Overall, I’ve always been fond of the 20th anniversary celebration of Doctor Who, so I’ve looked forward to the Blu-ray boxed set which finally arrived the other day. So what did I make of it, revisiting Peter Davison’s penultimate season as the Fifth Doctor?
Arc of Infinity shows just how much John Nathan-Turner wanted a vacation in Amsterdam, and just how much Janet Fielding wanted to wear that new skimpy costume while everyone else was bundled up for winter. Or maybe how much the crew wanted Janet to wear it. (It’s the latter, isn’t it?) It’s interesting that the Doctor and Tegan’s paths cross here. Quite a coincidence — so much so that if it happened in the new era, this would have indicated that Tegan was an Impossible Girl, a Demi Goddess, or somehow the most important person in the universe!
But no, it was just because of her cousin. Pure coincidence. So, how ‘bout that?
Time Lords really are pompous jerks. The Castellan, Lord President Borusa (he seems to regenerate a lot and gets worse every time!), and that creep Maxill. Hope I never see that actor again.
Thank goodness for good old buddy, ol’ pal Hedin, who was in the Doctor’s corner — or so we thought. And everybody figured that Hedin took the face of the Celestial Toymaker to razz the Doctor. Now we know the rest of the story. He’s a scamp!
There’s an anniversary come back for Omega, as the mandate for Season 20 was, in every story, to have something or someone from the past return for the celebratory year, and who better to kick it off, with the Big O returning to torture the Doctor. Little known fact: before coming back as a bag of bones for The Reality War, he also came back and co-produced the 30th anniversary special with the EastEnders cast. Eeeeevil.
Some fun running around seeing Amsterdam, but even worse than the place the boys chose to sack out for the night — good god, how do you walk around that place in stocking feet? I would have kept my boots on too.
By story’s end, all’s well, but Tegan’s got no job; she got sacked! It couldn’t have been her personality, could it? So she’s back, and the Doctor’s really not very happy about it at all! More on that in a bit.
Rating: 3 out of 5 celery stalks
Snakedance is the sequel to Kinda, and as much as I was so-so on the original from the previous season, I was less enthused about this one — it’s somewhat dry and I was never that taken with the snake motif, although kudos to both snake stories for updating their SFX. Muuuuch better snakes when possible. I always applaud the DVDs and Blu-rays when they update the special effects. They never go too far, and the original producers and directors always appreciate seeing their stories coming closer to what they originally envisioned. (Fingers crossed once again for Invasion of the Dinosaurs…)
Lord Snake boy was a curious character. He seemed a bit of a jerk before the Mara’s influence and didn’t really seem to get much worse under the influence. Fielding probably relished getting to lower her voice, chomping at a meatier role, while Nyssa showed us her new outfit, likely hand-picked by that Pharaoh of fashion, JN-T. Yecch. Meanwhile, if one looks closely, Davison is rather impatient with his companions. He ignores Nyssa’s ugly new frock, badgers Tegan about her dreams, and generally has no patience for either of them.
It really did once again remind me of the Thirteenth Doctor’s general impatience with the “fam”. The glowering looks, the snapping… Chris Chibnall really went out of his way to reconstruct the Davison TARDIS team. But there were important differences. Adric was annoying and Tegan was a mouthy nightmare, while Nyssa was just… there and wooden. I could understand the Fifth Doctor getting annoyed, but he inherited all three of them and never wanted them there. With the Thirteenth, you had Ryan, who was dead weight, Graham, who started great and sweet, then just faded away as a joke, and then Yaz, who mostly just hid in a corner quietly until she and the Doctor were suddenly in love. Worst and most unbelievable ‘ship ever. The Doctor went to great lengths to lovingly call them her fam, but was constantly acting like she wanted to hire a babysitter full-time… before of course suddenly falling in love with Yaz.
But anyway… Snakes! Oh, and the Mara was the anniversary comeback nod.
2 out of 5 celery stalks
Mawdryn Undead is… complicated, as far as rating it goes, anyway. The big anniversary nod here is the Brigadier — and you’ve just gotta love him. The other nod to the 20th is the Black Guardian, so it’s a fairly stacked line-up. Anyway…
Turlough is a weasel. Hippo is a worm. I’m not sure if Stephen Garlick was originally cast for Hippo but the poor sap they had playing him was pathetic in so many other ways, it hardly matters that everyone kept referring to him as fat when he obviously wasn’t. He was a wretch. But Turlough is a detestable, conniving weasel, and I really wish the Black Guardian had just destroyed him. You know what? I liked Adric better than Turlough. There, I’ve said it. Adric was annoying but at least he meant well. You just wanna punch Turlough and throw his gangly butt out of an airlock. They even brushed his ginger eyebrows straight up to look… evil? Alien? It was not a good look.
Leaving the weasel and the worm behind, as much as I love the Brig, he really shouldn’t have been in this story. William Russell (R.I.P.) was supposed to reprise his role as Ian Chesterton but when the time came, he was unavailable, which was so unimaginably unfortunate. To think, it would be almost 40 years before we’d see him again in The Power of the Doctor.
It’s also unfortunate that no one bothered to do a better job rewriting the script significantly to accommodate Lethbridge-Stewart, but I’m guessing the casting change was too late in the day to totally revamp the story. It’s a testament to how much we love the Brig that we gladly looked past a pile of nonsense and enjoyed the story anyway. Most fans aren’t as forgiving these days.
Mawdryn and his brethren were some of the ugliest, worst designed aliens I’ve seen. What’s with the spaghetti on top of their heads and the flowing clown robes? Good lord… Oh, and again, Black Guardian, what’s with the crow? I can’t even blame that on this era’s clothing designers or JN-T, because the crow showed up under the last bad design team under Graham Williams!
The big climax where the Mawdryn 8 were going to drain the Doctor of his “eight remaining regenerations”… Bless. If they only knew then!
This was probably one of the more severely timey-wimey eps of the classic series.
3.5 out of 5 celery stalks for the Brig!
Terminus should have been called “Interminable”
About 70 minutes into episode one, I just assumed I was looking at some edited super cut to remake it into one longer movie. No. Turns out it just felt like 70 minutes. It was, in fact, the longest, time-warping 25-minute episode in history. This whole thing was tedious and unimpressive.
Davison’s Doctor is still unimpressive, out of breath, in over his head, and will basically remain so until The Caves of Androzani. The lepers, the guards in their weird armour, pretty much everything was unimpressive, along with the awful glacial pacing!
Sarah Sutton’s acting has always been unimpressive and her swansong was no different. Another correlation between JN-T and Chiball. Each created characters, brought them into the TARDIS, and then had no idea what to do with them. And, of course, ushered in the two least impressive Doctors — your mileage may vary. [Editor’s note: It does, Rick!]
I’m assuming it was a known fact in advance that Sutton was leaving, as they paraded her about in numerous outfits during the first four stories, ending with her disrobing down to a slip with little else. Maybe trying to crank up the sex appeal for the end.
Also unimpressive was the “ominous, threatening” creature — the Garm. He’s supposed to be scary? Probably shouldn’t have shown him to us. He just looked like a big, snuggly dog. I think he turned out to be an okay Fido though, but I’m not sure. I think I fell asleep at some point during the third episode, hoping against reason that this was somehow a two-parter.
Finally, yeah, still hate Turlough. He even inherits Adric’s room? Is the TARDIS suddenly short on space? At least JN-T has chosen to show other rooms of the TARDIS. It’s the one way in which he’s like Moffat. Russell T Davies and Chibnall never really bothered to show anything outside the console rooms.
They chose this story to try and have Tegan and Turlough bond through adversity while Nyssa gets manhandled into quarantine. But I do not much care about the Aussie and the weasel.
The Guardian is the sole nod to the 20th and the entire enterprise is forgettable. Bye Nyssa.
1 of 5 stalks.
Enlightenment might just be the highlight of the season. Beautifully directed and written, properly lit, and well acted in general, especially the guest cast. This might also be the most beautiful and liberating outcome of new effects, bringing even more beauty to a true gem. Ethereal, creepy, and beautiful.
There were so many opportunities to kill Turlough and his psychotic eyebrows!
This story was the opposite in almost every way of Terminus. This story flew by — it’s wonderfully paced. If not for The Five Doctors, this would be my favourite of the boxset. As it is, Enlightenment is tops for the regular season. Full of wonder, this is wonderful Who and I’d say the second-best regular season Fifth Doctor episode after Caves.
We say goodbye to the Guardians and their silly bird headgear. Did anyone besides Williams and JN-T actually like this look?
4.5 out of 5 stalks.
The King’s Demons has one thing going for it: it’s two parts.
Tegan’s whining and complaining, Turlough’s Turlough. Check.
Was anybody ever fooled into thinking the mush-mouthed Frenchman was anyone other than Ainley? The Master doing his bad French accent was the anniversary nod, while the evil Time Lord seeks to mess up the signing of the Magna Carta and change Earth’s history. Just how bored is he? Speaking of pathetic… In Kamelion, they really did try to build a robot that could be an actual companion. Let’s just think about all the reasons why that wouldn’t work back in 1983. Done? Affirmative? Good. I think I even wrote a piece about this once, ages ago.
Kameleon definitely could have worked. You could get an actor to put on the silver suit, or just bring in an actor to play him looking human as the new default. Then, as needed, he could shapeshift into other characters when necessary. But JN-T’s eyes were too big for his stomach. So much for the end of the season.
2 stalks out of 5.
Finally…
The Five Doctors, the 20th anniversary special featuring three out of five Doctors, plus fill-ins. They’ve done yet another new upgrade on the special effects in 2023 for the 40th anniversary of the story, and they are indeed even more impressive than what they did for the DVD. They upgraded the Time Scoop once again — no swirly thingy; now, it’s more of an obelisk that actually stomps and catches them. Updated monitor screens and other bits. They look very nice indeed.
I don’t know what else to say that hasn’t been said a million times. I still think I like Richard Hurndall’s tetchy First Doctor more than David Bradley’s befuddled version.
The script was basically by-the-numbers but served each Doctor quite well. It only occurs to me now, but as nice a job as Terrance Dicks did on the script, imagine if Robert Holmes wrote it! I wonder if it might have been possible to edge Tom into coming back that way? We’ll never know.
I’m kind of surprised there hasn’t been a return to the Death Zone since. Also a shame we never got see the Raston Warrior Robot again. At least Tom showed up for the 50th.
All in all, it was a grand celebration of the show.
4.5 stalks out of 5.
And there you have Season 20, or Peter Davison’s Season 2 if you’re over here buying The Collection in the States. The usual ups and downs of a typical season. The biggest thing going for it was some of the call-backs from previous seasons. Bit of a cheat stretching the Black Guardian over three stories, but what can you do? There were plenty of returns and even more cameos in The Five Doctors.
Happy anniversary once again for Doctor Who.
