One of the most patronising things that anyone can say about a good sixth Doctor story is “wow, that’s really good for Colin Baker.” It’s as if it’s impossible for one of his stories to be genuinely good on its own terms, and people have to instead make the best of things by saying “oh well, it could be Timelash, so count your blessings.” Now when a bona fide classic comes along like Revelation Of The Daleks this is rendered nonsense, but I can sort of see why this view comes about in relation to The Mark Of The Rani; while it’s not quite good enough to be counted as able to survive its own era like Revelation or Vengeance On Varos, it’s still streets ahead of one or two other moments of Colin’s brief era. Therefore what reputation it has largely rests on the fact that it comes in the same season as Timelash and Attack Of The Cybermen – personally, while I understand this viewpoint I think it’s unfair to attack the entire story because the reasons it gets laughed at occasionally can be isolated into just a couple of scenes.

Immediately noticeable is the vast quantity of location shooting (a figure of 50% is one I’ve heard passed around), and thanks to some quite superb direction from Sarah Hellings – sadly her only story for Doctor Who – there’s a much classier feel to this story than I might have expected from an era not known for its taste. It’s helped by some pleasant incidental music, even though the dated sound of the synthesisers is highlighted by the period setting and their attempt at imitating actual instruments. The studio sets are also pleasantly subdued (particularly the Rani’s TARDIS, of which more later), possibly earning this the title of best looking sixth Doctor story.

Unfortunately, a sixth Doctor story will at some point involve the presence of the sixth Doctor. Dreadfully misconceived though his character is, Colin just about manages not to embarrass himself too much in this story, apart from his first scene with its notorious “malfunction!” shriek. It’s made all the worse by being his first scene and therefore devoid of context, and his theatricality disrupts the peace of the opening scenes like a sneeze in a library.

In case anyone doesn’t notice when they watch the story, this is what first introduces us to Pip ‘n’ Jane Baker, two decent plot-writers but whose tortured dialogue has earned them a reputation as two of Doctor Who’s worst writers. To be honest in comparison with some of their later work The Mark Of The Rani seems alright, even if they undo their good work in the second episode by providing the programme with one of its most infamously stupid lines. Nevertheless it’s quite sweet to see them pitching their episodes firmly at a family audience, as the miners’ newfound aggression manifests itself in them whipping each other with towels and kicking over stalls of potatoes. 

I don’t know why the Master’s dressed as a scarecrow, alright? It’s just spooky looking, I suppose, although I’ve never approved of elements in a story – technically good though they may be – that emphasise effect over sense. However, a serious mitigating factor is that Anthony Ainley tones down the ham in a story that in many ways doesn’t allow for that sort of thing. However, there are still one or two annoying scenes as the writers advance the plot by having him talk to himself. There’s a good scene where he meets the miners for the first time, and the deliberate irony of having the Doctor chide Peri for her smugness is amusing.

Terence Alexander gets most of the best lines in the episode, although he throws himself into the Victorian-gentleman trope a bit too enthusiastically to make him believable. He certainly has a dramatic entrance though in a decent action scene over the pit.

To be honest, neither Ainley nor Kate O’Mara is terrific in their roles, but O’Mara comes off the best here even if Ainley is still above average. The exchanges between the Rani and the Master are always fun to watch; what scores this story serious points in my book is the way it uses the Rani – a character with clear-cut needs and motivations – to send up the Master’s clichй of causing mischief for its own sake, without a proper reason.

Meanwhile, back on the other side of the plot, the Doctor’s logic in piecing together the peculiar events so far is interesting to listen to, but the villains have been given too much screen time too early on (with consequent plot revelations) to build up a decent sense of mystery. And, just in case you’d forgotten who wrote this story or felt their reputation was undeserved, we get the ridiculous line “fortuitous would be a more apposite epithet.” That said, there is much to enjoy in the Doctor’s confrontations with the Rani and it’s always nice to see his costume covered up. The only serious problem with the episode so far, as far as I can see, is that it’s shallow. Apart from the send-up of the Master there’s little here beyond the basic plot for me to really get my teeth into.

The cliffhanger to the first episode, at least this side of the episode break, is pretty good with some excellent film editing and good stunt work from whoever the poor sap was inside that casket (“so you want a job, do you?”). Unfortunately episode two has the famously lazy resolution where the reprise is re-edited and extra footage spliced in showing that the Doctor was never actually in any danger. They might have got away with this five or ten years before when episodes were being watched only on transmission, but by 1985 the era of the home video recorder was well underway and the production team short-changing the viewer like this isn’t so easy to overlook as it might have been in a black and white episode.

Episode two sees a definite drop in quality over episode one, and the interplay between the Rani and the Master is still a highlight of the story. However, having the Master repeat “the mark…of the RANI!” as if it’s an incantation a second time is a very unsophisticated piece of writing. There is a genuinely touching moment as the Doctor waxes lyrical about the Rani’s morals, and the mustard gas moment is a nice idea that worked better when I was a kid, I think.

The Rani’s TARDIS is seen for the first time at this point, one of the classiest sets ever seen in the series. I could easily believe that the entire budget of the season was used up on this one set, and it seems like an affront to designer Paul Trerise to allow Colin Baker on it while wearing his full costume. It’s all complimented by more superb location shooting (like the spider’s web shot – Hellings is possibly in the top twenty Doctor Who directors, maybe top ten for location filming). However, now we come to the most contentious issue in the entire story, and the easiest target for its detractors: the Rani’s landmines.

Is it plausible to have a device that can turn a human into a tree in a small explosion? Since it’s Time Lord technology, I don’t see why not. Is it a good special effect? I think so, yes. Was it a good idea to have the character formerly known as Luke reach down a branch and grab Peri? No. It’s compounded by that stupid line I alluded to earlier, the hilarious “don’t worry Peri, the tree won’t hurt you!” What elevates the line from just another clunker and into a piece of loopy genius though is that it makes perfect sense in context, which rather detracts from the whole concept of the scene, really. The story’s wound up with some more dodgy lines, like calling the Master a “crack-brained freak”, and a non-resolution where the Rani’s TARDIS is sent flying away faster than it should, and all’s done. I still like it, but I can’t help but feel a sense of waste.

I do like this story, but it’s got just a few too many flaws to really qualify as above-average. Whereas stories like Day Of The Daleks settle quite comfortably into average ratings, I feel more disappointed by The Mark Of The Rani because, despite all that works against it – the writers being the chief example – it comes very close to being something more.

A bit of the "odd man out" in the notorious Season 22. 

A kinder, gentler story in this very morbid and "noir" season. The Doctor is a bit more approachable. The storyline, simpler. And the general tone of the whole tale is considerably less dark than the other stories surrounding it. This made quite a bit of fandom happy since a lot of folks aren't happy with the direction most of Season 22 went in. 

But now, here's where I differ from most of you. I loved what Season 22 did. I know I could be very alone in that sentiment, but I really enjoyed the whole anti-hero nature of the Doctor and all the strange, off-beat violence and the general sense experimentalism at work throughout the season. So, does this mean I despise "Mark of the Rani" for going against the grain? 

Meh. It's an okay story.

It's got a couple of really big flaws to it that have been attacked and lambasted several million times over by fandom. The tree saving Peri, the Master offering no real explanation for surviving "Planet Of Fire" and several other moments like that. There are even some flaws to it that bothered me that didn't seem to bother anyone else. For instance, the attack on the Doctor in the first part where the three recently-converted Luddites are trying to shove him "down pit" looks horrendously fake. Watch really careful, by the way, at the bad editing. One of the Luddites falls into the pit - only to re-appear a moment later! 

But none of these flaws are quite enough, in my book, to genuinely "kill" this story. They lessen its effectiveness a bit, but they don't turn it into a genuine "stinker". I do feel, however, that there is a genuine flaw to the overall "flow" of the plot that does cause it to lose some of its impact. I'll explain it in a moment. First, I'll heap on some praise where praise is due. 

Pip and Jane Baker, for all their overblown dialogue, do offer an excellent first script. Based on this tale alone, I can see why they were re-commissioned as writers. And, for my money, what they did in Trial of a Time Lord was pretty good too (but that's a whole other review!). 

The greatest strength to this story is how they set up the Doctor/Master/Rani dynamics. To me, the very high-handed vocabulary even suits them (they're Time Lords, they'd use big words with each other!). The banter between the three of them as they reach the cliffhanger is just a whole lot of fun to watch and is probably one of the most memorable moments of Season 22. I really like how these scenes are executed. 

The biggest problem, to me, that arises is that the Master/Rani/Doctor confrontation is the high point of the story. But we still have another forty minutes or so to get through in the next part. And though there are some nice moments in the second half of Mark of the Rani, it never quite "measures up" to what we got in the first half. Thus making the whole thing a tad on the anti-climactic side. This is the greatest flaw to this story. We get all the really good stuff far too early. I suppose it couldn't be avoided in some ways. A second, drawn-out three-way confrontation between the Rani, the Doctor and the Master would've seemed too forced. Perhaps, then, it would have been better to have kept the first encounter short and then given us a bigger one later. 

This doesn't mean, of course, that the second half of the story is totally bad. We still have some nice little moments. The excursion into the Rani's gorgeous TARDIS interior being highly memorable. And the Doctor almost "losing his cool" and being tempted to use the Tissue Compressor on his two rivals is also quite riveting. But, overall, most of the bang for my buck is done as the cliffhanger rolls up. 

Still, the story does score some extra points by having a very different "feel" to it. As much as I enjoyed the nature of Season 22, I'm even more impressed with the fact that they stuck something so radically different in the middle of it. I also find the Master to be at his all-time creepiest in this story. All those moody shots of him just skulking about were so well-achieved. Yes, he's psychologically imbalanced and, therefore, not half the man Delgado was. But that was the whole point of the Ainley Master. He was living on borrowed time and this was having a drastic effect on his sanity. And his nuttiness is played up quite effectively in this tale. Making him genuinely scary rather than just comical. Like "Ultimate Foe", having the Master take a bit of a backseat in this tale was actually a great move for his character. He could really focus on just being sinister and nasty rather than having to propel the plot a whole lot. 

So, in the final analysis, this is a fairly passable tale. Overshadowed quite a bit by some of the other offerings of Season 22, but still a nice little break from all the sombreness. Even if said sombreness is greatly enjoyed by this reviewer!

Still not sure, exactly, why Pip and Jane are so maligned by fandomn. 

Okay, "Time and the Rani" was pretty bad in spots (though still not half as bad as some of the other "duds" the series has produced now and again), but their other submissions to the series are actually quite strong. And, in all honesty, I can see why JNT turned to them as often as he did during this highly tumultous time. The bottom line is, they're fairly solid writers. 

And "Terror of the Vervoids" is a pretty good example of this. Even though it's probably my least favourite story in the Trial of a Time Lord season, it's still a damned good one.

Okay, the dialogue is a bit overblown in places and we practically need a thesaurus in order to follow along with some of the dialogue. But I can think of plenty of authors who do this in Who. It's actually part of what I like about the show. It has seriously enriched my vocabulary over the years because the scriptwriters weren't afraid to give the actors some real mouthfuls sometimes. So, really, to bitch about Pip and Jane doing this is pretty silly. I could find you some pretty overblown stuff from the great Robert Holmes without having to look too hard. So let's get off the poor Bakers' back about it, already, okay? 

Now, rather than address the sillines of fandomn's tastes, let's get into the story proper. It's a nice little premise, of course and the parallells between it and "Murder On the Orient Express" are obvious enough (and I'm pretty sure we all got it without the shot of the book sitting on the table but it was still nice touch). The characters are also well-suited to a murder mystery premise. Although I did find the actual execution by the actors playing Lasky and Rudge to be a bit "off". Honor Blackman just doesn't seem to have the prescence of her "dragon lady" personae "down" right. And I feel that Rudge needed to, perhaps, "bumble" a bit more to convey that he's a bit on the incompetent side. Although, once he shows his true colours, I did feel his performance improved.

The direction of the storyline works pretty good, overall, and Chris Clough does a good job with what he's given (which he does in all the stories he directed). Even with the budget increased because of the episodes being reduced, the classic series was still never given enough money to achieve all the proper visuals. So Clough is smart enough to not dwell too hard on certain sequences whereas he puts a nice chunk of the budget into that opening shot of the Hyperion III and gives us a very nice first impression of the third case in the trial because of that shot. He also put some nice work into the Vervoid costumes (even if we do see a jumpsuit or two) and their death sequence looked quite impressive. I'm still not exactly sure how he got all those leaves to turn colours at once! 

The biggest drawback that I feel this story suffers from is one that happened in a few mid-80s Who tales. There are, perhaps, just a few too many plot strands going on here. We've got murder, hijacking and killer plants all weaving in and out of each other a bit too much at once. It's just a bit on the prepostorous side to have so much going on in the plot and it stretches credulity a tad too far because of it. Although, in its defense, too much plot is always better than too little. But still, I just find it hard to believe that so much can happen on just one flight of a ship! But that's really my biggest gripe.

There are, of course, some silly inconsistencies like the whole "key upside down" sequence but they're hardly worth getting "up in arms" about. Sillier things have happened in a Who story. And some of the clever things like the Mogarian translator not switching on makes up for any of these smaller problems quite nicely.

The trial going on outside of the Hyperion storyline is getting quite interesting by this point. We now see that the Doctor definitely believes the Matrix is being falsified and even suspects who's up to it. And the charge being changed at the end of the final episode is a nice little twist and a good way to finish the whole story off with a bit of a bang. Some very well-achieved scenes. But then, I loved the trial scenes throughout this season so it's a bit of a bias, really! 

So, not a whole lot of problems with this story in my book. A bit too "busy" plot-wise and a few minor problems with some of the acting but this really is another fairly well-told story from Pip and Jane Bakers' pen. So, once again, gang: What is the big problem with the Bakers? I think they did the show quite good, overall.

No one knows what a Black Light Explosion could do - there's never been one! "There will be soon."

Ah, a lovely story. The Doctor decides to check out the planet of Ravalox which is eerily similar to Earth, but upon arrival Peri finds the landscape a bit too familiar for comfort. And she's right: Ravalox is Earth, devastated by a fireball 500 years previously, the regenerated world is deserted bar a handful of survivors lorded over by Drathro the Immortal. But all good things come to an end and enthusiastic entrepreneurs Glitz and Dibber have unintentionally triggered doomsday.

Robert Holmes wrote this story while seriously ill and with a bunch of stuffed shirts calling themselves BBC executives breathing down his neck. If I could write something this good under such circumstances, I'd be irrideemably smug. Maybe it's just the return to 25-minute episodes but this is the first story of the Sixth Doctor era where the plot doesn't feel upside down and inside out. OK, it's clearly rooted in Holmes other works: The Krotons (a hidden robotic god demanding the two cleverest youths join him in hiding); The Space Pirates (Glitz is the latest in a long line of Milo Clancy characters); The Ark in Space (humanity surviving the burning of Earth); The Deadly Assassin (a black monolith heralding the end of the entire universe); The Ribos Operation (a con job involving a planet of primatives). Give the guy a break - Rob Shearman rewrites the same story every Big Finish he does, you don't come down on him like a ton of bricks, do you?

Holmes treats the Sixth Doctor like he did the Fifth - ignore everything and write for Tom Baker. This is no slur on Colin; Holmes only wrote for Tom Baker. Look at Carnival of Monsters or The Space Pirates - how easy to have Tom Baker appear in them. It's just one of those things I suppose. But how did I miss the scene where the Doctor offers Humker and Tandrell jelly babies? Or when he calls for Sarah-Jane? And anyone stupid enough to say the Sixth Doctor was 'evil' or 'lost his principals', I refer you to the scene he breathlessly tells Peri they are charging into mortal danger: when Peri ridicules this decision, he stares at her in horror and says, "Peri, I can't just let people die if there's a chance of saving them!" before storming off.

Yep, that's the Doctor all right. Willing to risk it all to save a bunch of people he hardly knows and, like in The Caves of Androzani, they're all callous bastards. No. Look again. Glitz is usually shown as light comic relief, and watching the last three episodes of this story, you can hardly blame them. But look at episode one. This cheeky space-Arthur Daley plans to shoot the Doctor and Peri in the back of their heads for nothing more than sadistic pleasure, at the time regailing Dibber with tales of trying to kill the countless psychiatrists that tried to help him. Glitz is a bleeding psychopath! Maybe it was the rewrites that reduced him to the comic foil he becomes by part four, but he's still a hard case - cheerfully planning to wipe out 500 innocent people by gassing them like badgers, he may rarely get a chance to use his guns but if he did there's no doubt Katryca would be the first to die.

The rest of the cast aren't particularly nice. Drathro's the villain, but Merdeen is supposed to be a hero - though this hero is quite happy to cull the Doctor and dozens of others if he thinks he's being watched. Just because he sees its unecessary doesn't excuse he fact he does it. Grell's worse, not even seeing any problem with murdering friends and family. Katryca... well, she's just a nutter and its good that Joan Sims shows that off. Katryca's written as a wily old woman - as long as she's half-asleep staring into a fire. Beyond that, she goes crazy, makes speeces, and enjoys burning people in Wicker Men, only without the Wicker. The fact that Broken Tooth and the others let her push them around shows they aren't up to much either. The only remotely nice character is Balazar, who winds the Doctor up so much he calls him 'a pallid little swot' to his face, and also organizes fatal stonings.

There are a few problems with this story, I admit. For a start, the fact its working title is The Mysterious Planet. Odd how the mystery is solved five minutes into the first episode. It's Earth! Then, in the third. It's definitely Earth! Surely this should be a Planet of the Apes-style final episode revelation? And why is Peri so instantly tuned into the fact she's wandering around the United Kingdom and speak of it with nostalgia? She's not from there. Was Holmes thinking the campion might be English and recognize it? And Glitz seems well up on human culture for someone who's Andromedan (he knows of marriage, funerals, stamp collecting, charity workers and the Latin phrase Pater Familias). If Earth was destroyed two million years after the 1980s, why was Marble Arch station unchanged? Why do the train guards wear torch helmets when there's plenty of light to see? Why does Drathro only realize there is a village AFTER the L1 has left there? And if Drathro has studied human behaviour for 500 years... why's he so appallingly bad at it? (That may be the point, so I'll let it go.)

But on the whole, it's fine. The Doctor and Peri are the best of friends, with the former worried around the latter enough to delay his exploration and the latter willing to run into a shootout to rescue the former. The humor level is turned up and... I like it. OK, some of it's not sophisticated ('I did it.''I think you'll find that I did it.''I did it.''I DID IT!!'), but I laughed anyway. The Doctor deliberately getting people's names wrong, carrying a teddy bear, Glitz and Dibber discussing their childhoods, Balazar getting a face full of green slime... I laughed. It's feel good stuff. And after the relentless, plotless grittiness of Revelation of the Daleks, a breath of fresh air - this is a story where all the characters get a purpose before dying horribly. In Season 22, Humker and Tandrell would have been brutally shot down (stop cheering!) but here they escape, they reach the outside world... and they are so amazed by it they stop arguing, totally absorbed by it. Katryca learns fatally not to push it and that shouting she's in charge won't impress anyone. For all Drathro's talk of logic, he falls for Glitz's ploy hook, line and sinker. Balazar goes from annoying nerd to... well, he's still an annoying nerd but he'll never stone someone to death again. And Dibber continually proves he's smarter (and fitter) than his boss. It's a happy ending.

And that's Rob Holmes' genius. How the hell does he make these happy endings after such implicitely grim storyline? When I recently watched The Sun Makers with the eyes of a grown-up, I found it utterly terrifying. All of humanity was screwed by the Usaurians and then worked and taxes to death for centuries. The Doctor stops it in one afternoon, but what about the years and years of hopeless horror that Cordo and his ancestors suffered? Not only does this story show all human civilization burnt off the face of the Earth, the five hundred survivors are kept at that number by routine cullings. For five hundred years. Five hundred years. But somehow, even knowing that, it still feels right that the Doctor and Peri walk away from it exchanging witty insults. I wonder how Warriors of the Deep would have ended if Holmes had had a hand in it - it sure wouldn't have concluded with the Doctor croaking there should have been another way.

But it isn't just levity. The Doctor's passionate speech to Drathro is exactly the sort of stuff he should have had right in the beginning - he speaks of life with such awe as if even discussing it is not his place. No bombastic shouting or sulks, and it is a revelation to see the Sixth Doctor face an enemy he cannot sweettalk or defeat. As Glitz says, "Don't knock low cunning,". Seeing the Doctor only win the day by being defeated by a bunch of wandering cooks is a nice throwback to the Peter Davison days as well.The Mysterious Planet is a great story, and bar Peri's hairstyle, I think fandom would have engineered its replacement of Timelash without a second thought. It is only when I look at the story as Doctor Who's last, desperate bid to win the ratings war do I think it's in any way lacking. Where's the returning monster, the new villain, the companion departure, the event that stops a story being a disposable one? Where's the thing that makes you desperate to see what happens next? As a Doctor Who story, it's great, but as a television gambit, this is as far from target as its possible to get.

It didn't go very well, did it?

Decisions, decision. Is Attack of the Cybermen are decent story with a few plot holes, or a terrible waste of space with several moments of brilliance? Hard to tell.

What's wrong with the story? (I'm doing Season 22 in 25-minute episodes because that's how I saw it)

1) No unity of action. The first two episodes are set in the London sewers. Which have no bearing on the rest of the plot. All the important stuff is happening on Telos, which we don't see until episode two, and the TARDIS doesn't arrive until half way through episode three. The whole trip to London is irrelevent, and the Doctor might as well have landed straight on Telos and given the story a chance to breathe. Or maybe set the whole story in 1985 London for Lytton's attempts to leave the Earth, a kind of homocidal Ford Prefect, and his diamond hiest. Has there ever been a story like that? Seeing the Sixth Doctor and Peri caught in a bank robbery would be intriguing... But it's a throwaway plot, which leads us to...

2) Too many ideas, not enough interest. Like Resurrection of the Daleks, Attack throws in a mass of ideas, plots and characters and after juggling them for a moment, gives up and ends in a massive explosion. The return of Lytton and his policemen isn't the epic it's supposed to be simply because the Doctor barely met the former and never met the latter. Peri's met neither! The idea that the Time Lords have manipulated the Doctor into getting caught in the plot are nonsense, as the TARDIS arrives in 1985 because the Doctor was already heading there, and any other manipulation was down to Lytton. Speaking of Lytton, why does he send out the distress signal before going on the raid? Why does he decide to aide the Cryons instead of just trying to hitchhike his way off Earth? If Halley's Comet is so crucial to the plot, why is it only ever mentioned in two scenes involving the Doctor? How are the Cryons responsible for all the Cybermen dying while frozen in the tombs? Who are Bates and Stratton, how do they have access to a time machine, and how do the Cryons know what they're up to? Why do the Cybermen leave the policemen's helmets on when converting them? If the Telos scenes are, as they appear, set in the far future, how did Lytton contact the Cryons from 1984? If the Cyrons have a spy camera in the cold room, how come they don't realize that Flast is in there as well? And how has a bimbo like Rost lived so long in a guerilla war?

3) Wasting Lytton. Now, out of the disparate elements of Ressurection of the Daleks, Lytton was worth coming back for. A cunning warrior capable of surviving a bloodbath that at the time seemed to have wiped out the Daleks and Davros and still take a potshot or two at the Doctor, I can see at least one person considering him a replacement to the Master (who was, after all, dispatched eight episodes ago). Who can forget the brilliant bit where Stein reminds Lytton that the Daleks will ultimately turn on him, and Lytton doesn't do anything but smile knowingly - he's already prepared for that. Doctor Who needed a recurring villain, and Lytton definitely passed the audition. Imagine if The Mark of the Rani had featured Lytton trying to get a lift off the evil Time Lady, or if it was Lytton out for revenge, not Orcini out for honor, that hunted down Davros in Revelation of the Daleks. But no, instead, he dies here, in his second appearance, with his sidekicks gone by the end of the second episode and forgotten. I thought this was written by Eric Saward who, after all, created and rather liked the character.

4) Wasting Lytton (b). At the end of the story, the Doctor discovers Lytton was working for the Cryons and suddenly he's a good guy. Uh, no, he isn't. In his debut, Lytton happily allowed a bunch of unarmed civilians and a passing tramp to be shot dead, deliberately gassed and shot helpless prisoners, slaughtered his own men and did with a smile. He threatens to have Russell killed and ultimately betrays Griffiths, Stratton and Bates. The only-in-for-it-for-himself Lytton clashes harshly with the big-bleeding-heart Lytton who condemns Peri for not having any compassion, and the one the Doctor mourns for at the end. The Doctor, despite his complete lack of on-screen evidence that Lytton was a bastard, did not misjudge him. Lytton could have told him what was doing and got the Time Lord on his side, could have sweet talked his way round the Cybermen. If the Doctor wants to feel guilty, it should be because he was prepared to leave Lytton on Telos, not because he ultimately failed to save him.

5) Decapitating Cybermen. It beggars belief that Saward wrote this story after Earthshock. The earlier Cybermen story showed them to be near indestructible, ruthless, powerful and was only able to defeat them by making it part of history. Take out the extinct dinosaurs and the Cybermen would have won. But here they can get stopped by bullets. Bullets! That's the one thing that has never effected the silver giants till now - but one shot from Griffiths can make one bleed to death, and Russell can blow another's head apart with a single round! Not to mention the endless scenes of Cybermen getting their skulls smashed from their soldiers by metal poles, laser blasts and bare fists... Worse, like Resurrection of the Daleks, Attack shows this classic monster race on their last legs, with one overcomplicated time-travel-bomb-involving plan to stop them being wiped out... And it fails! Did Saward feel he had to kill off every character he enjoyed writing for? Only the regulars and two Cryons survive this story...

6) Too much continuity! As Gareth Roberts pointed out, building a sequel plot out of The Tenth Planet, The Tomb of The Cybermen, The Invasion and Resurrection of the Daleks is almost but not quite as pointless as building a sequel plot to The Smugglers, The Evil of the Daleks, The Mind Robber and Frontios. Worse, you can tell the really obvious padding of the scenes with the Doctor and Peri where they discuss his regeneration. Oh, and Totter's Yard. Why the hell was that there? Why? In Remembrance of the Daleks, it was there because it was one of the few places we saw the First Doctor visit in the first episode, and it also contrasts him with the Daleks - he used the yard as a home and spent most of his time in a police box, the Dalek uses the yard as shelter and spends most of its time killing people from the safety of a shed. There's no reason for the TARDIS to land there, in fact, all I could think of was that the chameleon circuit still thought that a police box looks good in a scrapyard... And imagine! Without all the pathetic scenes about the Terrible Zodin and the chameleon circuit and the Doctor running around London, he could have got straight into the plot. Is it a crime to have the TARDIS land in the action nowadays? And worse, the continuity is WRONG! The tombs don't look the same as in Tomb, which begs the question of why do it then? Why get the guy who played the Controller to come back when all the actor had no dialogue and was brought into wear a massive silver suit that hid his features? Not only does he make the Controller fat, twitchy and robotic, I can barely understand a word he says. Bring him back to play the Giant Robot (as Big Finish did), but not this! The Controller in Tomb was a creepy queen bee of the Cybermen, and this one is a jowly moron you get bored waiting for someone to attack!

Hmmmm. Pretty damning evidence. But there are good sides to.

1) The Sixth Doctor. For the last three years we had a Doctor who behaved realistically when a gun was pointed at him, being prone to panic, desperation and not being believed by people in authority. While that did have its merits, it is nice to see the Doctor have a gun pointed at him... and he beats the living snot out of his assailant, and then, for a laugh, puts on the police helmet and then wanders into the line of fire to give Peri a scare. There's also the brilliant moment where he offhandedly tells Peri to shoot the uncooperative Russell. No one can possibly believe the Doctor actually wanted her to do it, because if he did want Russell dead he would have done it himself. Like the fifth Doctor, this one is not exactly perfect as he causes the TARDIS to repeatedly malfunction, winds up his enemies to no avail and makes mistakes with fatal consequences. However, this Doctor is constantly building himself up as a genius and thus the moments he's exposed as a fraud all the more entertaining. The only downer moments are the noted 'Who cares about Lytton if he's not a good guy?' scene, and the moment when he agrees he wants the Cyber Controller and all his followers as dead as Flast. It's bloodthirsty and not the best.

2) The comedy. The Doctor's funny, and always has been, but the repartee between Lytton and his gang, not to mention Stratton and Bates who seem to have been written with Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmonsen in mind. Having seen the bloke who plays Stratton in countless police dramas as loud, psychotic overbearing fathers, seeing him young and punkish is a nice culture shock. There's lots of lovely humor moments, with only Rost's 'wit' failing. No one sheds a tear when a Cyberman punches a hole through her, so maybe it was intentional. The whole angle of fixing the chameleon circuit is a waste of time, but it's laugh out loud funny as the TARDIS assumes more and more impractical shapes so you don't notice at first that it's finally fixed. The line "time travel... in an organ!" deserves points for sheer postmodernist alone. The destruction of the Cybermen is worth a laugh too, like the panicked one that tries to pat out its exploding hand with "Naughty sleeve! Don't burn! Naughty sleeve!" or the "Oh, heavy!" wave from the Cyberman as he and his fellows jog casually away from a bomb about to detonate. And how cool is it to see Terry Molloy utterly baffled when people start mentioning Daleks?

3) The violence. Or rather, lack of it. People seem to think this story is one long bloodbath when it's nothing of the sort. Thanks to the dark and some poor pixelation, we can barely see humans getting their necks broken by the Cybermen, who kill people with nice clean laser guns. Even the Cryons dying is nothing more intense than smoke and light. All right, there is the infamous 'Cybermen crush Lytton's hands' scene, but this is after a story where the Cybermen beat the crap out of people with no blood spilt at all, making it quite clear these things are tough. When the impassive Stratton begins crushing Griffith's hand, that's to show you how powerful these things are. When the Cybermen do crush Lytton's hand, that's to show you how tough Lytton is. The small amounts of hydraulic fluid spilt during the fight scenes hardly matter, and its nice to notice the Cyber reinforcements accidentally kill themselves rather than the Doctor doing the deed.

4) The Cryons. Giving the Cybermen a foe other than humanity is always a good idea... and it couldn't be any worse than the Vogans in Revenge of the Cybermen... I mean, the Daleks get Thals, Mechanoids, Movellans and their own creator PLUS the Doctor and humanity to deal with. The Cryons look very creepy, almost like the ghosts of aliens (which ties in with them somehow surviving) and they have distinct personalities - albeit not very nice ones. They can even use the Cybermen's credo with irony. I like the way they're tactile and like to run their hands along each other, and thus visibly have to restrain themselves around Peri due to her body temperature. But the trouble is for an all-female race... why do they all have moustaches? And how can they survive in the presence of humanoids who continually raise the temperature? And just how have they been able to wipe out the Cybermen? How do they survive the destruction of Cyber Control?

5) Conversion. At last! Somebody remembers that the Cybermen can turn you into Cybermen! It's wierd, but watch their televised stories... it never happens! The closest comes in Tomb of the Cybermen, where Toberman gets a metal arm. And that's it. It's not even a background threat in The Moonbase, Wheel in Space, Revenge of the Cybermen, Earthshock or The Five Doctors. But the trouble is that the Cybermen still need to remind themselves not to kill people in order to increase their numbers (which is blatantly contradicted when one of the sewer workers is killed and later seen in a conversion booth). And the fact there are countless of Strattons and Bateses who didn't go through the conversion process... So you've got better arms and legs? So what! You can still feel, breathe, taste and do the nasty, stop complaining! Actually, these last two points are edging more towards negatives rather than positives...

6) The novelization. Truly, Eric Saward is a genius in this field. He manages to do the whole story without any real changes and yet improves it immensely. This is a good book, people. It still has the massive flaws but the characterization is improved, the violence turned down and the deaths don't seem so meaningless. The carnage at the end suddenly looks like there might be a happy ending. And the Doctor's annoyance at Lytton is a vent for his own guilt at not protecting Russell. There's also a beautiful scene at the beginning when Peri confronts the Doctor about his regeneration and threatens to leave unless her demands are met and... the Doctor agrees unconditionally, not even waiting to hear them and sending the TARDIS to a holiday destination, so delighted is he to be with her. A single paragraph makes the death of Griffiths somehow uplifting - his dying thought is the happy one that he didn't die alone and forgotten but killed by cyborg aliens on another planet while stealing a time machine with two millions' worth of diamonds in his back pocket! However, the fact is this changes are so minor... why the hell weren't they in the original?!

So, weighing up the facts... Sorry. Attack of the Cybermen is rubbish, littered with enough diamonds to make this fact all the more depressing. It could have been brilliant

Colin Baker says this was his favourite story out of anything he did on the series. One can easily see why. 

Although there is a school of thought in fandom that claims that this one "isn't all that it's cracked up to be" - I'm not one of those fans. This, in my mind at least, is a classic. In my top ten faves. Possibly even my top five! 

Where does one start with the praise? I'll take my usual route: the script. Phillip Martin makes possibly the most stunning first submission the series has ever seen. It's a great story on multiple levels. First, it's makes a great social comment, of course. Like "The Sunmakers" before it, or "Happiness Patrol" in years to follow, the script focusses greatly on creating an entire society for us to look at as well as a storyline to follow. And like the other stories I just compared it to - there's some allegory at play in this presentation. So, not only do we get a very creative script that puts together an entire self-contained society - but we also get some somewhat scathing underlying symbolism. Nicely enough, Martin's symbolism doesn't totally have to bite you on the ass, though. 

The other great aspect to his script is the actual action of the story. The best example of this is the later half of the first part. From the landing of the TARDIS on Varos to the cliffhanger - we are treated to one of the best roller-coaster rides the series has ever offered. The assailing of trap-after-trap in the Punishment Dome is not just good fun to watch, it's highly imaginitive. It almost seems as though Martin is aware that the story will probably have only so much budget to realise his vision so instead of having the crew build elaborate sets and props to execute his traps - he comes up with more novel ideas like the purple zone. A trap that is not only creative in the fact that it is more a "trick of the eyes" than a legitimate physical trap - but also creative because it required little more than a post-production effect and a bit of purple lighting. Brilliant stuff, really. Even more brilliant that Martin knew when to settle down with the chase through the dome and focus on the political intrigue of the story. Which is as entralling to watch as the action sequences. 

But, that still wasn't quite enough for this script. No, Martin also has to give us one of the most unique plot devices "Who" has ever seen. We get our very own "Greek Chorus" thrown into the mix with the characters of Arak and Etta watching the whole adventure on their T.V. screen. This is a magnificent touch. And their inclusion in the story is one of the vital elements, in my opinion, that propels this story from "fun little runaround" to "classic". Their introduction into the story is delightfully stylistic as the image of the tortured Jondar cuts to the screen on their livingroom T.V. They also have one of my favourite lines in the whole story: "I like that one! The one in the funny clothes". The two actors portraying them do a magnificent job - giving us a real Holmesian double-act even though the great Robert didn't write this one! 

Which leads us into another strong point: the acting. Aside from our two slightly wooden rebels, (who weren't really even all that wooden) - the actors in this piece do a thoroughly magnificent job. Of special note: Nabil Shaban as Sil. No one has ever played an alien with such relish and gusto as he has. In both his appearances on the show, really. But he makes the most remarkable first impression in Varos. I'm not sure what Phillip Martin's plans were for the character after this story - but Shaban can be given just as much credit as the writer for "earning" Sil's second appearance. I'm not sure if the Shaban is still around, but if there's any multiple appearance character from the old series that I would love to see come back for the new series - it would be Sil. He's great fun to watch. 

Also of noteworthy mention was Martin Jarvis' excellent portrayal of The Governor. A troubled man, torn between trying to make some positive changes in his society and remaining popular enough with the people to stay alive. His speech to Maldak as he's submitted to the green light of the cellular disentegrator is an excellent moment that really gets us to see the underlying passion of this character. Yes, he's horribly cold and callous too. But, in the end, his true colours shine through. And, again, this is displayed by a gorgeous marriage between the words of the script and they way they are spoken by the actor. 

While we're at it, though, let's also heap some praise on the great Colin Baker himself. The performance he turns in for this tale is one of his best. One can see his love for the script in how well-crafted his acting skills are in it. And though there is still the slighest insinuation at the beginning of the show that he's still a bit shaky from the regeneration, all of the sixth Doctor's traits are in strong evidence here. He's great oratical skills are displayed from the gallows as he rails against the Gallatron mining corporation. His first meeting with Quillam shows off his very poignant "cosmic jester" personae. And just the general delivery of his very rich, almost didactive style of dialogue is displayed in great abundance. He's arrogant and righteous one moment, compassionate the next, clever and deceitful the moment after that. And Colin gets all these very "topsy turvy" emotions to blend together seamlessly in one coherent characterisation. He does this in every story he was in, of course, but he's at his absolute best here. Even a simple line like: "Peri this is no time for casual conversation" is executed with a great delivery. Watch that bit - you'll see what I mean! 

The third pivotal element that makes the story a classic is its design. One of the greatest challenges I think the show always faces is getting each planet to look different from the last. This must be done by some sometimes outlandish-looking set design. Vengeance On Varos comes just to the edge of outlandish in the way the sets look, but it never quite totally crosses the line into absurdity. So that we really get a cool-looking architecture going on. Even those two little moving spotlights they set up in the background all over the place add just the neatest little effect to the whole proceedings. Not to mention the weird, slated doors and the mottled brown colour scheme. It's the perfect distinctive touch to a very distinctive story. 

Do I have any complaints? They're minimal, at best, so I can't even be bothered to mention them. I will bother to mention however, that some of the complaints levelled at this story by some segments of fandom seem generally unfounded to me. 

Although other people have found this tale to be too violent and almost a contradiction to its message because of said violence, it doesn't come across that way to me. Martin understood that he still had to tell an adventure story whilst making the comments he made and he struck a beautiful fine line between adventure and gratuitous violence. 

This story also has several elements to it that make it very reminiscent of other stories in this season. It's dark and somewhat macabre - like Revelation of the Daleks and The Two Doctors. The Doctor also goes a little anti-hero in places. And, it's a good long time before he actually gets involved with the story proper. But these elements, and others, were all things that I actually enjoyed greatly about Season Twenty-Two. I know I'm pretty alone in those sentiments and that many of you feel this season strayed too far from the Doctor Who formulae. But that's exactly what I like about this season. It tried something bold and different. 

And at the very epicenter of all that boldness lies Vengeance On Varos. A great story that embraces a very unique approach to a T.V. show that could've very easily rested on its 22-year-old laurels rather than explore new ground. But not only does it do some bold experimentation, it also does a wonderful job of telling us the most exciting of tales about a troubled penal colony in the Earth's future. 

As far as I'm concerned, you can hold this baby up to any of Tom Baker's best stories and I think it shines with them quite nicely. In some cases, even better. For instance, I'll take this story over "Genesis of the Daleks" any day. 

How's that for "fighting words"?