Doctor Who Season 24: Our hero, the fool

The Sylvester McCoy era gives us a new version of the title theme and a new, computer-aided credit sequence. It’s the best we’re going to get from the show for a bit. Why, because the season opens with…

Time and the Rani

Pip and Jane Baker finish their trilogy of terror with a particularly pointless adventure centered on kidnapping brilliant minds from across the galaxy for a nefarious plot so uninteresting that I don’t even remember the details a short time after seeing the episode. Mel screams a lot (I mean, a lot; she could break glass) and we have some rather noble looking guest actors forced to be extremely silly as the sad-sack aliens (really, the Rani should dominate these losers).

And then there’s McCoy. He has far from an auspicious start, as the fired Colin Baker (rightfully so) refused to return for a regeneration episode. So… Syl puts on a curly wig and slips into the Technicolor vomit coat and plays Doctor #6 for a few moments, regenerating after apparently falling down in the Tardis (concussions are a danger, but still…)

It doesn’t get much better as the show develops. McCoy spends the first series – much of the first season really – finding the balance for his character. What eventually comes from this – a comedic surface that hides a real darkness – is brilliant. It isn’t there yet. Instead, we get lots of maliprops, the first appearance of the spoons, and just a lot of clowning. It’s enough to make you want to scream – but not like Mel, never like Mel.

Paradise Towers

The second outing is better, in part because author Steven Wyatt used a J.G. Ballard novel (High Rise) as inspiration. The decaying housing tower is full of plenty of oddities, from the young women who have arranged themselves into gangs (“Red Kangs, Red Kangs, Red Kangs are best!), to the elderly “rezzies” who are looking for a good meal – which would include Mel on the dinner plate.

This gets let down in key areas. First, the props and effects are definitely not “special,” with a stunningly feeble monster robot thing that wouldn’t scare the world’s most skittish mouse. Then there is Richard Briers, who turns in truly one of the worst guest turns ever on Doctor Who, stripping really any kind of menace from the script.

McCoy improves here, toning down the performance a bit (just a bit) and showing some Troughton-like tendencies. And his tipping his hat to a water-pump-like thing with a quick “you never know” still makes me laugh.

Delta and the Bannermen

Nothing makes me laugh in this tone deaf disaster, loaded with bad versions of ‘50s rock tunes, badly done American secret-service agents, bad intergalactic tourists, and a bunch of heroes who all go green by the end (not in a recycling or Hulk kind of way either). Basically, space tourists land on Earth in the 1950s. Spend time at a Welsh holiday camp. Bad guys arrive, kill all the tourists and eventually get defeated by the Doctor and the green brigade. Did I mention this is played for fun? Yep, a show where dozens of innocents are disintegrated is mostly played as a farce. Gah.

Dragonfire

Two significant things happen here. First, we lose Mel (hurray!) and we gain Ace (double hurray!). There are some things of interest in Mel’s backstory (she was a computer programmer, you know), but Bonnie Langford was never particularly convincing and her chemistry with McCoy was nil. There was the screaming, too, but I just don’t want to think about that anymore.

Ace was everything Mel was not. Cool. Modern. Tough. Angry. Ace never met a problem that couldn’t be solved with explosives. Her first outing showcases all of that, as she gets ensnared with the Doctor, Glitz (back for one more go), and a search for an ancient treasure.

The episode also has – uniquely among the 24^th-season episodes – a convincing villain. As Kane, Edward Peel plays the role as cold as the subzero environment the character needs to survive. His temptation of Ace makes for a compelling early scene, while his backstory has enough pathos in it to make the character truly compelling.

At story’s end, Mel goes off with Glitz (for no reason really, except they needed to get the character out of the way) and Ace joins the crew. We’re ready for an anniversary season – and the best one the show has seen for quite some time.