It’s difficult to find anything good to say about this season twenty four opener, but here goes. The Rani’s bubble traps look quite good, and… err… You see, ‘Time and the Rani’ is perhaps the worst Doctor Who story the McCoy era produced and probably the worst ever. I say probably only because I’ve yet to see other clangers such as ‘Timelash’ or ‘The Twin Dilemma’. In my growing Doctor Who video and DVD collection it is perhaps equal only to ‘The Chase’ in its extreme crappiness. Perhaps the worst thing that could be said about ‘Time and the Rani’ is that there is very little to say about it.

The plot, concerning the Rani gathering together the greatest minds in the universe (for a purpose so tedious I won’t even begin to explain), is un-involving, one-dimensional and just plain rubbish. The performances, particularly by the lead actors, are either completely over the top or wooden, the Tetrap monsters are about as scary as a pet hamster, the dialogue is ridiculous… I could go on. To be fair to the writers, Pip and Jane Baker, apparently they wrote this serial without knowing who would be playing the Doctor, so had to be as generic in his characterisation as possible. Less forgivable is the completely over blown dialogue they write. Why they feel the need to do this is unclear. Perhaps they are trying to cover up deficiencies in the plot.

Sylvester McCoy gets off to a bad start as the Doctor. His performance throughout this serial has a certain pantomime quality to it, complete with spoon playing and over the top physical movements, and you never get the sense that he (or any of the other performers for that matter) really believe in any of it. Probably due to the poor script. The Doctor McCoy plays in this adventure is completely different to the mysterious and dark traveller we get in later McCoy stories such as ‘Ghost Light’, with his performances improving greatly from him playing the role much straighter. It goes without saying that Bonnie Langford as Mel is awful, and in my opinion the reason many fans have a big problem with season twenty-four is because of this one character. Thankfully this would be her last season with the show. The Rani is played by Kate O’Mara, and although she appears to be having a great deal of fun, she comes across as not especially villainous. This is the only Rani adventure I have seen – I’m still yet to see ‘The Mark of the Rani’ – and, assuming this is the same Rani we get in her debut adventure, it is difficult to see how this character could ever earn a second outing. The idea of a female Master is a nice one, but Pip and Jane Baker have written this character like a pantomime villain.

‘Time and the Rani’ was the first Doctor Who adventure I watched as a small boy of four years old. Unbelievably, it was also the story that got me hooked on Doctor Who and as a result good film and TV science fiction in general. Looking back on it now, however, it is perhaps fortunate I was so young when I first saw it, for I fear that if I was only three or four years older ‘Time and the Rani’ would have turned me off Doctor Who for life.

In summary, whereas I can usually find things to enjoy even in bad McCoy adventures, such as ‘Silver Nemesis’, which is so bad its good, ‘Time and the Rani’ is so bad its bad. Doctor Who had reached its lowest point, and after this awful McCoy debut adventure, things could only get better.

Through the wonders of the local council a copy of the "extended version no true Doctor Who fan would want to miss" of Battlefield fell into my sticky little grubby Doctor Who obsessed paddy paws. Well first off let me put that one straight: extended version? What extended version? Thirty seconds of the Doc and Ace climbing a spiral staircase covered in fairy lights (the staircase, not the actors)? Well whoops se do (but not in a good way).

Everyone says this story is total and utter...

And yes I began to believe the hype: Bad direction, too rushed, someone even complained that the countryside was too green and nice looking! But then I thought about it. Actually this story is rather clever. Concept wise: OK, so all the plot really consists of is a bunch of other dimensional knights poncing around an over green bit of English country side trying to recover a sword for some reason that is never actually explained, but at least they aren't your usual "oh, let's take over the Earth for the sheer hell of it" type aliens.

I think Aaronovitch had been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. The bad guys in Battlefield are a sort of cross between the Klingons and the "Knights of Ni" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (but without the shrubberies). On the one side there is the honour code stuff and on the other there is the cod awful overacting, complete with maniacal laughter.

However by giving them a pseudo medieval background this also gives them a bit of depth and grounds them in a culture that the viewer can relate to. The upshot of the idea that "it may be more exciting to actually think about your villain and perhaps create a bit of backstory about them rather than just write in some malevolent green slime that shimmies around the air conditioning ducts" is the wonderful scene with the head bad lady (who has the most impractical fingernails I have ever seen) and the Brigadier where they take some time out from the mindless slaughter of universe domination and universe saving to have a bit of a chat and honour Earth soldiers who have fallen in battle. And this, along with a lot of other stuff makes Battlefield INTERESTING. Not really scary I admit, but definitely interesting.

Are You Short?

I am. I am very short. Do you know how difficult it is to dominate when you can barely see over the table? This is probably why I will cut Sylvester some slack for Battlefield. Not only does he have to stop some alternately dimensional knights from unleashing bloody and unstoppable destruction on Earth, but he has to cope with being a shortass (and admittedly sort of weird looking) to boot. Perhaps six foot tall Sean Connery could have done it and still found time for a few rounds of golf, but Sylvester had to go the extra gurn just to get people to look at him.

So this is my theory. People criticize his performance in Battlefield all the time. But it is not the gurning, the question mark jumper or the hat. It is because he is short and silly looking. Well so was bloody Napoleon. And look what he did (not that I am saying starting wars and general conquering is a good thing mind you).

As a "vertically challenged individual" I know how tricky it is to make tall people take you seriously - "seven degrees, worked with Mother Teresa, ran the UN, and found the holy grail.. well that's nice dear, but you can't see over the top of the steering wheel without a cushion can you now?"

So what do you think Sylvester (a bloke who, until Doctor Who, was most famous for stuffing ferrets down his trousers and pretending to be a car) did when he was asked to stop a war?

He did everything he could.

And do you know sometimes it works. Short, silly looking and Scottish he may be, but sometimes his performance as the Doctor gives me the chills. Sometimes he totally freaks me out (god help his kids if they ever misbehave). It's the eyes. Sometimes, when Sylvester isn't wiggling around like a man with a ferret down his trousers he comes across all dead spooky and serious. Sylvester may be a clown, but he knew who the Doctor was. And he knew that the Doctor was scary.

Winifred and Ancelyn

Drawn together by a love of hitting people and gratuitous violence Brigadier Bambera and Knight Commander Ancelyn fall in love. They are like a very dangerous and violent version of the Moonlighting couple. He is a spunky blond-haired knight from another dimension (with a healthy respect for the fairer sex) and she is a spunky gun obsessed UNIT Brigadier (with a cute little beret). If you ask me this is a match made in heaven.

Very rarely do we have a love story on Doctor Who, and while I think this one was handled with about as much subtlety as Tom Baker after a late at night down the pub, it is sweet. And INTERESTING. Sometimes I get so sick of your generic scientist/soldier supporting characters who get no character at all and then usually snuff it horribly.

Here we have something different. Instead of putative dead people standing around going "Oh my god we are going to die/the Doctor is a spy and we must kill him" we actually to seem to have characters who aren't just waiting around in suspended animation for the entrance of the Doctor (Maybe the writer had been watching The City of Death?).

I have actually read later books/fiction of some kind where the two characters pop up and they have actually got married and settled down to have little psychopaths, er sorry - kids. And, call me an old softie, but I think that's lovely.

And just think of the sex? Phoaarrrr!

Just when you think the Colin Baker era has been put out of its misery, up turns Time and the Rani. I can only imagine that these season 23 scripts got stuck in heavy traffic on their way to Wood Lane because for the life of me I can't think how else this brave new start got commissioned. Time and the Rani sits bestride seasons 23 and 24 much the same way Robot does in seasons 11 and 12; a tale that is a comfortable reminder of the old regime whilst also pointing to the future. But this is 1987 rather than 1975 and the last thing that the audience needs is to be reminded of the previous era. Nor is this a hint of things to come; Pip and Jane's scripts represent the final throw of the dice for a storytelling style that's binned before Cartmel even has a chance to utter the word 'Masterplan.'

Time and the Rani needs Colin Baker, not because he would have improved this serial any but because the Sylvester McCoy era does not deserve to begin here. Rightly or wrongly, the tabloid press is a good barometer of public opinion and this one serial gives the whole era a silly, lightweight label that is unfair on both the series and its lead actor in particular. I would contest that Sylv is not a bad actor during Time and the Rani, but he is saddled with some horrendous Pip and Jane inspired dialogue that he does his level best to wrestle with. Importantly, Sylv is trying to make his Doctor likeable and he succeeds. Freed from the constraints of alien-ness that had blighted the character for over two years the seventh Doctor is a much-needed breath of fresh air. The bad bits come from script rather than actor and as for the costume change bit at the end of part one - it wasn't big and it wasn't clever back in Robot and it's not bigger nor cleverer here.

The bad bits don't end here though, oh no. The Rani's disguise as Mel is a truly awful idea in concept and execution, while part four descends into a typical mix of silly science and technobabble that is the trademark of a Pip and Jane script. Bonnie Langford remains startlingly miscast and never seems comfortable playing against this alien backdrop. Tellingly, aside from JNT's continuing presence in the producer's chair, Bonnie and Pip and Jane are the only survivors from the previous season and are the three worst things about Time and the Rani.

Despite all this Time and the Rani remains watchable. It has an energy and sense of fun long since sacrificed at the altar of Saward, and breezes along at a fair old pace. The effects work is as good as it got for the series, and unlike the previous season you can see where the money was spent - up on the screen where it counts. The Tetraps look good, a high standard of monster design that would remain in place right till the end of the series' life, while the bubble traps surely represent a more effective, but less spectacular use of the series' effects budget.

Like a football manager who's team is on a bad run of form, Time and the Rani is indicative of the mythical corner being turned, of lessons being learned and results slowly improving. Doctor Who had got as bad as it was going to get the year before; the fight back started here.

Doctor Who is dead! Long live Doctor Who!

Cartmel's influence can be felt here in a stylistic shift every bit as severe as the Robot/Ark in Space change 12 years before. Then, of course, Bob Holmes knew exactly the direction in which he wanted to take the programme, here Cartmel can do naught but betray his uncertainty. However, the inconsistent tone of Paradise Towers can perhaps be attributed to director rather than script editor. The criticism aimed at the cannibalism of The Two Doctors and Revelation coupled with the "more humour, less violence" directive picked up by Mallett from working on Mysterious Planet the year before leaves director and script at odds from which the serial never recovers.

The script itself is a blackly comic urban thriller, a template that would serve the programme well for its final three years. However, black comedy is a very fragile and complex genre; every time the script aims for this target it is undermined by Mallet's reliance on slapstick.

It's sometimes hard to believe that this is the same director who two years later would pull an excellent performance out of Nicholas Parsons; here every performance is slightly off-key and no one can claim to have put in a good shift. In ninety minutes of television, only two scenes play out as the script intended; Sylvester's escape from the Caretakers and Tilda and Tabby's capture of Mel at the close of part two.

In Sylv's escape from the Caretakers we see the first seeds being sewn of the seventh Doctor's character proper. Subconsciously or not, Sylvester has taken Terrance Dick's "never cruel nor cowardly" edict to heart; acid baths and cyanide traps are a million miles away from this incarnation. His subversion of the Rule Book is the first in a long line of character moments that will eventually encompass talking Kane to death, befuddling Light and refusing to fight the Master. And that's just three I can think of on the hoof.

Then at the close of part two, Mallett hits the perfect note despite himself. For the most part Bonnie Langford is just as uncomfortable here as she was in Time and the Rani, but surrounded by old ladies and scones and tea and knitting she momentarily finds something she can respond to. So when the whole scene takes a turn for the absurd, Bonnie's overplaying is exactly what the script demands.

These two scenes apart the rest of the serial veers wildly between average of absolutely awful. No review of Paradise Towers would be complete without reference to Richard Briers, the man solely responsible for changing the consensus opinion of the serial from "not very good" to "awful." Somebody make him stop. Please. Say what you want about Hale and Pace and Ken Dodd, Richard Briers is the only actor amongst this august quartet and his is the most buttock clenchingly awful performance of the season, nay the era. Like Kate O'Mara's impersonation of Mel just a few weeks before it overshadows the entire serial. It's no wonder that contemporary commentators were already penning the series' obituary.

Richard Briers apart, Paradise Towers does continue Cartmel's steep learning curve. Being the first serial since Vengeance on Varos not to feature any continuity references is ordinarily not cause to celebrate, but this is damning the serial with faint praise. The very ethos of the programme has changed from the turgid navel gazing of season 22; from Paradise Towers onwards Doctor Who is looking forward rather than gazing wistfully behind.

The ratings for your last season were a disaster - what do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO? Do you look at the pattern of the 1980s, where from a strictly ratings perspective your two 25 minute Saturday afternoon seasons (18 and 23) have proven to be the least successful of the of the decade? Do you reflect on the fact that the two episodes per week format has been the biggest ratings draw of the last six seasons?

Or do you stick with the weekly half hour serial format that has patently died a slow and lingering death?

By the mid-80s audiences had proved reluctant to stick with a serial for the three weeks it takes to reach the conclusion. The Davison seasons overcame this to an extent because part four was broadcast just over a week after part one, whilst during season 22 that deficit was reduced to a single week. Heaven knows what was going through JNT's mind when he agreed to a fourteen week serial...

What I'm getting at is this; having been forced to regress to a format that should have long since been abandoned, through accident or design Cartmel comes up with the best compromise he can, the three-parter. It would be unfair to saddle the three-parters with the generalisation that they were simply four parters with the crap episode taken out (that's part three, by the way), but they are certainly a natural step on the path to self-contained 45-minute episodes that would become genre television's stock and trade in the 90s.

In their most simple terms, Cartmel has reduced the formula thus: episode 1, exploration; episode 2, investigation; episode 3, resolution. The episode 3 exposition instalment that has bogged down Doctor Who plots since time began is removed and the resolution is now only 14 days away, rather than 14 weeks.

In short, I think three-parters were a good idea.

And so on to Delta itself. It's fab. I am totally unashamed to admit that I love it to bits. It feels like the first story to be made exclusively for my generation (by my generation, I mean people who weren't about in the 70s), which probably explains why anyone over a certain age hates it.

A group of rock and roll loving aliens go on a trip to Disneyland in a spaceship that looks like a bus, crash in to a satellite and find themselves in a holiday camp in Wales in 1959. There they meet Burton, who deadpans the line, "You are not the Happy Hearts Holiday Club from Bolton, but instead are spacemen in fear of an attack from some other spacemen?" in a way that Leslie Nielsen couldn't have bettered. Thereafter he wanders through the story like Captain Mainwaring on acid, facing the bad guys with an enthusiasm that seems almost improper for a tale about genocide.

You couldn't make it up, well... er... yes you could, evidently.

After eight weeks of toil Sylv is getting a grip on where he wants to take the character. He dances uncomfortably with Ray, confronts Gavrok, rides a motorcycle, hugs a stratocaster and talks about love in a way than none of his predecessors could have done. Then he hatches a plan to defeat the bad guys with honey; he's a joy. Bonnie is still as stilted as usual, but she seems on firmer footing back on earth with (regular?) human beings to interact with.

As for the guest cast, Ken Dodd is Ken Dodd and doesn't bring shame on his profession in the way Richard Briers did a week before; Don Henderson is Don Henderson - I've never seen Z Cars but from what I've seen of him in other things, here he plays the same gruff character he'd been playing for the previous thirty years. Stubby Kaye is Stubby Kaye; actually, can you see a pattern developing here? By the same token I can only assume that David Kinder and Belinda Mayne are as bland in real life as they are on screen.

But the two who really steal the show are Richard Davies and Hugh Lloyd. Davies I mentioned before, he's possibly my favourite character in the whole thing. There's only been two characters in the whole series that I wish had joined the TARDIS crew; the wonderful D84 is the other. Hugh Lloyd as Goronwy adds a wonderfully magical edge to every scene he's in, and provides all of the exposition. In fact, sometimes I wonder if 'Goronwy' is welsh for 'Basil.' For example, when he's talking about the Queen bee secreting hormones into food to create a mate, he's not really talking about bees... or perhaps I'm just reading too much into it.

Either way, I love this tale of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll to bits. Really. Oh, and if Malcolm's Mum could put the cheque in the post, that'd be great.

I have now decided, after a particularly fine weekend with my best friend and fellow Who-nut Matthew, that I have been far, far too kind to this story in the past. We sat through four episodes of excruciating agony, Matt finding much more positive things to say than I, and I have rarely been as bored watching television as I was during this sleep-fest. 

People blame the production for the generally poor reputation but the script doesn’t do the story many favours either. Taking the show as a whole it takes simply ages for anything to happen, the Sea Devils aren’t woken up until the end of episode one, the invasion of the Sea Base doesn’t start until the end of episode two and it takes a full one hundred minutes before the reunited reptilian forces enter the action and serve a decent plot purpose. Some might say that this is deliberate plot pacing, spacing out the juicy stuff so the third (often the most criticized instalment) and fourth episodes aren’t left to pad out the tale but as a result of this slow moving plot the story seems to drag on and on and on…

The ideas are serviceable; I can see some merit in uniting the Sea Devils and the Silurians and for them to attack the humans in response to atrocities commited against their respective races in the past. It does effectively link the two species in a way that was only hinted at in their debut stories and pairing them up does give them both a ‘hook’ (the Silurians are the brains of the operation and the Sea Devils are the brawn). However, this is the ninth story in a row to heavily involve continuity from the past and it does start to feel like overkill. Maybe its having both species back in one story or maybe its because JNT decided to heavily redesign the creatures and gets it all wrong. 

Even the Sea Base is a nice idea, during a time of international crisis, a weapons station with missiles ready to launch should the political situation become untenable. You can just imagine a really good film coming from these ideas, huge sea monsters, a base falling to pieces, traitors aboard and possible Armageddon. It could have been really tense. So can somebody explain to me why this story is so tedious? Is it the sub standard performances? The weak direction? The tacky score? The terrible special FX? The diabolical dialogue? No my friends, it pains me to inform you that it is all of the above. Oh and it has Tegan and Turlough in it. Just to rub salt into the wound. 

For a start I cannot understand why JNT had to completely redesign the Sea Devils and the Silurians. I know I was whinging in Arc of Infinity that he DIDN’T redesign Gallifrey but that was a planet in serious need of a paint job. The original designs for both these monsters was fine but here they look ridiculous, oh so cumbersome and walk so bloody slowly it takes them five minutes to get from end of the set to another. The Sea Devils are supposed to have this Samurai feel to enhance their soldgier-like appearance but their strange spiky collars have the unfortunate effect of drawing to the attention their lack of facial movement. They look dreadfully static lumbering about the corridors of the Sea Base and both races talk rea…lly…slo…wly, which makes them appear even more leisurely. Its no wonder it takes them so long to get involved, they drag themselves along like geriatrics to a bingo hall. It doesn’t help when the central threat is so…unthreatening. 

Next up…the Sea Base. Instead of a rusting, creaking, echoey castle of doom we get an airy, bright, sterile looking palace. It’s not the most inspiring settings for this tale of nightmarish monsters especially when the blinding lights continually expose the creatures deficiencies. Plus I saw three sets wobble during the story, hate to join the ranks but there were consoles, walls and doors threatening topple. Even when the Sea Base is in darkness it refuses to hide away any of production mistakes. There are lots of good places to shoot the story with, up stairs, in between storage crates, through grates, around corners…instead poisonous director Pennant Roberts decides to opt for a lifeless point and shoot approach, constantly using long shots to expose large sets when a more intimate, cramped approach would have helped. Script wise this story is no better than say, Seeds of Death with a similar low budget feel but look how well Michael Ferguson managed to disguise that money loss through his thoughtful and dynamic direction. 

Can I just put one thing to rest please? How you anal fifth Doctor fans (and please feel free to call me an anal sixth Doctor fan, as I am!) justify his approach to the Sea Base staff is astonishing! Yes he does hand over his gun to suggest his peaceful intentions but only after he has ran away from their security force and beaten up two of them after they tried to approach him. Hmm, yeah what a pacifist. Tegan is screaming, “Doctor!” in disgust as he is thrown over a precipice when he started the damn fight! The only time he approaches them in an orderly fashion is when he has a gun in his hand. Rob Matthews is right, he is a coward, his ‘principles’ abandoning him until he is in a position of power. 

There is an attempt to dramatise the story by having the fifth Doctor take a very moralistic approach, condemning the humans for trying to wipe out the pesky lizards that are trying to take over their nuclear base. His scorn is twisted and senseless, the Silurians and Sea Devils have invaded the Sea Base, sent in their bloody great monster before them to kill as many people as possible to achieve their position on the bridge and he thinks they shouldn’t fight back? Huh? Negotiate with these homicidal nasties when their methods have wiped out half the crew? On your bike mister! I could understand insulting both sides of this conflict (much as the third Doctor did in the Silurians) but the Doctor takes a very lizard-friendly attitude which given the plot seems hard to agree with. His later “there should have been another way!” that apparently climaxes the story on a thoughtful note would be a damn sight more effective if his principles had kicked in earlier (he himself puts the Myrka out of action!). As ever the writers don’t seem to know what direction to take this tricky incarnation into and Davison plays it every which way, pretty effectively it has to be said, his anger towards the humans and despair at the end is very palpable but the writing just doesn’t match the consistency in quality of his performance. Story of the fifth Doctor’s life really. 

The Myrka, ahh the dear old Myrka, so astonishing it deserved a second story (the rather wonderful Bloodtide!). I hate to admit this but when the Myrka is on screen was one of the few times I was genuinely entertained during this story, this lumbering, groaning beast, clearly unfinished and awkwardly pawing his way through the base is quite a vivid image. So vivid Michael Grade decided the show was a budget-less exercise in science-craption and seemed to think that every story contained a Myrka of some sort, leading to the snowballing decision to cancel the show. Its really, really bad but excusable in the same way that The Chase and Time and the Rani is, so utterly inadequate you want to weep but you laugh your head instead (or else you would commit yourself to a mental asylum for enjoying this garbage). You think nothing could be worse than the Myrka bursting through the airlock door which turns out to be a mattress that flattens dear old Tegan but then Doctor Solow receives her long overdue death scene by attempting a bizarre techno-karate move on the creature and is buzzed to death. Oh I know which scene that would turn up on Ingrid Pitt’s before they were famous…

I spent far too long pointing out the obvious mistakes of Warriors of the Deep…so I might as well continue. Hexachromite (I fear I might have spelt that wrong) and therefore the denouement are revealed in the first episode. Tegan and Turlough do sod all which seems to be their purpose in much of their scripts. The corridor wandering is endless. Continuity is royally fluffed up when the Doctor claims he has met the Silurian leader before (if it is an unmentioned story there is no indications of it). The apparent bravery of not mentioning what the two Earth power blocks are lacks resonance, it would have been braver TO name the two blocks and face the consequences (and besides when one character says “the power block opposed to this base” it becomes really obvious they are skirting around the issue!). The fact that this is the opening story to a season that is hardly a ratings spectacular is understandable. Oh and the guest acting ranges from the mildly awful to the diabolically unwatchable. 

I find it insulting that Doctor Who could produce something this bad in its twilight years and that we should be expected to enjoy it. Season Twenty-One is a real mixed bag of the generic and the magical and Warriors of the Deep kick starts the year in the worst of ways, its classic Michael Grade fuel and proof to those ‘only telly Doctor Who counts’ that their legacy wasn’t so perfect. I have never read a book or listened to a CD that has made me this embarrassed to be a Doctor Who fan.