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Hindscan: Season 22

Reviewed by Richard Scheib

Like having five ad breaks to the hour, Colin Baker is something that one relaxes into with a grumbling tolerance. And, in fact, when one had learnt to switch off, Season 22 passed reasonably pleasantly. And in his favour at least his performance toned down after the ghastly excesses of The Twin Dilemma, probably because most of the stories were tightly plotted enough to keep him in an action setting. The one thing that his portrayal has opened up is a far greater camp element and this season has introduced a number of recognizable faces - Jacqueline Pearce, Kate O'Mara, Paul Darrow, Alexei Sayle (I discount Jason Connery as this is before he was a recognised name), all clearly treating the show like a Christmas pantomime chance to put on silly wigs and whoop it up. Peri proved pleasant too, her whimpering more plaintive than abrasive. And, at least, by the end of the season she has developed some decent clothing taste.

ATTACK OF THE CYBERMEN
I consider this to be the real highlight of the season. All that Remembrance of the Daleks did and was raved about; this did first and better, the plot cleverly and intelligently weaving together a number of strands of series history. The Cybermen were, unfortunately, at their wimpiest ever, killed by as little as a bash over the head, whereas the Troughton days had them at their fiercest and most frightening, near invincible. And the plot was captivating enough, balanced out by, particularly, a strong performance from Maurice Colbourne as Lytton and some intriguing aliens - sort of like Saran-Wrap Sensorites, even if the actors inside did tend to overdose on mime in playing them.

VENGEANCE ON VAROS
Like The Happiness Patrol social satire has yet to work effectively in the Doctor Who universe. In both cases, the stories fall into the Star Trek syndrome of creating cardboard societies for the purpose of delivering the particular moral lecture of the week. My yard test is always to ask one-self how such a society may have evolved - this one doesn't hold up at all. I fail to believe that anybody would willingly step into the Varosian Governor's seat and that scenes of torture on a television only appeal to an extreme minority of the population. Like The Happiness Patrol and most of Star Trek, the moral lecture far outweighs sociological credibility. It is filled out with a certain sense of humour, although the scenes with the nagging couple in their flat could have been cut without any noticeable effect other than a collective sigh of thanks on the audience's behalf. But at least the episode introduced the deliciously perverse character of Sil and his inimitable laugh.

THE TWO DOCTORS
I always enjoy reunion stories and this was fun, Patrick Troughton getting a hilarious chance to play up the role in the last chapter and some very witty parts trying to goad the Sontarans. And with John Stratton's wonderfully over-the-top slaverings and James Saxon who one wishes would have ended up in Shockeye's cooking pot, this episode was more camper than a caravan park. Unfortunately the one person who managed to get ignored in the proceedings, the Grand Mistress of Tongue-in-Cheek backstabbings, the Supreme Commander Jacqueline Pearce herself, ended up disappointingly drab in a dress that seemed to have been designed as formal evening wear for a pregnant woman. It also seemed to be an episode that a lot had been placed into - the production values were a standard above the usual and the longer six-part format allowed for much more expansive story-telling. For once a six-parter was able to use the longer format and still pace it well rather than have to pad it.

THE MARK OF THE RANI
An okay item, not too badly scripted, considering that the Bakers have the reputation as the series' worst novelists (a distinction that I think Eric Saward deserves far more) and wrote a really tatty SF movie Captain Nemo and the Underwater City in 1969. The dialogue is often sharp and the pairing of Doctor, Master and Rani has a broadly played quality well within this season's over-the-top playing; it's the first time someone - Kate O'Mara - out-overacts Anthony Ainley. The tree transformations were silly and I kept expecting something to be done with the dinosaur embryos. But the Rani's TARDIS is really 'Wow'! And I quite liked the sly playing of Gary Cady's Luke once possessed. Also it's good to see Nicola Bryant get into a decent costume and get rid of her unbecoming pageboy haircut. Here she is so ridiculously cute - all she needed was the clogs and tulips to become a Dutch flower girl.

TIMELASH
This has a reputation as one of the worst episodes, but to the contrary I actually liked it, it actually having a number of inventive ideas. The worst part is probably the horrible acting and upstaging of Paul Darrow, the only major minus side, although the Morlox was wasn't too convincing either. Herbert was overdone and not that accurate to the real H.G. Wells. The twist ending revelation of Wells as a time-traveller is old hat - it was first done in the 1960 adaptation of The Time Machine which showed at the end the panel on the George, the time traveller's, time machine, as reading, H. George Wells; and also the 1979 film Time After Time which had Wells pursuing Jack the Ripper through into the 20th century in his time machine. I also seem to remember a story of the 1970's TV Action comic where the Doctor met a time-traveller, revealed in the last episode as being none other than...

Reviewed by Duane Stronach

THE TWO DOCTORS
For this long-awaited classic I managed to persuade my mother to watch it as well, and (very sceptically) she sat down to watch the first episode. The acting was weak at first, (Jamie looked surprised at the scanner all of a sudden when he'd been watching it all the time) and to add to that the console was that of the Fourth and Fifth Doctors! However, the programme was interesting, and slightly catching (with Robert Holmes' scripts nothing could be dull). However, having read the book, parts of the first episode disappointed me (Shockeye was much more ghastly, and the Sontarans arrival was more abrupt in the book). But by the time the programme's camera-crew took us to Spain everything had drastically improved. For instance, the Spanish girl Anita actually had an accent, the Dona Arana's short lines were in Spanish, a classical guitar was playing for background music, Shockeye had us both in fits of laughter, and Jacqueline Pearce's performance as Chessene was chilling ("Out!" she barks at Peri), and the Sontarans were more than adequate, their death scene being particularly good. The most interesting and best-acted monsters/characters would be the Androgums.

THE MARK OF THE RANI
I don't think Pip and Jane Baker made a bad job of this story, but neither did they make a good job. The accents of the village people made the story hard to listen to. Scenes came and went too fast; and what were the Master and the Rani planning to do? Embarrassingly stupid scenes included the scene where a man falls down a mineshaft, and the one where Luke the tree lends a helping... branch to the petrified Peri. Funny scenes included the one where the Doctor threatens to punch the Master, and the Rani's little growl at Peri... ("You stupid earth-woman! You're worthless!" or something like that). I liked the touch-detonating compact discs. Also impressive was the Rani's TARDIS. However, the poor dinosaur's attempt (in the final episode) to get up off the ground was just as successful as the special attempts (all right, special effects) try at imitating it! And you thought Invasion of the Dinosaurs was bad! My father watched this story, mainly because it didn't have lumps of jelly in it (no offence, Sil). I think he found it harder to understand than the commentary in a horse race, and, quite frankly, that runs triple for me.

Reviewed by Nigel Flockhart

ATTACK OF THE CYBERMEN
Opened the season and what better way than to use an old tried and trusted villain. Maybe because I like the Cybermen I was expecting too much, as at the story's end I felt I had been shortchanged. The main problem with this story was lack of time. There was no lack of good ideas - the return to Telos, the plot to destroy Earth using Halley's Comet, the changing TARDIS, the huge refrigerated cities and the return of Lytton so superbly played by Maurice Colbourne. Also the Bates/Stratton characters of half cybernised humans was an excellent one. Yet a lot of these things were thrown away or disposed of as the story rushed to finish in four episodes, instead of the possible five or six. As for the Cryons - well they suffered from the old good idea and reasonable acting but poorly executed cliché. And the Cybermen? They were somewhat weaker in character as well as susceptibility to bullets (almost as bad as gold coins) though I have to admit I took perverse pleasure in seeing one get his voice box shot out. The CyberController seems to have developed from something generally frightening into an obscene tall dwarf who's managed to put on a few pounds. Altogether not one of the better Cyber stories of late and one can only hope that another Eric Saward comes along in the future and puts them back up where they belong.

VENGEANCE ON VAROS
Uh oh, I thought - studio story. But no, what could have been a complete write-off turned out to be quite a reasonable bit of Doctor Who. From the start the claustrophobic atmosphere is set with a background of prison planet gone wrong, a political system with a top job nobody wants and a society kept on line with deadly doses of ultra-violence. Although most of the cast had to work at it, Martin Jarvis' Governor stood out as the philosophical cynic who just doesn't care anymore. The most imaginative factor in this plot is the introduction of Sil. Top marks to Nabin Shaban for creating a thoroughly disgusting and unlikable alien villain - one of the most original for some time. Okay, so some parts were unnecessary, i.e. the stupid poison vines and the two half-naked demented madmen who haven't had a good feed in a while. Generally, a pretty standard Colin Baker story - interesting but nothing to get over-excited about.

THE TWO DOCTORS
Not so with this masterpiece! Many words spring to mind in reference to this story - superb is one, fantastic is another. I could go on but I'll shut up and talk about the story instead. When Robert Holmes writes the script you know it's going to be good as only his early works are lemons. Well paced from start to finish, the story stood out amongst the rest (with the exception of Revelation of the Daleks). Everything was done so well from the design to the locations around and about Seville that were used to their best effect. As for the cast - well we get some marvellous performances from Jacqueline Pearce, reprising her Servalan style role for Chessene, John Stratton's completely OTT Shockeye, Lawrence Payne's mysterious Dastari and a rather typical Holmes character, James Saxon's pompous Botcherby, who's missing death due to a bad cut was a disappointment. The two real draw cards that gave the story exactly what it needed were the welcome return of Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines and the reuse of the Sontarans by their creator - and to good effect. The time travel experiments were fascinating though I would have preferred Chessene to be atomised by the time vortex instead of what actually happened. It was nice to see the Sontarans rewritten again becoming a bit more individual while retaining the `win at all costs' philosophy, and it was rather sad when they met their unpleasant end. If only more of the stories had been like this then perhaps it might have not been cancelled, but then you always have to take the good with the bad.

THE MARK OF THE RANI
Hmm. Interesting story this one. Certainly the feel of the 1820's is captured very well in the grime and accents of the characters (I kept excepting someone to say "Tru - bill a' pit") and Terence Alexander and Gawin Grainger were convincing as Ravensworth and Stevenson. Kate O'Mara steals the show as the Rani however, in a style all her own yet in many ways a similar but darker portrayal as the Doctor's opposite. She doesn't want to rule the universe or destroy the Doctor. Instead she is quite happy to merely eliminate him getting in the way. She was quite capable of carrying the story on her own, but no, the Master has to be added to clutter the plot and shrink a few of the locals. His use as a character is unnecessary and serves only to confuse matters. His one good moment disguised as the scarecrow is thrown away far too early to have been much use. Overall the plot seemed to consist of a hell of a lot of running about in the woods and down mine shafts, which achieved very little bar exercise. It was good to see the design team create a new TARDIS for the Rani - much more sleek and sinister though we aren't told what type. From the bad reports of Time and the Rani, it would seem that the only way to get another good story using Kate O'Mara is for someone else to write it instead of the Bakers. Fingers crossed.

TIMELASH
Ah, well. I'm afraid it was with considerable apprehension that I watched this story having already read the damning reports. Basically the script seemed to be an escapee from a bad Blake's 7 episode. This had nothing to do with the fact that Tekker was played by Paul Darrow, who looked like he'd just come from the latest BBC Shakespeare production and then hammed it up for the entire 90 minutes. Generally the acting was terrible, especially Jeananne Crowley as Vena, who just didn't seem to know how to! Also David Chandler's infuriatingly idiotic performance does nothing for the great writer, H.G. Wells, who's probably turning in his grave. While the sets were literally 'tinny' i.e. the Timelash, long periods were wasted padding the story out such as when the Doctor enters the Krontron Tunnel to get the crystals or the missile TARDIS scenes. It wasn't a complete loss however. The costuming was done quite well, especially the guard's uniforms with the beekeeper domed helmets that looked strangely familiar. Also the makeup job on the Borad was in my opinion excellent as was the build up to him being revealed at the end of Part Three. However, once we get there the plot falls flat especially when the second Borad reveals himself in a rather 'been there, done that' scenario.

So, while the season did have its good moments, the pointless bickering that goes on between the Doctor and Peri in nearly every story tended to drag the production down and waste a lot of time that could have been used to good effect elsewhere.