen, as we're about to see.

There... isn't all that much else to say about this. Aside from it's awfulness. Again.

But enough of all that. Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Serial 137: Attack of the Cybermen

Doctor: Colin Baker (6th Doctor)
Companion: Peri Brown

Written by: "Paula Moore" (but really, Eric Saward)
Directed by: Matthew Robinson 

Background & Significance: We've talked about the controversy of the Colin Baker years plenty by this point. So know that I'm saying something when I say "Attack of the Cybermen" is one of the most controversial Colin Baker stories. Like, really really.

Colin Baker, as we all know, is probably the most widely unpopular Doctor for fans of the old series. That's terribly unfair, I think. Slap a dude with extremely weak stories amidst a new and wildly radical interpretation (which itself is dependent on slow growth over time) and of course people aren't going to like him. It's just not going to happen.

"Attack of the Cybermen" is the first story of Colin Baker's first full season. It's important to note, however, that this isn't the first Colin Baker story; it's the second. The first Colin Baker story, "The Twin Dilemma" (which we'll be talking about eventually and is widely considered to be one of, if not the, worst Doctor Who stories of all time) was tacked onto the end of Peter Davison's final season in an effort to get people warmed up to his Doctor and excited about the radical change brought about by the influx of a new Doctor.

Without going into it too much here, people hated "The Twin Dilemma" and they hated Colin Baker and they hated his portrayal of The Doctor. So now he had even more to prove moving forward and "Attack of the Cybermen" certainly couldn't have helped anything.

I'll have more thoughts as we go through, but "Attack of the Cybermen" is widely criticized for its violent content, something which I thought I could handle because I'm not exactly the squeamishest or flinchiest of persons; I've watched and relished in my fair share of violent movies, be they over the top or not. Turns out I couldn't, and you'll see why. I mean, there's a line, and "Attack of the Cybermen" WAY crosses it and people project that onto Colin Baker's Doctor, who, let's also point out, does in fact contribute to a fair amount of the violence in this.

Not only all that, but this story is also totally ghost written by script editor Eric Saward. As script editor he wasn't allowed to write any stories under the BBC guidelines, but he underhandedly weaseled his way into writing this using front men (like his then-girlfriend, but why she dated him god only knows) because he had a major major crush on the Cybermen. And the result is horrifically Sawardian in all of the worst ways. Saward, like Jonathan Nathan-Turner, is a man of ups and downs. I thank him for such gems as "The Visitation" and "Earthshock" but for every one of those there's one of these, and the stuff that's like "one of these" is rife with problems and I can't say I'm a huge fan. So ummm.... know that, I guess. Cuz I might not be kind to this story.

Honestly, this is where my (and most people's) criticisms of Saward and Producer Jonathan Nathan-Turner start because... well... it's a poster child. (For some reason they think it's a good idea to "sequelize" the great "Tomb of the Cybermen", but more on that in just a bit). All the best and worst of their eras are neatly wrapped up in this story and it's at this point that their "themness" starts to stop helping the programme (because they're "new" and "revolutionary") and start to negatively impact the stories and show they're making, especially towards Colin Baker, who should have been legendary and well-remembered but instead ends up being derided, reviled, and something of a scapegoat on all counts. It's unfortunate, because Colin Baker is SO good, especially in this, despite being in this. He's the thing that makes it better.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So let's get to it!

Serial 144: Mindwarp - The Trial of a Time Lord Part II

Doctor: Colin Baker (6th Doctor)
Companion: Peri Brown

Written by: Phillip Martin
Directed by: Chris Clough

Background & Significance: "Mindwarp" is a bit of a hard thing to talk about. Thinking about it now, it's hard for me to elucidate on all the things I have to think about without going too much into them. Maybe that's because I've changed my mind on what, exactly, I think about it since my initial viewing.

The first time I watched Mindwarp, I checked out mentally halfway through episode one when we have the re-appearance of "supposedly fan-favourite" alien Sil. Really, once you add him, the story becomes something I'm not interested in. Sil, whom you might remember from the insanely controversial "Vengeance on Varos" back in the infamous Season 22 (Colin Baker's premiere season), was a little annoying slithering alien who laughed and was "funny" and gross and... yeah. I've decided that I don't like weird alien slugs. Just don't like them. I can think of ONE time when they were used well in Doctor Who, and even then, I didn't have to look at them.

"Mindwarp" is written by "Varos" writer Phillip Martin, who was asked to contribute a story to Colin Baker's second season to bring back Sil as a returning villain (because of the popularity?) for what would have been Colin Baker's second season had the hiatus and Trial not happened, but when that season was scrapped in the face of Trial of a Time Lord, that planned story got dead. But apparently Sil was so popular they brought Martin back in for Trial with the explicit request to bring Sil back.

Martin, I find, is interested in wholly different things than I'm interested in. By my count he's done only three Doctor Who stories (the third being a Big Finish audio called "Creed of the Kromon") and all three seem to share similar qualities and interests as they relate to Martin. Unfortunately, I can't say I tend to agree with them. All three stories share forced genetic mutation (and all three to a female companion no less), suffer from stories that feel overly long, weak dialogue, and weird alien characters who are obsessed with money and capitalism.

That was my problem with this in the initial. Now, it's not so much, but there's... a reason for that. Which I will explain as we go through it.


This serial is also significant for being the final work Eric Saward contributed to the series. After this story, he quit due to "creative differences" and "hatred of JNT" and Robert Holmes's recent illness which would prove to be fatal in just a short time. The interesting thing is that most people tend to look at this era and blame JNT and while I don't think JNT is without blame... But man. I don't think that's the case.

Know how I know? Eric Saward showed his hand here. And we're going to talk about it. I recently finished watching all of Colin Baker's run in its entirety earlier this month, and I've come to a "Wow you messed up things" place when it comes to him. We'll talk about it a LOT more next year as we talk about him in the rest of Colin Baker's run, but really. In a lot of ways, this is his swansong and before reading this, I would like to remind you who it is we're dealing with. Check out his infamous post-departure interview he gave. That is Saward.

And oh boy do I just want to talk about him a bit.

If "The Mysterious Planet" explored a story from The Doctor's past, "Mindwarp" explores a story from The Doctor's immediate[ish] present. So let's... yeah. Let's go through this story. It's a doozy and a long one, but I think it gives rise to some solid discussion. Hope you like it.

So let's get to it!

Serial 143: The Mysterious Planet - The Trial of a Time Lord Part I

Doctor: Colin Baker (6th Doctor)
Companion: Peri Brown

Written by: Robert Holmes
Directed by: Nicholas Mallett

Background & Significance: I like ending things with a nice flourish. There's nothing so wrong with some cool events. This past summer it was The Key to Time. For the holiday break, we get to talk about another significant event-story in Doctor Who history. So for the next two weeks (that's two posts a week for y'all. Happy Winter indeed) we're going to talk about a highly debated and strangely controversial Doctor Who story: The Trial of a Time Lord. But first! A little background:

At the end of Colin Baker’s controversial first season, BBC head honcho guy Michael Grade leveled his sights at Doctor Who and took the first shot he could at a show that had fallen considerably in the ratings in the previous several years. He thought the show was silly and stupid and started talking about cancelling it.

The start of this, we’ll talk about more when we get to Colin Baker’s first story “The Twin Dilemma” sometime later next year, but after a full season of odd choices including making The Doctor wantonly unlikeable (which I find a plus because it’s a bold, bold move), moving the tone into a noticeably darker and more-typical-of-the-80s sadistic nihilism (see "Vengeance on Varos" and others), and changing the format into something no one knew how to handle, it’s not hard to see why people started jumping ship. The show had gotten weak and weird and strange and was a far cry (in the span of a season, no less) from the rollicking adventures of Peter Davison just a year earlier and Tom Baker just a few before that.

As such, Grade threatened cancellation and producer Jonathan Nathan-Turner took to the streets to drum up support for Doctor Who. You can’t cancel the thing. It’s been on the air for twenty two years. It’d be like cancelling a long running soap opera and staple of British TV. Fortunately, somehow, Nathan-Turner managed to stay the cancellation with a lot of help from the fans and turn it into an eighteen month hiatus.

It was a hiatus from which the show would never recover.

Now I'll be honest with you right up front. I think the concept for Trial is a bit melodramatic. The entire concept of the The Doctor on Trial comes directly from the current state of the show at the BBC because, in the mind of still-producer Jonathan Nathan-Turner, Doctor Who really was on trial. As such, I really do think it's a bit of a melodramatic concept to insert into the show. "Oh woe is us! Behold The Doctor's slow fall back to Earth as the once great show slowly falls from the graces of everyone" JNT cries, completely ignoring all the little things he did to help the show reach this point over the course of Colin Baker's run to this point (some of which we've touched upon earlier in this year, the rest of which we'll end up discussing in the coming one).

That said? Putting The Doctor on trial is a really awesome idea. As a concept, The Trial of a Time Lord has captured my imagination for quite a long time. Once I became aware of the classic series and started flipping through the collections in my local Best Buy, I remember seeing the boxsets for Trial and being completely obsessed with the concept of putting The Doctor on Trial for an entire season. And by The Time Lords no less. All of that was positively enthralling to me, but maybe that's because I love courtroom drama and never found it in my interest to avidly watch Law & Order.

But enough about my hang ups. What about the story itself?

Trial of a Time Lord is an interesting story to talk about. For one thing, it marks the dissolution of Nathan-Turner's since-first-season-of-Davison partnership with his script editor Eric Saward. It's also the swansong for the derided and notoriously unpopular Colin Baker. And it's also the last thing Robert Holmes ever worked on.

Now I know we've spent a lot of time here loving on the late great Robert Holmes (and there's plenty more opportunities to come), but it's interesting that this serial is not only the last thing Holmes ever completed for Doctor Who, but the last two episodes of Trial was the last thing Holmes ever worked on before his death. As such, it's a definite crux of the classic series if you ask me. After this, there would be a new Doctor, a new script editor, and one of the shining beacons of Doctor Who would be gone forever. Trial is the start of a four-year road to Doctor Who's inevitable cancellation in 1989 and represents a significant turning point for what was once a gem in the BBC's crown as, by this point, the show had become almost universally criticized and reviled.

Trial became everyone's attempt to re-capture the hearts and minds of every Doctor Who fan out there. Everyone on board needed to make a concerted effort to turn out the best show they possibly could. But could they really win over everyone? After an entire season of showing off a Doctor no one really enjoyed on some weird, dark, nightmarish perversion of such a beloved show, was it possible to turn the ship around and return Doctor Who to its glory days?

The simple answer? No. But I think that's... well... We'll talk about that as we go on because it's definitely important and meriting of discussion.

The story itself is split into four acts and based on the structure of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", with acts one, two, and three, relating stories from The Doctor's past, present, and future (respectively) and the final, fourth act functioning as an epilogue to wrap up The Doctor's current situation, the Trial, and what exactly is going on with the mysterious Time Lord prosecutor: The Valeyard.

All of that we'll cover as we look at this story extensively over the next two weeks, but for now, let's just relish in what we have and celebrate two truly remarkable elements of greatness lost as a result of this Trial storyline: Colin Baker and Robert Holmes.

So let's get to it!

Serial 139: The Mark of the Rani

Doctor: Colin Baker (6th Doctor)
Companion: Peri Brown

Written by: Pip and Jane Baker
Directed by: Sarah Hellings

Background & Significance: If you treat The Doctor as a superhero (and he is, in a lot of ways, a superhero), you'd notice that his Rogues Gallery is oddly limited.

His A-List bad guys would be Daleks, Cybermen, and The Master (Batman corollaries: The Joker, Two-Face, The Penguin, etc.). His B-listers would be something along the lines of Silurians, Sontarans, and Autons (Batman corollaries: Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, The Scarecrow...), and his C-listers would perhaps be Omega and The Black Guardian (For Batman: Mr Zzazz, Man-Bat, Killer Croc... etc.)

Let's face it, The Doctor's enemies, while compelling, have a very low rate of re-occurrence unless they're A-listers. (The Autons alone have made only three appearances in the show over the course of the series' almost fifty year run, which is a shame because I recently decided that I freaking love the Autons. But we'll talk about them eventually).

"The Mark of the Rani" is an attempt to forge a new recurring villain for The Doctor to face. In essence (spoilers for what you're about to read) she's an evil female Time Lord, bent on her own diabolical and selfish ends. In a way, she's like The Master, but female.

The first I'd heard of The Rani was a Russell T Davies interview about the hand that picks up The Master's ring at the end of the modern series' "Last of the Time Lords", in which he laughed and balked that it was her. That both livened my spirits and depressed me at the same time. Why is he laughing at The Rani? Shouldn't she be a major presence in the show's mythology? A huge deal? I mean I know that it didn't come about at the most opportune time (post Davison, when the show started to decline in term of viewership and popularity in the face of Colin Baker's radical (and awesome) take on The Doctor), but that doesn't mean she's worthy of scorn or dismissal.

So here's what I want you to think about as we go into this.

Why is The Rani such a failure, especially because she's such a good concept? Why was it such a poor execution, and where does said poor execution start?

I'll answer that last bit right now: From minute one.

So let's get to it!

Serial 138: Vengeance on Varos

Doctor: Colin Baker (6th Doctor)
Companions: Peri Brown

Written by: Philip Martin
Directed by: Ron Jones

Background & Significance: Peter Davison, fearing typecasting, left Doctor Who after three well-regarded seasons. Realizing his popularity, and knowing that they, again, would have to do something a bit different, Jonathan Nathan-Turner (the producer from Tom Baker's last season through the show's ultimate cancellation in 1989) decided to cast then-well-known television actor Colin Baker.

Colin Baker's era was particularly infamous. Perhaps most well-known for its darker stories and Colin Baker's completely outlandish costume (more on that a bit later), the series, at this point, had begun to show the signs of both age and disregard.

And I find that rather sad.

In a lot of ways, this is completely grounded and understandable. Doctor Who was entering its 22nd season, and those in charge of the BBC etc. found it outdated and were looking for something new. Not only that, but Colin Baker was a radical take on The Doctor (more on this later), one who was not nearly so likable as his predecessors. The audience got alienated. This wasn't the same guy who had been around for the past twenty years... Which is ironic, because The Sixth Doctor was the same guy, just different.

And perhaps that's a bit unfair, but it's also quite true. Not every incarnation is going to work for everyone. The truth is (as we shall see), The Sixth Doctor was a DIFFICULT Doctor to like. He wasn't as immediately likable as ANY of the other Doctors. But his portrayal isn't about likability. It's about "who is this guy?"

Unfortunately, the writers didn't really have any idea how to write for him. They just saw cold nihilist, so the stories became exceptionally bleak and dark. "Vengeance on Varos" is a story specifically cited for its extremely violent and dark content, and that's completely undeniable (as we soon shall see).

Also interesting to note: this serial (like "The Visitation") is not "remarkable" in any specific way. No Daleks, no Cybermen, no Master, no multiple Doctors, no Gallifreyans. Just a Doctor and Companion get in over their heads and have to deal.

Let's get to it!