Doctor Who Season 25: "I've even got your socks"

Doctor Who may have died a slow death at the tail end of the 1980s, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t folks working their tails off to make the best show they could under extreme circumstances. This included writers will to take chances, directors pushing the limitations of 1980s British TV, and the two regulars (Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred) willing to examine the depths of their characters.

A key cog to all of this was script editor Andrew Cartmel, a young turk who was interested in both returning the Doctor to his roots and pushing the show forward. A lot of the trapping that had marked the last decade of the show disappeared. The Time Lords were never seen during these years. Most of the stories introduced new villains and monsters. The Doctor took a decided turn to the dark side.

Not all of it worked, but the last two seasons are certainly the most intriguing of the entire decade.

Remembrance of the Daleks

A lot of the innovations “introduced” in the revised series can trace their roots these McCoy episodes, including several moments here. The most iconic – well, it would be if anyone would bloody well remember it – is the levitating Dalek finally working its way up a flight of stairs in pursuit of the Doctor.

This a glorious story from beginning to end. The Doctor is seriously bad ass (he essentially destroys Skaro at the end; hope the Thalls have moved to a better neighborhood), as is Ace, who takes out a pepperpot with a turbocharged baseball bat.

It’s also an anniversary episode, with the action taking place a few weeks after the events of An Unearthly Child. We return to the Coal Hill School (with a book about the French Revolution sitting there in the chemistry lab) and even the original junkyard (though misspelled here; oops).

Beyond that, the story of competing Dalek forces – and fascists on the ground – returns us to the themes that Terry Nation brought forward in the very first Dalek episode. Even the unnecessary presence of Davros doesn’t ruin it.

The Happiness Patrol

This is probably the most controversial serial in the classic series, mainly down to the strange brightly-colored robot, The Kandy Man, and the not-all-that-veiled references to Margaret Thatcher and late 1980s politics.

In a nutshell, Terra Alpha is a place where being sad is illegal. Lovers of walks in the rain and the blues are carted off to be re-educated or worse. The Doctor and Ace arrive in this surreal situation and proceed to muck it up, tearing down the government over the course of a long night.

The story and acting are fine, but the design eventually lets down its side of the bargain. This is a show that screams for a completely surreal look (Terry Gilliam’s Brazil has been mentioned as an inspiration) that just doesn’t come to life.  It’s a shame, as it is a perfect example of McCoy’s Doctor otherwise, quietly manipulating people to do his bidding and to come out with the solution he wanted all the while.

Silver Nemesis

While the Time Lords are thankfully absent in the Sylvester McCoy era, Time Lord lore is not. In fact, there was an extensive back story that made the Doctor the third leg of the society, along with Rassilon and Omega. Little of this came through in Silver Nemesis (though it did play a part in later Virgin New Adventure novels), but the sense of the Doctor as a very powerful being did. In fact, author Kevin Clarke worked with the unsaid assumption that our hero was actually God.

Now, I don’t think this is a good way to go for any adventure story – an all-powerful creature isn’t really all that dramatic – but it does play into the worker-behind-the-scenes vibe of this season. Here, he has a troupe of Cybermen, some neo-Nazis, and a time-traveling witch that he can play off each other. It ends with more mass destruction, as an entire Cyber fleet gets offed in a particularly bad special effect. The whole thing falls apart in the final episode, but it had been a good ride up until that point.

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

This doesn’t get off to a good start, as we have the Ringmaster of the Psychic Circus doing a little tap dance – and then rapping. Rapping was never good on TV in the 1980s (or really that much since) and especially not on British TV.

The story does get better, but there are moments when the ambition of the story can’t match the limitations of the time. In a series always one step from the abyss, this serial was particularly fraught. After location filming was done, their studio was shut down because of asbestos. The production team improvised, hired a tent and shot the rest of it in a parking lot. That stress shows through, but there are some strong bits here, from delving deeper into Ace’s background to an on-screen fanboy who proudly declares that he even has a pair of Psychic Circus socks (note: I have three pairs of Doctor Who socks).

It also gives McCoy a chance to show off his clowning skills. In the finale, he faces off with the Gods of Ragnarok, ancient deities who thirst for continual entertainment. He holds them off long enough for his plan to come to fruition, saved by Ace, a werewolf girl and the remaining circus denizens.

Disaster averted once again, the series was ready to head off for a new season. Everyone was unaware this would be the last.