Review The Colin Baker Doctor

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
The Trial of a Timelord

The story itself is, in my opinion, a spectacular train wreck, with the main casualty being Colin Baker's sacking as the Doctor.

Ill conceived, lazy and just plain poor.

The story is something that you put on in the background while you do something else. Not the classic that it needed to be after an eighteen month gap.

I find the dvd box set more fascinating for the endlessly watchable documentary Trials and Tribulations, with everybody playing the blame game. Especially Saward and Levine.

Poor JNT is not there to defend himself of course, but you come to expect such cowardly character assassination with certain characters in these documentaries.
 

apostasia

Member: Rank 1
I'm not sure I'd call the season ill conceived, as much as ill executed. Having the Doctor put on trial by his peers as a metaphor for the show's larger problems...well, alright, it probably still is self-indulgent tosh as a concept, but I'm prepared to believe it could have been done well, and wittily, and with some depth.

It just...wasn't.

Though by that point, the infighting and bitching was so great, it's fairly amazing absolutely anything at all got made. And, most sadly, a luminary like Robert Holmes dropping dead halfway through the final script didn't help proceedings. Pip and Jane Baker made a curious and interesting stab at picking up the last episode at very short notice, but being completely different writers, the two halves of the story simply didn't add up, and it consequently made the season pay-off even more surreal and impenetrable than the story Holmes had been writing, and the whole struggling season ended on a rather baffling non-sequitur. No wonder viewers were confused, and wondered what the point of the show was any more.

The Trials and Tribulations documentary is (morbidly) compelling viewing, and a rare instance of a documentary being rather more interesting and rather more worthwhile than the actual show it's talking about. So, at least it produced that, even if we had wait quarter of a century for it...
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
And don't forget this little tantrum of Saward's, published in Starburst magazine, before the season even aired....


 
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Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
Poor Colin.

I used to think that he was a misjudged actor who never had a chance in the role of the Doctor.

Now I have come to believe that he was, indeed, simply miscast.

I used to think that it was the costume that crippled his portrayal.

Now I believe that it was the actor inside the costume being overly theatrical and unsubtle (most of the time, bar an odd effective moment here and there).

I wish it were not so, as I really like Colin as a personality and as a man of principal.

Nevertheless, he is part of the canon and will always be the Doctor. Whether people like it or not.

And at least he wanted to stick with the role and didn't want to chuck it in after thirteen weeks....
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
So, the entire 54 year history of the show is actually about the character called Tekker, even though he only appeared in four episodes......

That's the impression I get from Paul Darrow in this anyway! :emoji_alien:

Having said that, I really find this story quite watchable, if one allows for it's daftness and corner-cutting....

Poor old Colin is in there pitching, as always, and Peri is trapped in the damsel in distress 1960's.

But I don't mind the glove puppet bandrils and find them quite effective actually.
 
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Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
I don't think Saward's script for part 14 would have improved matters much if it had been used instead either.

Just not a good time for the series, onscreen of offscreen really....
 

Gavin

Member: Rank 6
VIP
I loved Colin Baker's performance, erratic as it was. I didn't even mind the hideous costume that much. But the twins make this episode almost unwatchable. Every time they're on screen I just want to punch them. I know the script called for twins and twins are hard to come by in the acting world. But couldn't they find one pair of twins that at least looked like they'd seen acting before?
 

Gavin

Member: Rank 6
VIP
I remember watching this one when I hadn't seen much before Tom Baker. My only exposure to Jon Pertwee was through the novelisations. The references to an adventure with the third Doctor and Jo had me all excited and I was disappointed that it turned out to be a non-existent story. Is there any chance that Big Finish or one of the spin off novel series went back and looked at this missing adventure?
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
The Sarah Jane Adventures referenced it in Death of the Doctor, when Jo Grant tells Sarah that she went to the planet Karfel once....
 

chainsaw_metal1

Member: Rank 8
I used to believe he was. But after several years, I went back and watched a few of his stories again. He really is a layered Doctor, and had there been better writing and a better costume, he might be remembered better in the role. Someone in costuming seemed to miss the fact that, over all, the Doctor's outfit should fit his character. Hartnell was the Grandfather, Troughton was the Cosmic Hobo, Pertwee dressed like a dandy, but it fit his mix of action hero, scientist and eccentric traveler, Tom Baker was the Bohemian, and Davison was the young guy who did away with the neck wear and showed a cooler side. Colin was given this motley coat, which Martha teased in the graphic novel "The Forgotten", asking if he'd had an obsession with JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT. It doesn't fit the character, nor did it make sense for him to wear such a garment. I don't agree with him that he should have been dressed like Eccelston, but it would have been better than what he got.
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
It was such a shame, in retrospect, that JNT felt obliged to tack the Sixth Doctor's first story onto the end of Peter Davison's season.

How more powerful would it have been for Androzani to have ended the season, with all the delayed promise of Colin's Doctor?

Then again, it was clear that JNT would still have stuck Colin in that coat. No mistakes would have been averted. Nothing would have been altered for season 22 conceptually, as far as the character went.

They had eighteen months after season 22 to rethink Colin's character and costume. They did not. Apart from being a bit friendlier to Peri in Trial.

If Colin had accepted that offer of Time and the Rani, his entire era would have been book-ended by the two stories hailed as the worst ever in numerous polls.

At least the classic series was brave in it's creative madness, willing to transmit a classic next to a clunker, instead of everything being the same bland consistency. But a mistake is still a mistake.
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
The novelisation.....

An early example of where things went pear shaped for Colin Baker.

His agent rang up Target books merely to enquire how much would be paid for using his likeness on the cover.

Target thought he was after more money and panicked. So they scrapped the cover they had already done that had a great head and shoulders painting of Colin's Doctor





and gave us this.......






Thereafter they avoided likenesses of actors for quite some time.

The Virgin reprint in latter years restored Colin's honour though....


 
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Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
The above list of stories, although contentious, and somewhat different to the list of stories in the documentary, is the one I have gone with, owing to Ian Levine's comments below. And he was a Who fan who was there at the time, so I think would be more likely to remember...


The lost Season 23 - according to Ian Levine






Doctor Who - THE ABORTED SEASON 23 - THE TRUE FACTS.
March 18, 2015 at 7:24pm


SOMEONE NEEDS TO FINALLY SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT.

HERE IS MY LETTER ABOUT IT TO GALLIFREY BASE.


I absolutely HAVE to wade in here and put the record straight. During this period, I was around JNT and Eric almost every day, and I knew absolutely everything to do with the production at that time, including who was writing what.

The DVD documentary about the aborted season 23 is flawed in the extreme, and nobody ever talked to me, the one and only person who knew what all six stories were.

Eric has a memory like a sieve, and remembers nothing of that period, but I have a photographic memory, which mercifully was not affected by my stroke, and it still pains me to read such inaccuracies.

The six stories of season 23 were as follows...

THE NIGHTMARE FAIR
THE ULTIMATE EVIL
MISSION TO MAGNUS
YELLOW FEVER
THE HOLLOWS OF TIME
GALLIFREY


There is no doubt about the accuracy of this.

Eric was writing Gallifrey. After the cancellation, JNT and Eric had a furious row because John wanted to carry on with the same scripts. Eric said that it needed a new fresh approach so he refused to complete Gallifrey. In a classic fit of pique, John commissioned Pip and Jane Baker to write it to Eric's storyline. After one week, Eric made such an almighty stink that the commission was withdrawn, but I believe the stigma of this action led to Eric's finally walking out a year later. Eric finds this period so painful he has forgotten half of what happened, but Bob Holmes had offered the guidance of a mentor to Eric to write a story about con men, deposed Presidents, and sleeper agents with a hint of The Manchurian Candidate thrown in. Eric discussed the entire plot with me prior to the cancellation, but it never made it past the original story ideas as it would have been the last of the six stories to go into production, but Julian Glover was considered as the machiavellian arch villain President.

The Children Of January was a spare script and would only ever have made it to season 24, if ever used at all. Eric hated it.

As for Yellow Fever, I had a photocopy of the original scene breakdown of all three episodes, given to me by Eric. Indeed at one point Eric was hired to write it for the Doctor WHO book range, and got paid an advance, which he later returned.
The Rani was never to be in this story. Kate O'Mara was still doing Dynasty, and there was no mention of her in the story breakdown.
This was a story about The Master, The Brigadier, UNIT, and Benton.
The first half was set in London, with an Auton Prime Minister, the second half in Singapore.
It would have been wonderful, especially with Graeme Harper directing.

I am really sick and tired of people spouting fantasy mistruths about this cancelled season. I always regretted its loss,down to being JNT's mouthpiece to Charles Catchpole of The Sun, and the dreaded Doctor In Distress, and I reconstructed three of the missing stories myself on audio, and did detailed visual recons on DVD of all six stories, with Nicola Bryant, Julian Glover, Milton Johns, Jon Levene, Waris Hussein, John Leeson, Nigel Plaskitt, Ian Fairbairn, and many many more.

I am incredibly proud of them. Both Yellow Fever and Gallifrey were totally faithful to the original storylines.

I can 100% assure you all, no matter what anyone says to the contrary, that Gallifrey WAS to be the sixth story of that aborted season.

And Yellow Fever's tag "And How To Cure It", was a Bob Holmes joke and never seriously intended to be a part of the title.

That imagined cover featuring The Rani is just plain WRONG on so so many levels.


He also says the following in the comments:


(about Big Finish) Both The Nightmare Fair and Mission To Magnus are incredibly accurate. But they did a horrible job with The Hollows Of Time.

(about the Sixth Doctor) He most certainly gets out of his technicolour dreamcoat in Gallifrey.
 
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