#7 (22.12 - 22.13): Revelation of the Daleks.

Davros (Terry Molloy), taunts the Doctor.

2 episodes. Approx. 90 minutes. Written by: Eric Saward. Directed by: Graeme Harper. Produced by: John Nathan Turner.


THE PLOT

The planet Necros is home to Tranquil Repose, a facility in which people with enough money and status have themselves stored in suspended animation until a cure is found for their assorted diseases. The Doctor and Peri have come because Arthur Stengos (Alec Linstead), a professor and friend of the Doctor's, has died and his services are to be held at Tranquil Repose.

But something isn't right here. The two have barely arrived before being attacked by a hideous mutant, a pathetic figure who croaks about the experiments of "The Great Healer" before he dies. A great wall separates the outside from the facility within: A wall with no door. Inside, Jobel (Clive Swift), the chief embalmer, prepares for the funeral of the President's wife, even as the staff worries that Tranquil Repose's best days are behind it.

Meanwhile, the wealthy Kara (Eleanor Bron) has hired the infamous assassin Orcini (William Gaunt). Orcini is a former Knight of the Order of Oberon, and he has dreamed of ending his career with an honorable kill to make him feel like a knight once again. Kara has such a kill for him. On Necros, at the heart of Tranquil Repose, the Great Healer resides. But the Great Healer has another name, one he refuses to use on an open channel. That name... is Davros!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Much has been made about the Doctor's limited screentime in this story. Perhaps too much, given that he does have a sizable role in Part Two. But instead of focusing on the size of the part, I'd like to observe just how much Colin Baker does with it. His performance is noticeably softer and more subdued than in most of the rest of the season. In a fairly typical "bickering" bit at the start, he avoids delivering his lines as barbs, even responding to Peri's question about whether the local animals bite by putting a note of sympathy in his voice as he says, "Only each other." Even when confronting Davros, Colin remains subdued, showing as much with a glance at a dead body as with his voice. It's very good work, one that stands in stark contrast to his reputation in some circles as "the shouty Doctor."

Peri: Nicola Bryant is also more restrained here than in previous stories, which leads me to think director Graeme Harper was pushing the actors to embrace the funereal atmosphere. Her interactions with the Doctor continue to show that, for all the spikiness, these two are quite fond of each other. When she thinks the Doctor is dead, Jobel asks if the Doctor was a friend. Unhesitantly, she says he was "the best." When they are reunited at the story's end, the Doctor immediately expresses sympathy to Peri for the death of a friend she made in the course of the story.

Davros: "He sits like a spider at the heart of this planet, using the money he extorts from us to rebuild his disgusting creatures." Davros is the dark heart of this story. He lurks, watching the interactions of those who work at Tranquil Repose. Like any group, there are weaknesses, imbalances, and Davros pushes at the weakness of Tasambeker (Jenny Tomasin) at just the right moment to make her do her worst. He doesn't even have any real purpose: It simply provides a diversion while salving his wounded ego. When he's done, he disposes of Tasambeker like a child might do to a used-up and broken toy. Terry Molloy's performance is the best of his three televised showings (bettered only by the Big Finish audio story, Davros); he dominates the proceedings with a gloriously malevolent glee.


THOUGHTS

Doctor Who's final serial before the infamous 18-month hiatus that would cripple the show, that makes this the final classic Who story that was made when the series was  still at full strength. Thankfully, this is no "so-bad-it's-funny" runaround, but rather a meticulously-crafted, wonderfully shot piece that demonstrates that this series was far from the tired husk its fiercest critics made it out to be.

Revelation has an ambitious script, the most ambitious of Eric Saward's writing efforts by a considerable margin. Saward does an enormously good job of making Tranquil Repose into a place that feels convincing and real. The personalities of the egotistical Jobel (Clive Swift), the fawning Tasambeker (Jenny Tomasin) and the stable and steady Takis (Trevor Cooper) feel right, not just as characters in their own right, but as characters who fit into this setting and who fit in their relationships with each other.

The structure is made up of strands: Character pairs and interactions that form a tapestry as we see them building on each other, even when they don't directly intersect. Like everything about this serial, this structure is ambitious: Jobel and Tasambeker's strand has no connection with Orcini's story, and both characters only lightly brush up against the Doctor and Peri. But all of the strands feel like parts of the same whole, because they all "fit" within the setting.

I'm generally no fan of Eric Saward's, but this is his best work and shows that he did have some real ability. No punches are pulled - This is Season 22 at its purest, with black comedy and grim horror co-existing to ghoulish effect. It also gets an incredible boost from director Graeme Harper, who constantly finds ways to keep things visually interesting within his meticulously framed shots. Whether by color schemes emphasizing the coldness of Kara (Eleanor Bron)'s ship, or by color tints on the lighting, or by smoke in the frame, there's almost always something to push the visual element and keep the action dynamic. This is one of the best-looking stories of the classic series, with very little here that invites the viewer to laugh at the cheapness.

Harper's direction emphasizes the greatest strength of Saward's script: The atmosphere. The cold and somber mood of a funeral home in decline. That atmosphere can be felt in every scene, every performance. More than any other element, the craftsmanship behind the camera pushes this from simply being a good story into being a great one.


Rating: 10/10.

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#6 (22.10 - 22.11): Timelash.

The Doctor confronts The Borad (Paul Ashby).

2 episodes. Approx. 90 minutes. Written by: Glen McCoy. Directed by: Pennant Roberts. Produced by: John Nathan Turner.


THE PLOT

The TARDIS's course is diverted by a Time Corridor, which brings it to the planet Karfel. The Doctor has visited Karfel before, when his interventioned saved the planet, and he expects to be greeted as a welcome visitor.

Things have changed on Karfel. The planet is under the rule of the Borad (Robert Ashby), a genius scientist who has diverted all the planet's resources into his time research. The fruit of the research is the Timelash, an unstable time corridor which acts as an execution method for any who oppose the Borad's rule.

The Borad has targeted the Doctor to become the Timelash's next victim. But for Peri, he has another fate in mind. She is to become his unwilling bride!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: The early TARDIS scenes see Colin Baker at his worst. Admittedly, these scenes are dreadful on the page. But instead of trying to act against the Doctor's boorish behavior, Colin embraces it - making him as unlikable as he's ever been! Once the Doctor and Peri have reached Karfel, his performance improves tremendously. He shows his softest and most compassionate side when interacting with Vena, and is genuinely commanding when he and the rebels take control of the Timelash in Part Two. Still, while there's no denying his enthusiasm, this is almost certainly Colin's weakest television performance in the role.

Peri: In bondage! Seriously - she spends a great deal of this story being taken captive, tied up, recaptured, yanked around with a bondage collar, attached by that collar to piping, and being menaced by a monster that looks like a giant penis. Easily the character's weakest story, though Nicola Bryant struggles gamely to invest some spark into her rather pathetic material.


THOUGHTS

Timelash is one of a handful of serials often cited as "the worst story ever!" It is certainly badly-made. It's glaringly obvious that this is the season cheapie, as guest actors in cheap quasi-Roman costumes wander around barely-adorned floodlit white stage sets. The Timelash itself is, infamously, a bit of tinsel, with the inside of the Timelash even more howlingly cheap-looking than the outside. Doctor Who was always a series made on a shoestring, but most stories worked to look as good possible within those limitations. This one looks like something that should be accompanied by a Tom Servo/Crow T. Robot commentary.

The story's single biggest problem isn't production, however. It's padding. This is another Season 22 story in which the Doctor and Peri don't get involved until more than halfway through the first 45-minute episode. The solution? To pad out the first half of Episode One with TARDIS scenes that are, if possible, even more painful than the ones in Vengeance on Varos. First the Sixth Doctor acts like more of an ass to Peri than he ever has before (even when he was insane and strangling her), then he wrestles with messes of wires and uses safety belts (but no chairs). Better to have just held the Doctor's introduction until the point at which the story called for him.

The story structure is actually reasonable enough, with each major story beat leading to the next. But it's clear early on that there isn't enough plot here for 90 minutes... and the story runs out completely a little over halfway through Episode Two. The Doctor confronts and defeats the Borad at about the 27 minute mark, leaving almost twenty full minutes to go. We then get an extended "comedy" scene in which he takes the TARDIS to intercept a missile heading toward Karfel, followed by a second climax in which the Borad comes back to life so that the Doctor can defeat him all over again - in a way that's much less dramatic than the first time around.

Given the shift to 45-minute episodes, I'm at a loss as to why this wasn't streamlined into a one-parter. Cut the early TARDIS scenes, make the Borad's first defeat the final one, and tighten some of the scenes in between, and this would be an ideal single-part story. As it stands, that last twenty minutes kills what had up to that point been an entertaining (if badly made) yarn.

There are some bright spots. Paul Darrow, as the evil Tekker, manages to be wooden and hammy at the same time. It's such a gleefully bad performance, it gives the serial a considerable shot in the arm for most of its run. Darrow is having so much fun chomping on the scenery that it becomes infectious.

His performance is a perfect illustration of why I don't think Timelash can rank among the series' worst: Namely, while it may be objectively terrible, it's also rather fun. It's true that some of the fun comes from laughing at the bad acting, sets, and general cheapness. But the combination of execution that is bad enough to be amusing and story structure that is competent enough to maintain dramatic shape keeps this very watchable, putting it well above such fare as Underworld, Time-Flight, or Time and the Rani, in my view.

So: Cheap, objectively bad, but kind of fun in spite (and in part because) of that. If it weren't for the whole thing running out of gas halfway through Part Two, this would probably be a solid "5." Even with that dead space that is the last twenty minutes, I still find Timelash to be a fair notch better than its reputation, even if it isn't ultimately very good.


Rating: 4/10.

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#5 (22.7 - 22.9): The Two Doctors.

The Doctor (Colin Baker) tries to rescue
his earlier self (Patrick Troughton).

3 episodes.  Approx. 133 minutes. Written by: Robert Holmes. Directed by: Peter Moffatt. Produced by: John Nathan Turner.


THE PLOT

The Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and his companion, Jamie (Frazer Hines), are on a mission for the Time Lords. It's a simple diplomatic affair. The Doctor is to meet with station head Dastari (Laurence Payne) to ask him to suspend some time experiments - something which doesn't please Dastari one bit. The negotiations are already going badly when the station suddenly comes under attack by Sontarans.

Feeling ripples of the attack on his earlier, the Sixth Doctor decides to visit the station. He and Peri arrive to discover the effects of the massacre. Everyone is dead - save for Jamie, who escaped into the station infrastructure. They learn that the Second Doctor was kidnapped by Dastari, and follow the trail to modern-day Spain, just outside Seville. That is when they discover the real architect of this plot: Chessene (Jacqueline Pearce), an Androgum - a race driven entirely by their drive for sensual pleasures. Chessene has been genetically engineered to genius level, and is now manipulating Dastari, the Sontarans, and her fellow Androgum, Shockeye (John Stratton) in an attempt to gain power over the whole of creation!


CHARACTERS

The Sixth Doctor: This script is a particularly good match for Colin Baker, with Robert Holmes' florid dialogue a perfect fit for the actor's theatrical tendencies. There's what seems to be a ham-fisted moment in Episode Two, in which the Doctor imparts exposition to Jamie just in time to overheard by Field Marshall Stike... which Episode Three then reveals was deliberate on the Doctor's part; he noticed Stike's approach, and so he decided to say what he did to push the Sontaran into action. Therefore, Holmes' script tailors this most theatrical of Doctors to actually give a performance for the benefit of his enemy.

The Second Doctor: The last of Patrick Troughton's three returns to the series and, in my opinion, the best. In the multi-Doctor anniversary specials during the Pertwee and Davison eras, Troughton was certainly fun to watch and gave his scenes a boost with his energy. But when I watch The Three Doctors or The Five Doctors, I can never escape the sense that Troughton is playing a caricature, a send-up of what people remember his Doctor being like. He was rarely as purely comical as the character we saw in those specials. The script to The Two Doctors does seem to have mixed up Doctors Two and Three a bit (the Second Doctor working for the Time Lords, for instance), but it is the only of Troughton's returns that allows him to play both his Doctor's comical and serious sides.

Peri: The Sixth Doctor/Peri partnership has settled in nicely by this time. The two bicker, but it seems clear to me while watching that the two characters are genuinely fond of each other. Even in the midst of arguing on the space station, the Doctor pauses to lay a comforting hand on Peri's shoulder, for example. Peri also shows a basic, person-to-person compassion both Doctors lack. After Oscar's murder, the two Doctors bundle out of the restaurant and start arguing about which way they should go. Peri lingers a moment to comfort Anita, then angrily quiets them.

Jamie: This story was made almost two decades after Frazer Hines' time as a regular, and the years definitely show. Still, Hines' performance is a good one. He and Troughton recapture their chemistry instantly, and the interplay between the Second Doctor and Jamie in the opening sequence is a joy to watch. He also plays well opposite Colin Baker, to the point that I think it's actually a shame Jamie doesn't stick around with the Sixth Doctor and Peri at the end of the story - The dynamic works among the three characters, and the way in which Jamie casually pokes at the Doctor's ego when he falls down a rickety ladder is a wonderfully relaxed counterpoint to the more strident Doctor/Peri bickering.

Shockeye: Of the many pleasures I find in this story, John Stratton's Shockeye is the greatest. Shockeye, the Androgum chef, may be the series' single greatest example of Douglas Adams' description of the perfect Doctor Who villain: He's initially hilarious because of the ridiculous things he says, then monstrous as you come to realize that he means every word he says. His desire to eat a human begins as a whim, then builds to an all-encompassing obsession. For the first two episodes, his antics are largely comical, albeit darkly. Then he turns frightening. The effective Episode Two cliffhanger sees him looming over Peri, hands outstretched, intoning, "Pretty, pretty," in eager anticipation of his next meal. He becomes progressively more violent from there, until he is finally chasing a wounded Sixth Doctor through the fields, determined to kill him and probably eat him when he's done.


THOUGHTS

The Two Doctors is an often criticized story, and not without reason. The 45-minute format of Season 22 required this story to be a 3-parter, which is at least half an episode too long. This results in some pacing issues, and some general structural messiness.

The worst of the padding is in the slow-paced opening episode, which sees far too much time devoted to the Sixth Doctor and Peri evading the space station's automated defenses while picking their way through the station infrastructure. These scenes really aren't bad. But given that this material is only peripherally related to the main action, it's ridiculous that the characters are still there for a good chunk of Episode Two. Peter Moffatt's direction is too stagy to make up for the lagging pace with atmosphere, and the Episode One cliffhanger is one of the limpest of the entire series.

Add in an irritating guest character (James Saxon's imbecilic Oscar Botcheby). Then mix in some structural issues, many of them the result of the producer-imposed presence of the Sontarans in a story that simply doesn't require them. It becomes easy to see why The Two Doctors comes in for criticism.

So why do I enjoy it so much?

I do enjoy this story a lot. Though not the best televised Sixth Doctor adventure, it is nevertheless my favorite one.  It's also by far my favorite multi-Doctor story. And while the cast certainly deserve a share of the credit for that, the main reasons I enjoy it come back to the same source as the flaws: Robert Holmes' script.


OF POETRY AND PROSE

Robert Holmes has always been a writer who has enjoyed painting pictures with words. This is one reason, I think, why his scripts tend to stand out in classic Who. The show rarely had much money for visual splendor - but at his best, Holmes had a knack for creating that same feel with language.

The Two Doctors may be structurally flawed, but the language of its script is rich and resonant. Holmes stuffs his characters' mouths with words that evoke so much. Take the Sixth Doctor's musing about the scent of decay:

"That is the smell of death, Peri. Ancient musk, heavy in the air. Fruit-soft flesh peeling from white bones. The unholy, unburiable smell of Armageddon. Nothing quite so evocative as one's sense of smell, is there?"


Then there are Shockeye's many asides about the flavor and preparation of meat. Or the Second Doctor, in Androgum mode, describing for Shockeye the benefits of enjoying an appetizer before diving into the main course:

"One should begin with a light dish, something to bring relish to the appetite: Pate de foie gras de Strasbourg en croute, for instance, or a serving of Belon oysters. Even a light salad with artichoke hearts and country ham will suffice. It gets the digestive juices flowing!"

Only during Oscar's "definitive Hamlet" speech does the flowery language fall flat. Most of the poetic lines go to Colin Baker, Patrick Troughton, or John Stratton. And when these actors are embracing Robert Holmes at his most vivid, the plot ceases to matter - The language itself soars, creating something that's a genuine pleasure just to sit back and listen to.


THE OPENING SEQUENCE

Nor is all the plotting as bad as I've made out. I've already mentioned the structural flaws, most of them caused by overlength. So now let me praise the serial's opening scenes, whose structural tightness shows that Holmes still had all his storytelling instincts fully intact.

The script tidily sets the pieces on the board all within this sequence. The characters - Dastari, Shockeye, Chessene, and the Sontarans. Shockeye's overriding desire to eat human flesh, Jamie's in particular. The time experiments. Dastari's enhancing of Chessene, and Chessene's relationship with Shockeye. Virtually every piece of what follows is either seen or mentioned in these opening scenes, which also manage to find time for some amusing Troughton/Hines interplay.


THEME

A final word for the way the script plays with theme. Thematic resonance isn't something you find much of in classic Who, but Holmes' script is stuffed with it. It's fairly well-known that Holmes, a vegetarian, wanted to color his script as anti-meat, hence scenes such as Shockeye detailing the treatment of animals bred for slaughter or "tenderizing" a screaming Jamie while telling Dastari that primitive humans "don't feel pain the same way you or I do."

But, intentionally or not, the various characters are bound together by a theme of obsession. Every one of the villains is driven by an obsession. Dastari is obsessed with Chessene, and so has enhanced her to a genius intellect in order to "set her among the gods!" Chessene is obsessed with power, with making the Androgums the dominant species in the galaxy. Field Marshall Stike is obsessed with turning the tide of the Sontarans' war agains the Rutans by using time travel technology. Their obsessions bind them together to destroy the space station, to blame that on the Time Lords, and to kidnap the Doctor. But as their agendas start to conflict, the obsessive focus each places on his or her own goals leads to conflict and ultimately betrayal.

By contrast with the others, Shockeye's obsession with the purely sensual (specifically with eating, though it's clear that the sexual overtones in his menacing of both Peri and Jamie are not accidental) seems almost pure and simple. Which doesn't make it any less brutal. Even as the Sontarans literally self-destruct, even as Chessene turns on Dastari, Shockeye remains intent on sating his appetite for flesh. In this, he has other mirrors in the story: The Doctor's flirtation with fishing, Oscar's obsession with his moths which he kills in order to preserve and admire. Shockeye takes their actions to a new and horrifying level - one which puts the Doctor straight off meat at the story's end, as he agrees with Peri to embrace a "vegetarian diet for both of us."


OVERALL

This is one of those stories, much like Logopolis, where I'm very torn as to my final rating. As with that story, there are clear narrative flaws that keep this from being a "10," much as I might like it to be. The story is clearly overlong and is structurally sloppy. But it's so entertaining as it alternates from comedy to horror to horror that is blackly comedic. Holmes' script is among his most purely literate, and his language often soars above the messy plot and pedestrian direction.

My head says "7," my heart says "9." So I'm going to do the most reasonable thing and split the difference.


Rating: 8/10.

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#4 (22.5 - 22.6): The Mark of the Rani

2 episodes. Written by: Pip & Jane Baker. Directed by: Sarah Hellings.  Produced by: John Nathan Turner.


THE PLOT

The TARDIS is drawn off-course, materializing in a 19th-century mining community. Here, the Doctor is pleased to learn that the genius engineer, George Stephenson (Gawn Grainger), is hosting a meeting of some of the most brilliant scientific minds of the age.

But there is evil lurking within this village. A renegade Time Lord scientist known as the Rani (Kate O'Mara) has set up shop in the town bathhouse, using the miners to extract a fluid from the brain, and leaving them paranoid and murderously aggressive afterwards. Lord Ravensworth (Terence Alexander), the owner of the mine, believes these are simply Luddite rioters. And an extra complication is about to be added. Because the Doctor has been drawn to this point by his old enemy, the Master (Anthony Ainley). The Master has chosen this community as the site of his final battleground with the Doctor. If he has his way, the Rani will be his ally - whether she likes it or not.


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Colin Baker gives his most relaxed and confident performance yet. He is very protective of Peri, repeatedly trying to get her to stay back from danger even when he's in imminent danger. The "rudeness" that tends to be associated with the Sixth Doctor is still there, but he doesn't come across as deliberately unpleasant.  He's simply focused on the puzzle, and doesn't have time for social niceties.

Peri: Has taken to filling in the social niceties the Doctor forgets, such as when she darts back to thank the driver, or when she smoothes relations between the Doctor and Ravensworth. The writers actually remember Peri's botany background, and use it. In Part One, she reflects on how various farming advances will cause much of the vegetation around them to be gone by her time, while in Part Two she is drawn into the Master and the Rani's trap by going off with Luke to find herbs for a sedative.  All of this makes for the best characterization Peri has received since the Sixth Doctor's introduction.

The Master: Anthony Ainley's early performances as the Master were very good, with his Master being both extremely dangerous and unstable.  Ainley's actually still rather good, but his Master has become strictly one-note at this point. He disguises himself a scarecrow for no real reason save that in any Master story of this era, he must disguise himself at some point. His obsession with the Doctor has reduced itself to a desire to kill him. It no longer has to be due to his own cleverness. If he can get the Rani to do it for him, or even the Rani's frenzied victims, then that's perfectly fine by him. Oh, and he even kills a dog at one point - though he manages to not go "Mwuh-ha-ha!" when he does so.

The Rani: In her debut story, the Rani is more than just a female Master. She is a scientist with no scruples, not so much evil as amoral. She has a goal - gaining the chemicals in the miners' brains - and is determined to achieve it. The vendetta between the Doctor and the Master is an inconvenience. She allies with the Master because it's the best alternative open to her, but she clearly despises him. "He'd get dizzy if he tried to walk in a straight line," she observes of his endless convoluted schemes. Kate O'Mara is quite good, and both characterization and performance lead me to wonder what this character might have become if return appearances had happened under more favorable conditions.


ALTERNATE SOUNDTRACK

On this viewing, I chose to watch Part One using the originally-commissioned "alternative soundtrack" by John Lewis. This score is wonderful when establishing the village and/or the miners, though it should be said that in the "science fiction" scenes with the Rani, the music becomes self-conscious and draws too much attention to itself. Despite this, I do prefer the Lewis soundtrack overall to the competent but generic Jonathan Gibbs score that was ultimately used.


THOUGHTS

There is much to like about The Mark of the Rani. Doctor Who's production values tended to be at their best in historical pieces, and that proves to be the case here. The coal mining community is visually convincing, and the historical context of the Luddite riots creates a solid backdrop for the story.  Relatively little explanation is given as to who George Stephenson is for those who don't already know, but this is not a major impediment to enjoying the story.

Sarah Hellings' direction is fluid and visually confident. Both she and writers Pip and Jane Baker (in their first script for the series) use the opening sequence to provide a solid sense of the geography. We know where the village is, we know where the mine is. When the Doctor and Peri arrive, they walk through a wooded area to reach the village, further establishing the physical layout. This means that, when the action comes, we know how all the major settings connect. There are a number of lovely visual touches, from the opening crane shots to a simple but effective rack-focus shot that shifts emphasis from a spider-web in the foreground to the Doctor in the background. It's a pity Hellings did not do more work for the series after this.

Pip and Jane Baker are often slated as Who writers, to an extent that I often think is out of proportion to their actual weaknesses. In their debut Who script, they write reasonably well for all the lead characters, and give solid sketches for the major guest roles. The story is well-paced, with the Doctor and Peri getting involved in the story fairly quickly, and with the relationship between the Doctor and Peri written quite well.

Still, it must be said that the only major thing wrong with this serial is the script. The story's well-directed, well-acted, visually lovely, even quite well-paced. All that's missing, to paraphrase Leonard Maltin, is a plot. The Rani is draining brain fluid from miners, the Master shows up and blackmails her into helping him kill the Doctor, and the Doctor stops them. That's really about it. There's a lot of build-up involving a meeting of scientists... but the meeting never happens within the story, nor do we ever see the Master or the Rani doing anything about it. Neither Master nor Rani has any further hidden plot. She just wants brain fluid; he just wants to kill the Doctor. It's all very watchable, even if the Rani's tree-trap is one of the stupidest set pieces I've yet encountered in these reviews. But the story has the opposite problem of Attack of the Cybermen. There just isn't anything there, other than a string of fairly mild set pieces.

Though it's mild and under-plotted, the story is genuinely enjoyable. Colin is a much more immediately engaging Doctor than audience reception at the time would have one believe.  The story itself may be a very mild triumph of style over substance, but it is a pleasant way to pass 90 minutes.

Torn between a "5" and a "6," I'll tilt this just barely toward the slightly-higher score.


Rating: 6/10.

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#3 (22.3 - 22.4): Vengeance on Varos

2 episodes. Written by: Philip Martin. Directed by: Ron Jones.  Produced by: John Nathan Turner.


THE PLOT

The TARDIS is out of fuel. The Doctor uses emergency reserves to take he and Peri to the planet Varos, the one place that mines the rare mineral Zeiton-7, which is used to fuel time and spacecraft.

Varos is in the midst of its own problems. The governor (Martin Jarvis) is attempting to negotiate with the grasping Sil (Neil Shabin) to sell their minerals at a price that will raise living conditions on Varos. What the governor asks is still far below the value Sil would get out of it... but Sil is not satisfied, and seems intent on stalling until the governor is voted out of office. On Varos, such votes inevitably prove fatal.

The Doctor arrives in the midst of Varos' form of "entertainment." Jondar (Jason Connery), a former guard who has been denounced as a rebel, is about to be executed. Rescuing him immediately makes the Doctor and Peri into targets. As they traverse the Punishment Dome and its many varied horrors, their progress is viewed by the governor, the guards, and Sil (indeed, by all of Varos). Sil, worried about the possibility of a corporate rival, wants the strangers dead. The governor, needing a popular vote to stay alive, wants them captured or killed so he can be seen to be putting down insurrection.

All of which means that a single wrong turn by the Doctor and his friends could prove fatal!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Doesn't push anyone into an acid bath, no matter what fan legend may insist. What may be slightly more disturbing than the false acid bath issue is his rigging of the laser, creating a fatal booby trap for a guard before he even knows that Jondar is innocent. For all the Doctor knows, he might be helping a monstrous criminal to escape, while rigging that laser to kill a perfectly decent human being.

That aside, this is the best story yet for the 6th Doctor. Though Colin Baker's more, um, theatrical tendencies drag down the (poorly-written) early TARDIS scenes, his performance sparkles once he and Peri arrive on Varos. From his use of the execution laser to free Jondar, to his insistence on everyone closing their eyes as he leads them through The Purple Zone, to his wonderful nonchalance during his faked "execution" in Part Two, this story sees a Doctor who is proactive, keenly observant, and clever. Colin has expressed a strong appreciation for this script, and he does seem to be having great fun. Most of all, this story sees him properly the Doctor, far more so than either of his first two serials.

Peri: Nicola Bryant has developed a strong working rapport with Colin by this point. Moments, such as the two of them leaning out of the corner to greet the guard, or the relieved hug they share when reunited near the story's end, show them very much in sync. This story gives Peri relatively little to do, but Bryant plays her part well. Her character feels more fully-formed here than in Attack of the Cybermen, particularly when she gets some quite decent scenes opposite Martin Jarvis in the second half.

Sil: Neil Shabin's Sil is the first truly memorable alien creation of the Colin Baker era. He is the monstrous face of the most grotesque aspects of capitalism. None of the good elements - Sil doesn't represent ingenuity or inspiration, he doesn't represent entrepreneurship. He is just a parasite. Perching, slug-like and near-immobile, he gains pleasure from watching the suffering of others, laughing his inimitably reptilian laugh at the mere thought of the pain or ruin of those whose existence he finds inconvenient. Shabin revels in the character, and it's quite easy to see why a return for Sil was commissioned almost immediately.


THOUGHTS

Well, it's finally happened. Three stories in, and the Colin Baker era manages to deliver a genuinely good story. I enjoyed The Twin Dilemma far more than its reputation, but it was more a case of "fun tackiness" than anything else. Attack of the Cybermen, though extremely well-made, was largely dreadful.

Vengeance on Varos has a genuinely clever script, with a harshly satiric core that has actually gained in relevance since its broadcast. In today's atmosphere of nonstop reality television, including shows that trade on their contestants' humiliation, Varos suddenly doesn't seem all that far away.

There may not be quite enough story to fill 90 minutes.  This results in the shockingly poor TARDIS padding scenes in the otherwise excellent first episode.  Then the second episode is bogged down with an entirely gratuitous "transmogrifier" subplot. Both of these moments, in addition to some repetitive corridor-crawling and a few too many too-similar scenes between Sil and the governor/Sil and the security chief, lead me to wonder if this couldn't have been condensed to a single, tightly-focused 45-minute episode.

The guest acting is variable. The major roles are well-played. Neil Shabin is terrific as Sil, as is Martin Jarvis is excellent as the fundamentally decent governor (a rare sympathetic authority figure in this patch of the Saward era). But the second-tier guest players are far weaker. Jason Connery, as Jondar, and Geraldine Alexander, as his wife Areta, vary between barely-adequate and appalling. The guard who suggests Jondar's method of execution looks like he's performing in a drama school production. Then there are bizarre moments where any semblance of decent realization vanishes - notably, the Black Golf Carts of Doooom ("Oh no, there's a security car! Walk briskly!"), and the bit in Part Two in which the Doctor and his allies are menaced by two old men dressed in diapers.

Still, Vengeance on Varos offers an intriguing concept, a good central performance by Colin Baker, a sympathetic guest performance by Martin Jarvis, and a terrific villain in Sil. It may be imperfect, but it's intelligent and suspenseful, and even quite funny in turns. Even with a bit of padding and a somewhat slack second half, I find myself inclined to give a high score.

Oh, and the cliffhanger is a serious contender for a "Top 10" cliffhangers list. Really great stuff. The ending of Part Two is also rather good, and I enjoyed the Doctor's exit ("Now you see me...")


Rating: 8/10.

Previous Story: Attack of the Cybermen
Next Story: The Mark of the Rani


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#2 (22.1 - 22.2): Attack of the Cybermen

2 episodes. Written by: Paula Moore, Eric Saward (uncredited), Ian Levine (uncredited). Directed by: Matthew Robinson.


THE PLOT

*Takes deep breath* OK, here goes...

The Doctor is making repairs to the TARDIS, in order to repair the chameleon circuit. Though his last attempt involved wizards mumbling mathematics, this time he just tugs on a few wires while background noises go "bleep." After a rough patch of travel, and a moment in which the Doctor and Peri observe Halley's Comet, he picks up a distress signal coming from Earth, 1985. Since such a signal is beyond human capability, he decides that it must be an alien, and investigates.

Meanwhile, a gang of crooks plot a diamond heist. Their leader is a man known as Lytton (Maurice Colbourne), who is actually an alien mercenary hiding on Earth following his last encounter with the Doctor. Lytton leads his gang into the sewers, the plan ostensibly being to break into the diamond exchange from below. But Lytton isn't actually there for diamonds. He is there to rendezvous with the Cybermen lurking in the sewers, and is bringing his gang along as "gifts."

Meanwhile, on Telos, a couple of prisoners of the Cybermen escape. This has no real connection with anything, but it does kill a bit of time that might otherwise have been used to clarify the actual plot.

Back on Earth, the Cybermen discover that the Doctor is in the sewers, and decide to steal his TARDIS and take him, the TARDIS, and Peri back to Telos. Once there, the Doctor discovers that this is all connected to the Cybermens' plot to undo the events of The Tenth Planet by reversing history so that Mondas will never be destroyed.

The Cybermen lock the Doctor in a room with a Cryon named Flast.  Flast knows all the necessary exposition for the Doctor to thwart their plans.  Also in the room are a whole bunch of explosives. So this is the absolute most logical place to lock up a dangerous and resourceful prisoner.

Oh yes, the Cryons. What's a Cryon, you ask? Well... (head explodes)


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: The ending of The Twin Dilemma assured us that the Doctor had fully stabilized, and that his remaining spikiness was simply part of the new persona to which we would have to adjust. Unfortunately, this cue is not followed, despite this script having been essentially written by the same man who wrote those lines in the first place! Instead of a spiky yet stable Doctor, the first episode presents a Doctor who spends a fair chunk of the episode wandering around in a semi-delusional haze, referring to Peri as "Susan" (and, offscreen, as Tegan and Jamie) while nattering on about "The Terrible Zodin." When he does get proactive, it mainly involves beating up policemen (who aren't really policemen) or shooting Cybermen. The second half sees him spending most of the episode confined to a room, and his TARDIS has to be rescued by the Cryons in order for him to get away. This is the hero of the piece?

At least Colin Baker is still game, even if his Doctor is rendered completely ineffectual. The first episode has a very good scene, in which he attacks the Cyberman in the sewers. He brashly assures everyone that he knows what he's doing. Then, when no one's watching, we see the doubt and apprehension on his own face before he springs into action, indicating that much of his bravado is sheer bluff. He gets some strongly compassionate moments in Part Two, expressing his sorrow to the Cryons or his regrets over Lytton, in a serial that ends on a note of self-recrimination. If anything, it seems like overcompensation to cries that he was too cold in The Twin Dilemma, as from too alien a Doctor he seems to have swung back to being too human and fallible. Still, Colin plays what he's given well.

Peri: Peri is no longer plucky and willing to give as good as she gets. Instead, she stands around whining while the Doctor alternately bullies her and patronizes her. Somewhat bizarrely, when the Doctor bluffs (?) at her to shoot Russell (Terry Molloy), Peri actually looks like she might do so, simply because the Doctor has told her to. When separated from the Doctor in Part Two, she isn't any more useful opposite the Cryons. Effectively, as Flast delivers one batch of exposition to the Doctor, the other Cryons deliver another batch of exposition to Peri. Nicola Bryant is still trying hard, and does what she can, but there's really no character here for her to play.

Lytton: Anyone tuning in for the first time here could be entirely forgiven for thinking Lytton was the main character, as he carries the story and drives the action. Colbourne gives by far the best performance on-hand, and its apparent that writer Eric Saward was far more interested in writing for the shady, acid-tongued Lytton than he was in writing for the regulars. The good news is, when Lytton's on camera, it just about works. The character is well-scripted, the actor is good, and the individual Lytton scenes tend to hold up. The bad news is, the effect doesn't last once Lytton is off-camera. I'd also question how badly the Doctor really did misjudge Lytton. So the ruthless mercenary is working for victims this time instead of aggressors. That hardly makes him suddenly into a good guy, does it?

Cybermen: The good news: Gold is no longer the Cybermen's only weakness. The bad news: That's because EVERYTHING is their weakness. Russell kills a Cyberman by shooting it with a pistol. A police pistol, not a sci-fi laser thingie.  The Doctor stabs one with a sonic lance. Stratton and Bates kill Cybermen by knocking their heads off with heavy objects. I get the feeling that if you sneezed really hard at a Cyberman in this story, it would go "Uurgh!" and collapse, and then we'd cut back to control where a Cyberman would tell the Cyberleader, "A Cyberscout has been de-stroyed."


THOUGHTS

Attack of the Cybermen is a generally good production. It's a much better-looking story than The Twin Dilemma was. Director Matthew Robinson has a strong visual sense, and provides the set pieces with the urgency and atmosphere they need. Individual scenes and moments of this story do work, with individual set pieces even becoming fairly gripping. Much of the credit must go to Robinson, whose camera sense milks whatever tension is possible from every situation. Yet another good '80's Who director, putting paid once again to Saward's assertion that Peter Grimwade was one of only two.

Unfortunately, I'd prefer a good script that suffers pedestrian direction to a bad script that benefits from sterling direction. Attack of the Cybermen has probably the worst script of any Doctor Who story I've yet reviewed. It's a collection of scenes, set pieces, character types, and continuity references, all looking for a plot to attach themselves to.

The first episode almost sustains interest through atmosphere. The sewers are a good setting, lending themselves to tension. The knowledge that 1980's London is just outside the sewers, that the Cybermen could go out and massacre people on the streets at any moment, gives an added edge to the first part.  This helps sustain it through some endless (and frankly, appallingly-written) padding scenes with the Doctor and Peri wandering up and down alleyways.

If the story had confined itself to the simpler setting, it may have worked. A story about diamond thieves and an undercover policeman stumbling across Cybermen in the sewers has potential. Then the action switches to Telos. An alien planet filmed in a quarry just doesn't carry the same immediacy, so that edge is immediately lost. The whole Stratton/Bates subplot goes nowhere. Worse, it takes away valuable time that Saward might have used to actually demonstrate the threat the Cybermen pose.  Instead, he simply has characters standi around talking about the threat.

Most of the content in Part Two seems only barely connected to Part One. Lytton is working for the Cryons to prevent the Cybermen from leaving Telos and blowing it up on their way out. But the Cryons aren't even mentioned in Part One, so the whole near-genocide perpetrated upon them by the Cybermen feels like part of a separate story. There are good moments in both halves, and the set design for the Telos interiors is quite strong and atmospheric in itself. Either half could have been expanded into a pretty good full story, if the unnecessary convulations had been dropped. But by cramming so many convolutions into 88 minutes, the result is less a story than a barely-coherent jumble.

That's not even mentioning the sheer idiocy of knowing that the first story of Season 22 was an important one. A new Doctor, about whom the public was deliberately left uncertain. A new timeslot, a new format. This was, in effect, a relaunch. And what story was chosen? An ultraviolent mish-mash of continuity elements from three 1960's Cybermen stories, none of which had been seen in more than a decade, and none of which even completely existed in the archives at that point in time!

I do disagree with the decision to rest the show after Season 22.  I do believe the hiatus was misjudged on virtually every level. But honestly, raising the curtain on Season 22 with Attack of the Cybermen was all but a dare to the powers that be to push the "Cancel" button.


Rating: 4/10.

Previous Story: The Twin Dilemma
Next Story: Vengeance on Varos


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#1 (21.23 - 21.26): The Twin Dilemma

4 episodes. Written by: Anthony Steven, Eric Saward (uncredited). Directed by: Peter Moffatt.  Produced by: John Nathan Turner.


THE PLOT

The Doctor has regenerated into his sixth persona - but the process has gone even less smoothly than the last time. This new Doctor is subject to wild mood swings.  Sometimes he maintains the brisk confidence befitting himself.  Then he will abruptly swing to other states, including extreme vanity, cowardice, and murderous rage.

It is not a good time for him to be so unstable. A being known as Mestor (Edwin Richfield) has arranged the kidnapping of two twin geniuses, and plots to use their mathematical abilities in a way that will threaten the entire galaxy. Only the strongest of minds could hope to face down Mestor. Normally, it would be a task the Doctor could achieve in any of his incarnations. But in his current state, is he up to the challenge?


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Colin Baker's debut as the Doctor became infamous, as he met with a shockingly poor reception from contemporary viewers. Some of this was certainly intended. The brief called for the sixth Doctor to be initially unstable, and for audiences to be left in doubt as to whether he could be trusted. I would question whether the best way to achieve this was to have him attempt to strangle his own companion, cower in terror behind Peri's skirts, and go down onto his knees beating his chest like a silent movie penitent.

What I won't question is Colin Baker's performance. He overdoes the theatricality in the first episode, but from Part Two onward is really rather splendid. He alters his physicality and voice for each mood swing, giving you a reasonable read as to when his Doctor is "on" (such as in the last half of Episode Two and most of Episode Four), and when he's "off." He plays marvelously opposite Maurice Denham's Azmael, and throws himself into the role with such absolute relish that his enthusiasm becomes infectious.

Peri: I actually think Nicola Bryant's Peri was one of the best '80's companions. Bryant is a good actress, and she does a good job of putting across the character.,  Peri is likable enough to maintain viewer sympathy, but also has the selfishness that a young woman in her character's age group and from her background probably would have. She doesn't always deal well with this new Doctor. Her initial rejection of him, telling him that his new face is "horrible," probably does little to help calm the Doctor's unstable regeneration. I'd half-theorize that, after settling down in his persona, he decided to stick with the coat just because he knew how much it annoyed her.

The early scenes of the serial show her in mild shock at what she's seen. He has just changed in front of her, completely changed, and she's trying very hard to get her head around that while dealing with his new persona. Not since Ben and Polly have we seen a companion having so much difficulty dealing with the Doctor changing. Her first reaction is to wonder what it means for her.  After his attack, she spends the rest of Part One interacting much more tentatively with him, clearly frightened that he might lose his self-control again.  She only finally snaps back at him when his self-aggrandizement over the rescue of Hugo gets to be just a bit too much for her.

Azmael: Maurice Denham gives a wonderful performance as Azmael, the Doctor's old Time Lord mentor who has been forced to work for Mestor. Mestor's plan is wildly hilarious, even by Who standards. A key part of his plan involves bringing two small planets into orbit around Jaconda, which will magically grant them the same atmosphere and make them ideal for farming. Which is why the moon has the same atmosphere as Earth, and why so many crops are grown there. Er... Still, Azmael is a fine character, and I enjoyed watching his inner conflict between following Mestor's demands and despising his own actions. His scenes with Colin are nicely-played by both actors, and the final moment between them is one of the best scenes of Colin Baker's television tenure.


THOUGHTS

The Twin Dilemma is often regarded as "the beginning of the end" of Doctor Who's classic run. It infamously earned the "Worst Story" slot on the 200 list, and is routinely knocked as the worst of the worst. I don't think it deserves such a condemnation.  Every Doctor's era, with the possible exception of Christopher Eccleston's single season, easily contains at least one or two stories worse than this one. The Twin Dilemma is silly, but it moves along at a decent pace, and it holds together structurally. I'm no fan of script editor Eric Saward, but he was good at keeping stories adhering to a solid dramatic structure. This keeps a certain shape and momentum to proceedings, resulting in a story that is never less than watchable.

That said, I was appalled with Episode One on this viewing. That first episode is actually much worse than I had recalled, with Colin overacting some of the Doctor's mood swings horribly.  The acting by the women in the police station is outright inept, and the actresses are hardly helped by such melodramatic asides as, "This order comes direct from the ministry. And may my bones rot for obeying it!"

Things settle down after that. Colin's performance remains theatrical, but starting with Part Two it's an acceptable level of theatricality, even an enjoyable one. He is particularly good near the end of Part Two, when his Doctor comes fully to his senses after being left in the dome by Azmael, and contrives an escape for both himself and Peri. I caught myself laughing out loud at a couple of spots, first when the Doctor says of leaving Hugo to die, "Well if it's him or me, I certainly can," and then later, after beaming Peri out, his genuine surprise that his plan worked. He also is quite good in his later scenes opposite Mestor. I'm a particular fan of: "In my time, I've been threatened by experts. I don't rate you at all."

Even as the story and performances improve, aspects of the production keep dragging it down. This is a particularly weak production, with some of the worst pre-hiatus production values of John Nathan Turner's stewardship. Both the police station and the dome are horrible sets, garishly designed, with someone apparently having decided that lots of sparkles will make up for a lack of set dressing. Mestor's lair and throne room are much better-designed, but are still seriously overlit. Perhaps a more visual director than Peter Moffatt might have convinced the lighting director to dim the lights a bit, which would have helped enormously. As it stands, even though much of this is enjoyable tosh, there's no atmsophere.

Peter Moffatt's directorial style is particularly ill-suited to this story. The scenes with Mestor are the biggest offenders. The costume for Mestor isn't really that bad, by the series' standards. But Mestor needs to be kept in low lighting, in the shadows, so that his bulky presence and voice can convey threat. Seeing him in the overlit throne room, clear as day, in full shots, really undoes him as a threat. The lighting may not be Moffatt's fault - but the wide shots certainly are.

Despite the weak directing, I don't actually think The Twin Dilemma is that bad a story. Viewed as just another Doctor Who story, this isn't even the worst of the season, let alone of all time.  But The Twin Dilemma is not just another Doctor Who story. It's an introduction to a new Doctor, and in that respect it stumbles. The decision to present the Sixth Doctor as actively unstable, often unlikable, and completely unreliable is interesting on paper, and could have been compelling. But the instability lasts too long, comes up too often, and interferes with selling this spikier new Doctor. On its own, this would probably have been a minor hiccup that the show would have recovered from rather quickly. But in a more competitive television landscape, with new programming management that was particularly unsympathetic to the show, things went very differently...


Rating: 5/10.

Previous Story: The Caves of Androzani (not yet reviewed)
Next Story: Attack of the Cybermen


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