Doctor Who Thread VI: "The Very Model of a Gallifreyan Buccaneer" [SPOILERS]

[Sunken Valley]

In sequence:

Bull****.

Fair enough, he's been doing it a while, good to see he's not going to just keep clinging on. Hopefully he can leave on a high point.

The episodes he's written do not fill me with confidence in him as showrunner. Why not Mark Gatiss?

You calling my statement bull because you don't believe it or because its a bad idea. Because it is true http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-...chris-chibnall.
Its also a good idea. Moffat doesn't have to split between, Who and Sherlock, Dr Who gets to return to its spring slot and Moffat gets time to prepare his send-off and make it count.

As for Mr Chibnall, 42, the Silurian two-parter and Dinosaurs on a spaceship are all good episodes, not to mention his contributions to Torchwood and his playwriting career in the early 2000s. Not to mention Broadchurch shows he is able to show run and produce a coherent Season arc.

[Friv]

Oh, man, Chris Chibnall?

Really.

Chris Chibnall. The guy who thinks that the Doctor should fire missiles at people, and who wrote the excruiatingly bad "Cold Blood" two-parter (I mean, I say wrote, but he just stole the good bits from The Silurians and then added a lot of bad on top), and who presided over Torchwood's rapid collapse.

I do not hold high hopes, is what I'm saying.

[factotum]

Chibnall hasn't written a Dr. Who episode since 2012, and I wouldn't say the ones he *did* write were high points of the seasons they appeared in. However, Steven Moffat was known for writing awesome episodes before he became showrunner, and he doesn't seem to have recaptured that magic while in the post, so past performance does not guarantee future returns! We'll have to wait and see what he comes up with.

As for no Dr. Who until 2017--the nasty cynical side of me is suggesting they might be doing that in order to save money, since they're likely to be spending quite a bit on Olympics coverage and the like this year. Maybe I'm wrong, and the extra time will allow them to produce the best Nu Who series ever; but I'm not holding my breath.

[Thufir]

You calling my statement bull because you don't believe it or because its a bad idea. Because it is true http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-...chris-chibnall.
Its also a good idea. Moffat doesn't have to split between Who and Sherlock, Dr Who gets to return to its spring slot and Moffat gets time to prepare his send-off and make it count.

Oh I know it's true. I came to this thread to talk about the news only to see you'd got here first.
However I disagree on it being a good idea. Admittedly my perspective is not a majority perspective, Doctor Who is one of the very few TV shows I watch and so any disruption (of which there have been too many in recent years) is going to bug me. Moffat not having to split his time is good I suppose, but given the choice I would much rather have Doctor Who happen sooner and him do Sherlock once he's done with it. Moffat having time to prepare his send-off sounds good in theory, but if more time to prepare between series led to better Who then series 7 and 8 should've been a lot better than they were.
And what I read was that at least part of the reason for pushing it back was to build anticipation for this big end of an era occasion. Actually hang on, I'll copy over the quote as well:

According to BBC1 controller Charlotte Moore, the network has “decided to schedule Steven’s big finale series in Spring 2017 to bring the nation together for what will be a huge event on the channel. 2016 is spoilt with national moments including the Euros and Olympics and I want to hold something big back for 2017—I promise it will be worth the wait!”

To which I say, no. No. No no NO NO NO. Giving me no Doctor Who for a year does not build more anticipation for the next series when it does come, it just ****es me off that they've decided to arbitrarily delay it and forced me to wait an extra X months for something I should already be watching. And "Steven's big finale"? "Huge event on the channel"? One of the biggest problems with Russell T Davies departure was that he made so much of a spectacle of it, having the Doctor make the rounds and say goodbye to all of RTD's darlings for 15 minutes before finally regenerating. I can appreciate that the showrunner themself will want to go out with a bang, give a grand finale to their tenure on the show, but for the show as a whole and certainly the BBC in a wider sense it should not be this big a deal that they have to make such a massive thing of it. They consider Steven Moffat's departure to be a huge event, a big national moment, something that needs to be built up, but strangely they didn't do anything of the sort for the last regeneration, which I would consider way more important. To a lot of the audience, the showrunner is just a name on the screen, they may be aware that he sometimes says interesting things in interviews; but the Doctor is the character they tune in to watch. If anything is a huge event in Doctor Who it's a change of Doctor, not a change of showrunner. Or, jumping back out of the narrative and into the real world, the 50^th anniversary - while they had already started messing about with the scheduling, including mid-series breaks and stuff, they didn't feel they needed to give us a whole year of no Doctor Who to build anticipation for the anniversary special, in fact the end of series 7 wasn't too much earlier than what used to be the norm, leaving us with about 6 months between regular series and anniversary where we'd usually have had about 6 months between series and Christmas special. And what did that more normal length of wait take away from the experience and the anticipation? NOTHING.

As for Mr Chibnall, 42, the Silurian two-parter and Dinosaurs on a spaceship are all good episodes, not to mention his contributions to Torchwood and his playwriting career in the early 2000s. Not to mention Broadchurch shows he is able to show run and produce a coherent Season arc.

I emphatically disagree with the bolded. That two-parter is the biggest reason why he doesn't fill me with confidence. Though looking at the list of Torchwood episodes it turns out he did write some of the better ones in series 2 as well as one of the worst in series 1. The fact I've heard good things about Broadchurch is still what gives me the most cause to be hopeful though.

Chibnall hasn't written a Dr. Who episode since 2012, and I wouldn't say the ones he *did* write were high points of the seasons they appeared in. However, Steven Moffat was known for writing awesome episodes before he became showrunner, and he doesn't seem to have recaptured that magic while in the post, so past performance does not guarantee future returns! We'll have to wait and see what he comes up with.

I'd say Moffat did still write some awesome episodes while he was showrunner. Not all of his episodes were of the same standard as his non-showrunner stuff, but then he wrote considerably more episodes as showrunner, and there were still not many absolute duds.
The thing he was absolutely pants at was ongoing series-spanning plot arcs. The details of individual episodes were still (mostly) good imo, but the bigger picture left something to be desired.

[BWR]

Moffat going is the best news I've heard in a while. The bad news is he will still do another season. A year off might let the bad taste of what he's done so far fade a bit so I might actually give it a chance. Sadly, I have not been impressed by Chibnall's efforts so far. Let's hope it's Moffat's situation in reverse (I liked Moffat's stories up until he took over, and he proved to be terrible as a chief writer and creative director- maybe this guy will prove to be good for DW even if his stories aren't).

[dps]

Chibnall, huh. I was hoping I'd get the gig.

[Dienekes]

For the record, my favorite two seasons of New Who were Moffat's first two as show runner. However, after that it went downhill pretty quick, he still had a few good ones in him, in my opinion, but nothing like his old good stuff. So, I'm not sorry exactly to see him go, but I'm not exactly excited for Chibnall either.

[Androgeus]

Chibnall, huh. I was hoping I'd get the gig.

I'm sure you were a close second.

[dps]

In all seriousness, of the people who have written multiple episodes in the NuWho era, I think I'd have preferred Jamie Mathieson (Mummy on the Orient Express, Flatline), but apparently he has some commitment to do a French TV series.

[DJ Yung Crunk]

Chibnall, huh. I was hoping I'd get the gig.

You and me both.

I had... plans

[Aotrs Commander]

Could be worse - they could have picked me, and that would have meant nothing but Daleks...

[DJ Yung Crunk]

Could be worse - they could have picked me, and that would have meant nothing but Daleks...

See, I would have done the opposite.

[dps]

Could be worse - they could have picked me, and that would have meant nothing but Daleks...

That wouldn't necessarily be terrible, but it likely would be. Yeah, overexposure might be a problem, but the main problem with the Daleks is that nobody anymore seems to be able to write them well. The Cybermen come off even worse in that regard, though. I'd use both very sparingly unless I found someone who actually understands how to write them (and I don't claim that I could write them better than what we've seen in NuWho--not to say that they were always written well in ClassicWho). I've read several times that they have to use the Daleks at least once a series for legal reasons, but I'm not sure that's correct.

[DJ Yung Crunk]

I think the Daleks are dead. It's done. It's over. It's boring. It should have stopped with Evil of the Daleks.

[Hopeless]

I'd have revealed the whole mess about the Paradign Daleks was that the Timelords tired of waiting for the Doctor to get his finger out arranged their creation to force him to rediscover Gallifrey.

Missy was their agent, but rather than that Raven and the Hybrid rubbish, I'd have revealed the TARDIS that blew up with Eleven was actually the Master's revealing the reason they couldn't control his TARDIS is because they didn't know which one he had!

When he came back from that reset he was once again in his own TARDIS having discovered where the Master had hidden it within the exploding TARDIS so rather than being wished back it brought him back after absorbing the paradoxical event which is why we didn't see it recharging after that ending scene.

The Time lords' manipulations resulted in restoring the Daleks presence, but it also would have caused the Doctor's death on Trenzalore so their granting him his extra lives restored the true timeline rather than made the matter much worse.

I'd have had the doctor turn up to restore Gallifrey with a clip of the 50th anniversary as a potential xmas special next year (as I liked the Husbands of River Song!) but instead established Missy was trapped inside that Timelord Soul Capsule and the Doctor would discover her predicament and reveal Clara's boyfriend was still stuck inside meaning he had several reasons to get involved.

I'd have Missy take over Clara so she and her boyfriend to end up together and the Doctor a new nemesis and one he wants to save at least so he can restore Clara.

Special Note: The Doctor would see Missy everyone else sees Clara as being Timelords' their telepathy would make it clear who is who and the fact if she's killed she just nips back into that artefact that's if she doesn't just use it to store several others so she has multiple bodies to use when she wants to!

Next season would involve the Doctor eventually figuring out he needs to restore Gallifrey before he can find a way to save Clara and the villain would eventually be revealed as Rassilon ultimately the following season would involve him stealing that timelord artefact before Rassilon destroys it, is it bad I'll like to see Leela turn up?

[Androgeus]

Could be worse - they could have picked me, and that would have meant nothing but Daleks...

I didn't know you were Nick Briggs.

[DJ Yung Crunk]

Also I'd plug Big Finish at every opportunity. I'd make that **** ultra canon. On screen appearance from Charley Pollard? I don't see why not.

[Eldan]

That would be a thing that would get me back into Doctor Who. Onscreen apearances from Big Finish companions.

[DJ Yung Crunk]

Honestly, I'm enough of a narcissist that I might just tell y'all about my major plans. I have quite elaborate dreams for the New Series. Though it can be summarised by "basically the opposite of what's going on now".

[Eldan]

The opposite, you say? I'm listening.

[DJ Yung Crunk]

Okay. Deep breath. Here we go.

Spoiler

Show

In no particular order

• Already mentioned the Big Finish shoutouts so I'm just going to restate it here. In my mind, Big Finish is even better than the TV show. It's the complexities of the classic series with the humane characterisations of the new series. I will probably graduate an audio companion to the big screen as tribute. Depending on India Fisher's schedule it might be Charley Pollard but I'm open to whatever. New series fans might find Lucie Miller or Bernice Summerfield redundant.
• Drop Murray Gold and never look back. I really hate the pomp and bombast of the new series' score. It seems really incongruous with the tone of the show, to me. I'm willing to admit this might be my own personal preference, though. All that loud, anthemic post-John Williams runoff got old by 1985. The best film scores have been psychedelic rock, jazz or electronic. Electronic would make sense for Doctor Who, so I'm thinking someone like a Cliff Martinez or a Sinoia Caves or an M Geddes Gengras.
• Throw the sonic screwdriver out the nearest airlock. It's been an anchor weighing down a perfectly good series for too long. Seriously. It's garbage. It'll give writers an opportunity to actually write, for a change.
• Take The Doctor down a peg. No more "most important thing in the universe". No more messianic overtones. No more elaborate speeches. The Doctor will just be a traveller, going where the wind takes him with no clue where he is or what he's doing. He stopped exploring at a certain point, and he got blessed with a frankly absurd encyclopedic knowledge of every nook and cranny of the universe. He could do with a bit of incompetence. Also going to make him more alien and unrelatable. He is a time lord, after all.
• Four person TARDIS team. Bring it back to the ensemble style of the original Hartnell run. The Doctor/Susan/Ian/Barbara was bloody immaculate the way every character's import was evenly distributed and all perspectives were considered. Individually, sure, you could have replaced Ian and Susan with cardboard cutouts and few people would have noticed, but as a group it was outstanding. There was also a dialogue amongst that group. It wasn't a squad of cheerleaders fanning The Doctor's ego. Even if the TARDIS team doesn't get that large we need an audience surrogate character on par with Barbara again. Someone whose wisdom outshines The Doctor's own. A meaningful contrast between ethics and cold, hard intelligence.
• Hard, hard, hard, hard limits on "monster" episodes. They were fantastic in Troughton's run. The Hinchcliffe stuff added an interesting gothic twist to it. But, really, it was running out of steam well before the new series even began. Now all it can do is cough up a miserable gimmick or a "hey, remember these" every now and then. It doesn't do anything to disguise the fact that these stories are all, functionally the same. One or two episodes a season, I'm thinking. Doctor Who is not a horror show. It's an anthology that can occasionally be horror, yes. But I resent how it's defined by monsters.
• Follow up on that last one. No more Daleks, Cybermen, Silurians, Ice Warriors, Autons, Angels, Gobbledeegooks or Willy-nillys. Come up with new stories, guys. We got a lot of mileage out of the Daleks, I'll grant. Given that they're the most one-dimensional beings in the universe we turned out some pretty great stuff. Power of the Daleks is possibly the best TV episode ever and Jubilee might be the best Doctor Who story of any medium. But we're really pushing our luck now. If we go without them for five years it'll actually be kind of dramatic and cool when they do reappear. Right now I don't get an ounce of the threat I got from Evil of the Daleks. I just roll my eyes in exasperation. Cybermen were never cool, though. Their best story was a ripoff of The Tomb of Tutankhamun. Think that's a good sign?
• Let's bring some historicals back, please. By this I do not mean swill like Vincent and The Doctor or Awakening. I mean a historical episode in the sense that the TARDIS and her crew are the only sci fi aspects of it. All conflicts will be period appropriate and contextually justified. The last time we had that on television was The Highlanders. But, in my opinion, no one 'genre' of Doctor Who story had a greater success rate than the historical episode. The entirety of the new series combined doesn't have an ounce of the warmth, subtlety and nuance of Marco Polo or The Aztecs. Seriously. Have you seen The Aztecs!? Guys, you can bang on about Blink or The Girl in the Fireplace until the cows come home but, dang what a serial! All this being said, I'll set a hard limit of two episodes per season for this, too. Let's not get carried away.
• Less focus on continuity or "season arcs". Like I said, I think of Doctor Who as an anthology series with a recurring cast. Not sure when episodic shows stopped being cool but I didn't vote for it and I certainly don't endorse it. I don't think it works with Doctor Who because it's invariably contrived. Doctor Who continuity is a hilarious mess in the first place. From now on, the only arcs I care about are the character arcs of the TARDIS crew. Even then I'll have it play in the background, secondary to whatever story we're on this week.
• No Christmas specials. I don't feel like I should have to explain this one.

Basically the BBC would fire me in an hour.

Tl;dr: The Hartnell era with better production values.

[Thufir]

• Take The Doctor down a peg. No more "most important thing in the universe". No more messianic overtones. No more elaborate speeches. The Doctor will just be a traveller, going where the wind takes him with no clue where he is or what he's doing. He stopped exploring at a certain point, and he got blessed with a frankly absurd encyclopedic knowledge of every nook and cranny of the universe. He could do with a bit of incompetence. Also going to make him more alien and unrelatable. He is a time lord, after all.
• Four person TARDIS team. Bring it back to the ensemble style of the original Hartnell run. The Doctor/Susan/Ian/Barbara was bloody immaculate the way every character's import was evenly distributed and all perspectives were considered. Individually, sure, you could have replaced Ian and Susan with cardboard cutouts and few people would have noticed, but as a group it was outstanding. There was also a dialogue amongst that group. It wasn't a squad of cheerleaders fanning The Doctor's ego. Even if the TARDIS team doesn't get that large we need an audience surrogate character on par with Barbara again. Someone whose wisdom outshines The Doctor's own. A meaningful contrast between ethics and cold, hard intelligence.

These are the two of your points that I absolutely agree with, with no reservations. Messianic Doctor got old about 5 seconds after it became a thing, and multiple companions is just an inherently much more interesting dynamic (plus it helps avoid the other pitfall of the series as it stands where the companion also becomes the most important thing in the universe and the doctor throws a tantrum every time he loses one and it has to be the biggest ****ing deal every time. In Classic Who companions just left sometimes, or on at least one occasion the Doctor just left one behind without really thinking about it IIRC)

Your other points I vary between "somewhat, but not entirely," "good premise but taken too far," and "oh hell no."
Actually bringinng back historicals is another thing I could get pretty well behind (though just to point out, the last historical was Black Orchid, then before that it was The Highlanders. I made the same mistake a while back when I mentionde the same idea).

I find it interesting seeing all of you guys coming up with your own particular ideas for where you'd want the show to go, because I really don't have them for all that I put a decent amount of thought into it. Just a difference of application I suppose. You guys start from scratch and think about the shwo as you'd want it, whereas I by nature am more inclined to look at what we actually get and simply filter it through my own tastes and sensibilities ("These bits were bad, these bits were a decent idea but out of place, this took too long, these other bits didn't get enough time to be properly developed, so cut 1, repurpose 2 to a different story, truncate 3 and replace what we've lost with more of 4" sort of thing).

[DJ Yung Crunk]

These are the two of your points that I absolutely agree with, with no reservations. Messianic Doctor got old about 5 seconds after it became a thing, and multiple companions is just an inherently much more interesting dynamic (plus it helps avoid the other pitfall of the series as it stands where the companion also becomes the most important thing in the universe and the doctor throws a tantrum every time he loses one and it has to be the biggest ****ing deal every time. In Classic Who companions just left sometimes, or on at least one occasion the Doctor just left one behind without really thinking about it IIRC)

Oh, I forgot one.

• Companions are regular people. I don't mean "humans from modern day Earth" so much as there's no galaxy spanning caveat attached to them. They're just people who have been whisked away for whatever reason. I'm kind of over Bad Wolf and Impossible Girl and immortal boyfriends and whatever. Subtle, understated payoffs. You guys wanna know how to send off a companion? Dalek Invasion of Earth. I know the classic companions were hit and miss and they're treated as kind of a joke but all the gimmicks in the world won't give you a character as interesting as Barbara or Ace or Evelyn.

It'd also be neat if one of these three companions was only tolerated by The Doctor. No love lost. Maybe a UNIT ambassador he's stuck with. As such he has an adversarial, co-worker like relationship with them. I think there's potential for some interesting two-sided debates with that dynamic. The UNIT officer could be our Barbara stand in, if you will.

Just out of curiosity, though. What were the points you disagreed with?

I find it interesting seeing all of you guys coming up with your own particular ideas for where you'd want the show to go, because I really don't have them for all that I put a decent amount of thought into it. Just a difference of application I suppose. You guys start from scratch and think about the shwo as you'd want it, whereas I by nature am more inclined to look at what we actually get and simply filter it through my own tastes and sensibilities ("These bits were bad, these bits were a decent idea but out of place, this took too long, these other bits didn't get enough time to be properly developed, so cut 1, repurpose 2 to a different story, truncate 3 and replace what we've lost with more of 4" sort of thing).

Don't give my imagination that much credit. I'm basically proposing we go back to the Hartnell era, here.

[Aotrs Commander]

Okay. Deep breath. Here we go.

Tl;dr: The Hartnell era with better production values.

The only one that I would agree with would the one about the multiple companions, but even than that was only because the series at its best that it ever was for me was during Matt Smith with Amy/Rory/River. (Until then, I only tended to watch the highlight so Nu Who, rather than religiously watch every episode.) Maybe the monster one, but that's only because I'd prefer more story-arc stuff and preferably more recurring villains (esp. Daleks, one of the vanishingly few nonhumanoid alien races that aren't basically just monsters.)

Going back the Hartnell era would probably put me off more or less completely.

Which would a shame, since Doctor Who is one of, what, now only four TV programs (Agents of Shield/Agent Carter/Murdoch Myteries/DW) I actually watch anymore (not counting the one cartoon I watch on the interwebs as it comes out, or the cartoons I have on in the background when I'm cleaning the front room). DW is one of the few shows left where I feel I am actually the target (though the last couple of seasons were not as good).

[DJ Yung Crunk]

Today I was sufficiently bored in a waiting room that I began ranking the Peter Davison TV stories from worst to best. Since they wildly fluctuated between works of art and just the lowest of the low with relatively no middle ground, it was surprisingly easy. Tell me where y'all fall in on this.

Spoiler

Show

20. Time-Flight
Worst Doctor Who story in any medium ever. Coming from someone who has very strong opinions of the reboot series and its near total lack of quality that is not something I say lightly. But it's got a muddy art design, it's outstandingly dull and the plot is confused and incoherent. You will pray for the understated nuance of The Last of the Time Lords when it's over

19. Warriors of the Deep
Footage from this one was used by Michael Grade as a reason to take Doctor Who off the air. I can't say I blame him.

18. Arc of Infinity
Can anyone can follow this script down its baffling, convoluted rabbit hole and come out the other side satisfied? It's so maudlin, too. I could forgive it if it embraced its own ridiculousness. I don't know what it is about Gallifrey episodes that made them such wet logs. The Deadly Assassin was cool, but anything after that is just asking for trouble.

17. The Five Doctors
Whenever the franchise gets narcissistic I just phase it out. Really, The Three Doctors was barely mediocre. From there they just get worse every ten years. So that makes this an infinitely more appealing proposition than, say, Day of the Doctor or Zagreus. But that's not really praise, is it? You'd have to work really hard to be worse than Zagreus.

16. The King's Demons
Mercifully short as it is it demonstrates enough courtesy to be benign.

15. Resurrection of the Daleks
A few ideas, if given time to properly develop, would have elevated this serial considerably. The finished product is just a bit noisy, mean-spirited and outrageous. I admire Tegan's exit, and The Doctor's final confrontation with Davros. Everything else is just ugly, forgettable white noise. Like most Dalek stories, really.

14. Awakening
Remember this one? Me neither. Think that's a good sign?

13. Terminus
If it had been good the Black Guardian Trilogy might have been Doctor Who's most complete and fulfilling plot arc. As it is now it's just "the one sandwiched between Mawdryn Undead and Enlightenment.

12. Four to Doomsday
Terrible, sure, but I'm charitable towards it for the same reason I'm charitable towards The Horns of Nimon. It sucks, but at least it's amusing. It's not a painful, awkward slog like Time-Flight or The Last of the Time Lords. Based on pure entertainment value this one's got it going on.

11. Black Orchid
The last proper historical, though hardly fitting the legacy of its predecessors. It's not bad, really. It's just pointless. Cute and harmless Diet Doctor Who, really.

10. Frontios
Gets a bad rep, I think. The set design was top notch, especially. It's late enough in the game that some plot elements sag a bit, but it's paranoid and desperate and nervous enough to overlook some of its flabbier bits.

9. Planet of Fire
Another underrated one. To be fair, I haven't seen it in a while so many of the details elude me. I remember liking it a lot, though. That may have had more to do with the abundance of scenes featuring a young Nicola Bryant, a woman replete with assets prized by the superficial male.

8. Earthshock
A classic once-upon-a-time. Moments in it are outstanding. The cliffhanger to episode one is a stroke of genius. The final scenes are still echoed in Doctor Who to this day. The rest of it is a bit muddled and superficial, though. But you can certainly do worse with the Cybermen. At the very least they're given some of their Tenth Planet menace back.

7. The Visitation
See, Awakening? That's how you use a location! The pastoral wide shots in The Visitation are beautiful, but never betray the underlying bleakness that permeates the script. It can seem oppressively barren, at times, even in a crowded action sequence. Just the lingering necromantic death that clings to the air is palpable. The Visitation's atmosphere is so on-point it should be a masterclass for the subject. Also, they destroy the sonic screwdriver in this serial! That alone makes it one of my favourites!

6. Mawdryn Undead
Pitch black, oppressive and genuinely challenging. This is a serial that overcomes some of the superficial problems with the JNT era simply by having a gripping script fraught with socratic overtones. It's one of the finest starts to any plot arc in series history. Ridiculous design aside the presence of The Black Guardian is weighty and menacing. Not so much that it takes away from the main plot, either. Extraordinarily balanced, it is. Also, the Brigadier's back. That's cool too.

5. Snakedance
Definitely a lesser sequel, Snakedance trips by making the undertones and symbolism of its predecessor and making them too literal. Even with that, though, it's still a chip off the old block. Ambitious in its use of symbolism the subtleties of the script. Ambitious even further for its rather abstract villain, one that's more rare for Doctor Who in that it's more conceptual than literal. But more about that later...

4. The Caves of Androzani
Oh, you already know why. I guess I have to explain why it's so low, huh? No reason, really. The Caves of Androzani is an absolute work of art. It's just that the next three are even better.

3. Enlightenment
At this point my writeups fail to do these serials any justice. I'm just going to degenerate into sycophantic babbling and hyperbolic praise. This is the classic serial I recommend to NuWho fans to aid in their transition. It's got the new series pre-occupation with scope and majesty as well its melodramatic and operatic atmosphere. But it's never bombastic, outrageous or needlessly silly. It retains the classic series conceptual ideas and character depth, but adds a sheen of polish on it that makes it far less abrasive. As opposed to...

2. Kinda
...this one. As flawless and genius as the script is, the weak production values might prove a bit of a hurdle. The CGI effects on the DVD help patch things up a bit, but the design is still one of the worst in the series. It's a shame too because the writing is possibly the best in the entire franchise, accross any medium. It's a rare spiritual episode, and a bold re-imagining of many of the classic creation myths (Pagan, Christian and Buddhist, alike). But this isn't needless set dressing. Kinda's story of inevitability and recursion requires a strong metaphysical subtext to survive. And it's woven sublimely into such an oddball and outlandish psychological horror. Neither side makes way for any concession into another. It's just pure subtext and pure genius all the way. Not the most accessible, but infinitely rewarding and rich with symbolic detail for return viewers.

1. Castrovalva
I think The Aztecs might be the only serial even better than this. But that could change any day, really. Like Kinda it has themes of recursion and inevitability, but takes a less clinical and hard nosed look at it. In Castrovalva these ideas are external manifestations of The Doctor's fractured psyche and his increasing weariness with the whole bloody process. This is Davison's first, after all, and the process of death and rebirth is taking a considerable toll on The Doctor. So recursion now have personal stakes for us, as the audience. The on screen realisation of these themes are just extraordinary. Where Kinda took a Genesis/Revelations to the subject, Castrovalva externalises it with references to mathematics (the concept of recursive occlusion is brought up) and art (it's called "Castrovalva" after all). More importantly it humanises the concept. It asks what the concept of recursion means to us, as people, and asks hard questions about what we're to make of the situation, if it is indeed the truth. Top all this off with the best score in the series history, some gorgeous art direction and set design and an emotionally powerful climax and cook until crisp and golden.

****, I ****ing love this serial. It's so good, guys. Just watch it, already.

That was longer than I had intended it to be. Regardless. Thoughts? Agree? Disagree?

[BWR]

Davison is pretty much my least favorite oldWho Doctor. Colin baker had a rocky start and was saddled with that horrible costume but he showed real promise and I would have loved to see more of him. Davison was just kind of bland all the way through. He was also saddled with some of the worst companions, which doesn't help things.
I'll take almost anything of Davison's era over much of nuWho, however, warts and all.

[Aedilred]

Today I was sufficiently bored in a waiting room that I began ranking the Peter Davison TV stories from worst to best. Since they wildly fluctuated between works of art and just the lowest of the low with relatively no middle ground, it was surprisingly easy. Tell me where y'all fall in on this.

Time-Flight worse than Twin Dilemma? Worse than Last of the Time-Lords? It wasn't great, by any means, but I didn't think it was awful. Also it raised my hopes that we'd seen the last of Tegan, which won it brownie points in my book, though they were soon to be dashed.

Warriors of the Deep I think is criminally underrated, because, and here's the kicker to my comments in the other thread re: production, the production is just terrible. The special effects barely merit the name and a lot of the acting is ropey. But I think if it could somehow be "remastered" and given the attention the plot deserved rather than being done in a rush at the last minute, it would reveal itself as one of the better episodes of the Fifth Doctor's run. In fact while watching it (and trying to ignore the awful costumes) I found myself thinking exactly that.

Kinda on the other hand I find somewhat overrated. It's ok, but it sags badly at times and the ending is underwhelming, and I wasn't taken with the follow-up in Snakedance either. I must admit that I really don't like Tegan at all, which doesn't help my appreciation of Tegan-centric serials like Snakedance.

Black Orchid was a mess. I have some affection for it as the last true "historical" which I think is something that could do with reviving, but the serial itself is bleh.

Terminus I think asserts some of the bleakness that characterises some of the best episodes of this era. The production is a problem, again, with dimly lit sets that can make it hard to tell what's going on and a dodgy costume for the Garm; it would probably also have been better served losing the whole Big Bang angle and focussing on the lazars, but it was decent enough I thought.

I liked The King's Demons, but that's possibly because I enjoyed the historical framing of it at least as much as the merits of the episode itself. I think it was let down by Kamelion - not so much his appearance in the episode itself, but that he then disappeared for so long due to technical problems, so having had an intriguing introduction episode it went nowhere.

Kamelion was in many ways one of the bigger misses of the Fifth Doctor's period, I think. The sad thing was that I actually really liked him in his first appearance, and remained sympathetic for much of his reappearance in Planet of Fire. But his unexplained absence from interceding episodes, and the awkward "fix" imposed in Planet of Fire, was a problem.

I would rate Caves of Androzani above Castrovalva, although both are strong, as was Enlightenment.

I like The Five Doctors, and it's probably my favourite multi-Doctor episode (which I must admit, I'm a sucker for).

Davison is pretty much my least favorite oldWho Doctor. Colin baker had a rocky start and was saddled with that horrible costume but he showed real promise and I would have loved to see more of him. Davison was just kind of bland all the way through. He was also saddled with some of the worst companions, which doesn't help things.

At the time, I also felt the companion issue was a problem, but as it wore on I started to find it was mostly Tegan that bothered me. There are problems with Nyssa and I don't think the writers really knew what to do with her (she was supposed to be written out early on, apparently, but Davison insisted she stay) but she was ok, while Turlough is one of the more compelling companions the Doctor's had, and while Adric was often obnoxious, he was intentionally so, and I don't think he ever (for me) slipped across to "OOC" irritation rather than "IC" frustration (as opposed to, say, Donna Noble, who did so frequently), to the extent that I felt his absence keenly in the following three serials, none of which I was taken with, and things only started to pick up when Turlough appeared.

I think the Fifth Doctor himself is my favourite of the lot, though, I'm sorry to say, even if that is mostly the character rather than the episodes and supporting cast, which were often weak.

[DJ Yung Crunk]

Time-Flight worse than Twin Dilemma? Worse than Last of the Time-Lords? It wasn't great, by any means, but I didn't think it was awful. Also it raised my hopes that we'd seen the last of Tegan, which won it brownie points in my book, though they were soon to be dashed.

I'm not going to argue about Last of the Time-Lords because it's really only barely better. But The Twin Dilemma I always thought was underrated. Oh, don't get me wrong. It's awful! But it's hardly the worst ever. It's not even the worst Sixth Doctor serial. Not as long as trash like Timelash and The Ultimate Foe exists. Those were horrible ideas executed horribly. The Twin Dilemma, meanwhile, actually has an almost passable script. If you need proof the Target Novelisation is brilliant. Beneath the campy production and unbearable dialogue The Twin Dilemma's not a bad idea. If it had examined the Doctor's guilt in a bit more depth (like the novelisation) it could have worked. There's no saving Time-Flight or Timelash, though. They should not have made it off the page in the first place.

I especially like the concept of having the Doctor regenerate in the penultimate story of a season and having the finale be a sort of "sampler" for the new guy. I think that makes a better cliffhanger, and it gets the whole "post regeneration goofiness" out of the way early.

Warriors of the Deep I think is criminally underrated, because, and here's the kicker to my comments in the other thread re: production, the production is just terrible. The special effects barely merit the name and a lot of the acting is ropey. But I think if it could somehow be "remastered" and given the attention the plot deserved rather than being done in a rush at the last minute, it would reveal itself as one of the better episodes of the Fifth Doctor's run. In fact while watching it (and trying to ignore the awful costumes) I found myself thinking exactly that.

To me it seemed like a poor man's version of Doctor Who and the Silurians. The production was just a part of it. I've tolerated flimsy productions before (see; Kinda) but Warriors of the Deep was too shallow and too lugubrious to properly escape it.

Kinda on the other hand I find somewhat overrated. It's ok, but it sags badly at times and the ending is underwhelming, and I wasn't taken with the follow-up in Snakedance either. I must admit that I really don't like Tegan at all, which doesn't help my appreciation of Tegan-centric serials like Snakedance.

Tegan isn't Tegan through most of these serials, though. She's possessed. But I get what you mean, Kinda and Snakedance are divisive for a reason. They're more abrasive and weird than most Doctor Who serials. It's the same reason there's a subset of people who despise The Mind Robber and Listen. Doctor Who when it's avant-garde can be really awkward.

Black Orchid was a mess. I have some affection for it as the last true "historical" which I think is something that could do with reviving, but the serial itself is bleh.

I don't consider Black Orchid a proper historical. It doesn't share the same themes and motifs of the Hartnell era classics. It just happens to take place in the past.

Terminus I think asserts some of the bleakness that characterises some of the best episodes of this era. The production is a problem, again, with dimly lit sets that can make it hard to tell what's going on and a dodgy costume for the Garm; it would probably also have been better served losing the whole Big Bang angle and focussing on the lazars, but it was decent enough I thought.

The big bang stuff is way too much to handle. But even worse is the script. **** me, that's a miserable script. I don't know what conversations this guy has been having but I doubt they've been with humans. People don't talk like this, and the immersion is just shattered as a result. The cliffhanger to episode one is hysterically awful. I shouldn't be laughing at the end of episode stinger. "It's a plague ship! We're all going to DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" is right up there with this.

I liked The King's Demons, but that's possibly because I enjoyed the historical framing of it at least as much as the merits of the episode itself. I think it was let down by Kamelion - not so much his appearance in the episode itself, but that he then disappeared for so long due to technical problems, so having had an intriguing introduction episode it went nowhere.

The King's Demons reminds me of NuWho episodes in a historical setting. No nuance, no subtlety, broad characterisations and period cliches. Just using the time period as a goofy, silly cartoon backdrop like the canyons in Road Runner cartoons. As someone who worships The Aztecs, The Crusade, Farewell Great Macedon, The Massacre and Marco Polo I really have no patience to tolerate that. I haven't given up hope that we can't get another truly epic historical drama, but stuff like The King's Demons still stings a little. Watch The Crusade and The King's Demons back to back sometime. It's really a bit tragic, don't you think?

Kamelion was in many ways one of the bigger misses of the Fifth Doctor's period, I think. The sad thing was that I actually really liked him in his first appearance, and remained sympathetic for much of his reappearance in Planet of Fire. But his unexplained absence from interceding episodes, and the awkward "fix" imposed in Planet of Fire, was a problem.

I'm more forgiving of Kamelion than most. It wasn't wilfully bad, it was just a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes. I don't think he would have been that great a companion even if he did stick around.

I would rate Caves of Androzani above Castrovalva, although both are strong, as was Enlightenment.

2, 3 and 4 on my list are mostly interchangeable. The top four are all in my overall top ten for Doctor Who TV episodes. That's how good they are. Whether you prefer Castrovalva or The Caves of Androzani is dependant on personal taste. They're weirdly complimentary in a way. Castrovalva is optimistic with a streak of darkness while Caves is bleak but faintly bittersweet. Castrovalva is intellectual with a bit of heart while Caves is emotional with intelligent undertones. Back to back they work surprisingly well.

I like The Five Doctors, and it's probably my favourite multi-Doctor episode (which I must admit, I'm a sucker for).

The anniversary episodes just feel like blockbuster popcorn entertainment. That's fine, in theory, but I don't think Classic Who is very good at spectacle (excluding Enlightenment, of course, because wow). If I want blockbuster entertainment I'll watch Star Wars or something. I'm just not a fan of self congratulatory milestone things, either. I just resent the narcissism.

[Aedilred]

The anniversary episodes just feel like blockbuster popcorn entertainment. That's fine, in theory, but I don't think Classic Who is very good at spectacle (excluding Enlightenment, of course, because wow). If I want blockbuster entertainment I'll watch Star Wars or something. I'm just not a fan of self congratulatory milestone things, either. I just resent the narcissism.

But then isn't entertainment what we're here for? Doctor Who is never going to be high art, really, and while it can and should aspire to be better than braindead trash (as should all entertainment!), so long as I enjoy an episode it's done its job. As with a lot of things that have attained nerd followings, it's easy to forget that at heart it's still a Saturday-evening family show with all that that implies. Maybe that's a cultural thing, though. I don't know where you're based, but, having grown up in the UK, I grew up with the idea of Who being, basically, a family show - which generally means a show for children that makes some allowance for an adult audience, and never stopped thinking of it that way during the NuWho revival. As an adult now myself without any children to push me to watch it with them, I don't watch it to be enlightened; I watch it because it's fun. (I gather that in the US at least, on the other hand, it gained its foothold via the geek community and has tended to be treated more as a sci-fi show first and foremeost, which would create different expectations in its audience.)

So while, multi-Doctor episodes, with the arguable exception of The Two Doctors, are a little on the self-indulgent side and lean fairly heavily on the novelty of seeing multiple Doctors at once, nevertheless so long as I enjoy myself I don't see that as a problem. The sense of fanboyish glee that made me sit up and go "eeeee" in Night of the Doctor or the last couple of scenes in Day of the Doctor might be attained relatively cheaply but ultimately still counts towards having a good time.

[DJ Yung Crunk]

But then isn't entertainment what we're here for? Doctor Who is never going to be high art, really, and while it can and should aspire to be better than braindead trash (as should all entertainment!), so long as I enjoy an episode it's done its job. As with a lot of things that have attained nerd followings, it's easy to forget that at heart it's still a Saturday-evening family show with all that that implies. Maybe that's a cultural thing, though. I don't know where you're based, but, having grown up in the UK, I grew up with the idea of Who being, basically, a family show - which generally means a show for children that makes some allowance for an adult audience, and never stopped thinking of it that way during the NuWho revival. As an adult now myself without any children to push me to watch it with them, I don't watch it to be enlightened; I watch it because it's fun. (I gather that in the US at least, on the other hand, it gained its foothold via the geek community and has tended to be treated more as a sci-fi show first and foremeost, which would create different expectations in its audience.)

So while, multi-Doctor episodes, with the arguable exception of The Two Doctors, are a little on the self-indulgent side and lean fairly heavily on the novelty of seeing multiple Doctors at once, nevertheless so long as I enjoy myself I don't see that as a problem. The sense of fanboyish glee that made me sit up and go "eeeee" in Night of the Doctor or the last couple of scenes in Day of the Doctor might be attained relatively cheaply but ultimately still counts towards having a good time.

Well of course it's entertainment. It's popularist sci fi. Everything I'm saying is within the context of Doctor Who. But the entertainment I get out of Seeds of Death or The War Games is more patient and atmospheric, like a good horror or thriller. The anniversary episodes are anathema to that. It's trying to be all spectacle and all action. On those terms Doctor Who is really rather rubbish, I think. It tends to accent the flaws at the expense of the undertones. Those undertones are what makes it entertaining.

I think you're trying to change the rules of the conversation, a bit. I'm not trying purport Doctor Who is high art, I never was. My original post defended Enlightenment and Four to Doomsday on the grounds that they're entertaining, after all. I don't enjoy the anniversary episodes. I'm not entertained by it. I find it awkward, creaky, self-indulgent, dull. I don't know what else to say. I feel what it aspires to be has been done substantially better elsewhere. Not true for Kinda or Castrovalva.