Dragonfire

There is a temptation that when an award is subject to a public vote, to proclaim the result a reflection of popular opinion. This is of course not entirely true; as the old saying goes there are lies, damn lies and statistics. What the so-called public vote represents is the opinions of the people who chose to take part, and is therefore subject to the agendas and prejudices of the sample pool. And that's before you even get into the sticky problem of all the "don't knows/don't cares/go aways" that such samples are subject to.

So when the DWAS and DWM used to have seasonal polls to find the most popular story of a season, the poll might have been on a much smaller scale but the same principle applies. Now, for better or worse, Doctor Who fans are remarkably conservative in their tastes, we always (and I mean ALWAYS) err on the side of caution. So back in the heady days of early 1988, what should find itself coming out top?

Dragonfire.

Apparently Dragonfire achieves the rare distinction among its season 24 brethren of being the most like 'traditional' Doctor Who. I'll quote Tim Munro from his review in DWB No. 51, dated January 1988 (which the Howe/Stammers/Walker triumvirate loved too; they used it in the Television Companion): "It was the only story which came anywhere near to recapturing the unique atmosphere of 'real' Doctor Who." Ok, so he says "real" rather than "traditional," but it's still a great quotation. Especially good is the way our man Tim hijacks the expression "real Doctor Who" and uses it to mean whatever he wants it to mean. It would be facetious of me to say "real Doctor Who, as opposed the imaginary kind that you've been watching for the last eleven weeks," but playing on such a nebulous concept as "real," or my preferred "traditional" smacks of sloppy, tabloid journalism. What he really means is "the Doctor Who I used to watch when I was young and the Yeti were ten feet tall and it was SOOOO scary and everybody at school didn't laugh at me for being such a saddo."

Anyway, since when did being "traditional" warrant celebration? Dragonfire is traditional in the sense that it has the "it's the last serial of the season and oh my God we've run out of money what are we going to do?" look of cheapness about it. Overall, season 24 looks a lot more expensive than season 23 did (space station excepted), but of the four serials from this year, Dragonfire suffers the most from poor design. It is something of a cliché to wheel out the old "BBC are great at costume drama" chestnut but if Cartmel learnt anything from this season, it was that the designers of the day liked to keep things real. A decaying tower block has a real world connection, as does the 1950s, but obviously ice caves and spaceships are still a bridge too far for BBC design teams circa 1987.

You would think that if your sets are shoddy that you'd want to hide the damn things as much as possible, ergo, turn the lights off. A little bit of suspense can go a long way, just ask Chris Carter; Mulder and Scully spent most of season two of The X-Files pottering about in the dark; you begin to wonder if the pair of them are nocturnal. As a consequence every single ice cave scene in Dragonfire has no sense of space whatsoever. People wander around what is supposed to be underground, cramped, unlit, naturally formed, poorly ventilated and freezing cold ice caves as if they've walked into the post office. Sylv is the only member of the cast to remember this, but as he is the ONLY one his slipping comes across as a piece of misjudged slapstick.

So much of Dragonfire comes across as misjudged. The newfound confidence that was on show in Delta has been retarded and the series is back on the uneven ground it occupied during Paradise Towers. Nowhere is this more apparent than THAT cliffhanger. I can't decide whether Chris Clough betrays a lack of faith in the material or simply cannot give a toss. If the latter is true then the man should never have been allowed to work on the show again, but - having read the revealing interview with Eric Saward in DWM recently - on set in 1987 there were probably a hundred good reasons for it at the time. It's just a shame that none are readily apparent.

A slew of good ideas are undermined by this slapdash approach, the Alien-influenced biomechanoid dragon just one. I always appreciate Doctor Who's efforts to punch above its weight and so tend to be more forgiving when high concept ideas fall a little flat. Yes, the dragon is a man in a rubber suit, but Graeme Harper had just such an unwieldy creature in Androzani and got away with it. Just.

It may seem like I've belatedly joined the queue of season 24 bashers after giving the three preceding serials a relatively easy ride but that's not the case. Taken in a wider perspective the last serial of season 24 is much better than the first and although I personally prefer Delta, Dragonfire still feels like part of an uphill trend. Plus points are Sylvester's increasing melancholy, particularly in Mel's leaving scene - Mel's leaving of course being a big plus in its own right, if I feel so inclined to return to my previous facetiousness - is a helpful reminder that yes, this is the same character who will declare war on the evils of the universe for the next two seasons.

Ace, despite some clunky dialogue, proves to be a good addition to the programme. She is conceivably the first pro-active companion since the second Romana and her ability to carry her own sub-plots is a blessing that will only become apparent in the future. Paired with Mel for a lot of the action gives you the chance to directly compare the two; of Mel, Ray and Ace I still think the production team made the right decision.

Tony Selby remains tremendously watchable. He never hits the heights of the Holmes inspired wit that he's given in part thirteen of Trial, but he's playing the part with just the right amount of tongue-in-cheek bravado that the furry dice in the cockpit of the Nesferatu seem perfectly in character. I can also justify his inclusion in the narrative in the wider scope of the programme at the time. With time becoming a premium in the three parters, it becomes essential to get through the establishing scenes with expediency. One of the ways of doing this was to have the characters already know eachother and the vast majority of the three parters follow this pattern. Witness it is Ace's friends who are abducted in Survival, Lady Peinforte has met the Doctor before; more so in the three parters than the fours, the history of the two leads is a driving force behind the narrative as much as the plots of the respective antagonists.

It's easy to say that this is very much a transitional story between the froth of Delta and the introspection of Remembrance but that is lazy and quite frankly bollocks. Dragonfire is the last time we see the Doctor crashing round the universe, finding injustice and then fighting the good fight. From here on, the Doctor has a plan. He goes on the offensive. Doctor Who is never quite the same again.