#DoctorWhoLockdown - The McCoy Years

Sylvester McCoy was my Doctor. I was born in 1985 and grew up repeatedly watching recordings of Seasons 25 and 26. I waited for what seemed like an eternity before Season 24 emerged on VHS. Imagine my disappointment! It would be a full season before the great Andrew Cartmel could firmly put his stamp on the show. All these years later though, I find that there’s more to enjoy than I first saw in Season 24 and it is in fact only Time and the Rani that seems like the aberration. However, it would still take a year before John Nathan-Turner and his production crew managed to recognise how to produce the scripts delivered by Cartmel and his gang of budding new writers. Look at the difference in tone for instance between Paradise Towers and The Curse of Fenric: the same director responsible for two wildly different shows in terms of pace, performance and energy. With only twelve shows to his name, I’ve decided to also include the 1996 TV Movie in this article on Sylvester's time, making sure to include Paul McGann’s Doctor in the lockdown listing too, his one TV adventure proper, not quite enough to make up a list all of its own. And that one night in 1996 was an unforgettable event for Doctor Who fans – the best of the decade.

13. TIME AND THE RANI

Whether or not you enjoy Time and the Rani is arguably a matter of taste. It does what it sets out to do pretty well, with bravado and accomplishment. The bubble traps, the modelwork, the monster costumes and the sets would be hugely celebrated elsewhere in the series. Here though, in Time and the Rani, the look of the programme is probably its only blessing. Had this show actually been Colin Baker’s final adventure, as was the intention, it’s easy to see how it might have worked. He would have been killed by his era’s biggest new nemesis and he would have been written by Pip and Jane Baker who gave him his best, most charming material in Terror of the Vervoids. As it happens, it’s Sylvester’s first and ends up falling between two stools. It’s the only story of the era to feel like yesterday’s news, the verbose, over-mannered script a relic of the way things were done before. McCoy’s dialogue will never feel this forced and unnatural again. There’s a certain amount of fun to be had in the pink, campery of it all but actually the four episodes feel saggy, talky and lacking in drama. Far better was to come, but as a statement of intent, Time and the Rani finds itself seriously lacking, with one foot in the grave.

12. PARADISE TOWERS

The differences in scripting between this and Time and the Rani are manifold. Here is a writer engaged with creating an alien society (if we are to believe that Paradise Towers itself is off-world – we never find out). This hadn’t happened since Timelash and is done here with far more maturity and imagination. The Rezzies, the Kangs and the Caretakers are all elaborate creations making for a sense that this world has cogs and workings. It’s a real place. There’s wall scrawl, there are wipe-outs, things are ice-hot and people are made unalive. This is a world with its own language. The key failing of Stephen Wyatt’s fairytale council block story is not the script but its appalling production. The Kangs are too old, Pex isn’t butch enough, the Cleaners look rubbish and the Caretakers are dressed bizarrely like little Hitlers. Imagine the version shot on location, in which the residents of the towers are played by people the right age in costumes that look in some way wearable. It could have been an 80s film classic. But here, everyone’s playing the heightened world a little too heightened, a little too CBBC. (I see that comment levelled at much of the new series and I don’t really give it much credence but there’s a definite sense that people are unforgivably playing down to the children here. Look for instance at how Julie Brennon’s Fire Escape spells out the people of Paradise Towers: “There are old ones…” etc. The less said about Briers’s zombie Kroagnon the better.) What isn’t always mentioned about the four-parter though is Wyatt’s admission that he wrote Part One on spec and didn’t know where the rest was going. Despite his luxuriating in the tale’s world, Wyatt doesn’t really know what to do in it. Things become a bit repetitive, a bit flabby. There are two too many lift sequences, two too many cleaner attacks. And with a production so at odds with the scripts, we really don’t want to stay here longer than we need to.

11. DRAGONFIRE

It’s a show which feels as if it’s just finding its feet again. Dominic Glynn returns with a strong score, there are some lovely high sets and some strong performances from an experienced cast: all giving the feeling of solidity to this production, of a confidence otherwise missing in Season 24. With the arrival of Ace we have a new direction for the show and it could be said that Andrew Cartmel’s era really begins in earnest here as he writes out Mel and veers off in his own direction. Unfortunately, Dorothy Ace McShane here, and probably nowhere else but certain scenes in Fenric, is overwritten. Ian Briggs’s scripts are pointed, clunky and on the nose. “Bet you’ve never had a milkshake tipped over your head before either,” is a particularly egregious mouthful of a line. The literal cliff-hanger doesn’t work. The philosophical guard doesn’t work. There’s a feeling that this is a student production, led by a slightly arrogant clique of arty types wishing to show off how much they know. There’s an attempt to be meta but when the show is about a man trapped in an ice prison by a dragon there’s not much to be meta about. Scenes clang together beside one another with no real propulsion, purpose or geography. And Tony Selby shows up to remind us all that The Trial of a Time Lord happened. But then, there’s Edward Peel being magnificent and addressing the camera as he basks in his own glory. There’s his fabulous demise and the “take the coin” scene. There’s Sylvester saying a rather understated and beautiful goodbye to Mel and then there’s Ace – not quite fully formed here and we’re missing some vital information about her origins on Earth but the future is certainly looking bright.

10. SILVER NEMESIS

There is much to enjoy about Silver Nemesis if approached in the right mind. Part One is an unremarked upon tearaway success, the three groups coming together to meet the Nemesis at the climax, though not always necessarily taking the logical route. (Just what route the Doctor and Ace take I have no idea – they seem to flit from one place to another without reason but aren’t they just adorable by the river listening to Courtney Pine and later swimming to the shore worrying about tape decks?) There’s also some beautifully unique garbage later on: the skinhead scene is a peculiar delight; Richard’s claim that the llama “sounds like a bear… but worse!”; “All things shall soon be mine”; and Lady Peinforte’s final descent into madness – “Time, space, the world!” There’s no getting around the fact that Silver Nemesis is dismally scripted, up itself and without much televisual merit to speak of. But watch as the Cybermen follow Ace through the abandoned hangar and onto the gantry – it’s the stuff of the best Doctor Who. Like Dragonfire, there are terrific moments throughout but the scripts are tragically overwritten and too clever by half.

9. DELTA AND THE BANNERMEN

This is a real lark. The most confident of Season 24’s stories and the only one that manages to achieve visually what the script sets out to do. Yes, it’s high camp and 50s rock ‘n’ roll glitz all over but dammit, it’s so good at it. Watching the Doctor dancing suddenly with Ray as she agonises over losing her long-time crush sees Sylvester at his most charming and Doctorish. It’s also some very real human interaction in a season mostly devoid of it. The scenes in the laundry rooms feel like Doctor Who has arrived at its late 80s identity, the show feeling at least like the television around it, rather than a has-been relic. (“Dragging the show into the 90s,” as JNT would have it.) Keff McCulloch provides his finest score here, the 50s themes playing to his strengths. In fact, the music guides us through this tale, letting us know it’s OK to enjoy the campery. Sadly, there a few moments which don’t compute. The death of the bus passengers seems unnecessarily cruel in a story otherwise presenting baddies to “Boo-Hiss!” at. There’s never a real sense that the last of the Chimeron is in any danger and Mel’s reaction to the baby’s green face hatching from the egg seems therefore melodramatic and misjudged. If Delta had really wallowed in its own fun (or weltschmerz as it were), enjoyed its high-octane atmosphere and dispensed of the scenes which try too hard to be frightening, it would probably be far more loved. There’s a huge tonal difference between the (very funny) ionised assassin leaving behind only his blue suede shoes and a terrified Ken Dodd being shot in the back. It’s a dangerous tightrope to walk in terms of tone and Delta doesn’t quite manage it as successfully as it might. That it attempted it all, though, makes it something to be cherished.

8. REMEMBRANCE OF THE DALEKS

Many fans are keen to point out the great rift in quality between Remembrance and Battlefield. Frankly, though, I can’t see it. Remembrance suffers the same issues as Battlefield – characters are introduced thinly and remain vague, the actors bringing more to them than perhaps Ben Aaronovitch does. It’s unbelievable that Big Finish have managed to create their superb Counter-Measures series based on characters as wafer thin as Alison is here! Not even would-be love interest Mike is well-introduced, patronising Ace and wondering repulsively if she’s “from somewhere else.” What gives Remembrance its lofty reputation is context. After Season 24 stumbling to its finish line, Season 25 sprang off its starting blocks with confidence and panache. A rare and well-judged pre-titles sequence makes things feel grand and epic before we’ve even begun, the Daleks fire actual explosives and the Doctor is a mystery again. But to my mind, it’s all a bit po-faced and humourless with the four episodes feeling a little rambling, padded and unstructured. Where a better story would have had the reveal of the Doctor’s historical part in proceedings as probably the Episode Two cliff-hanger, here it’s a somewhat pat companion-threatened-by-Daleks sequence (although the explosive scene in the chemistry lab is viscerally thrilling). Sylvester McCoy gives his poorest performance as the Doctor here, on occasion failing to make any sense of his lines. (Going by the studio footage on the DVD, he was too busy arsing about to commit to a truly focused reading.) There is, of course, lots to enjoy in Remembrance – spooky shots in the school cellars, the café scene, the clever handling of the racism theme, and that amazing, whopping spaceship, to say the least - but it is by no means the classic it’s often purported to be. Even the new-spangled Daleks wobble about and the first reveal of the grey Dalek from the shed is flaccid and clumsy. It’s a generally well-made example of 80s Who but it’s never going to make my All Time Greats list.

7. BATTLEFIELD

Poor Battlefield. There are too many characters, too much plot and not enough focus. I can see Ben Aaronovitch’s second draft in my head. It opens with Bambera transporting the missile and ending up stuck by the lake in the thunderstorm. Then there are lights in the water. Something is coming. This coincides with lights in the sky as the android-soldiers begin to rain down on Vortigern. It’s time for the Brigadier to return to work… Unfortunately, it’s a few edits away from that Nigel Kneale-esque success. All of the guest characters are underwritten. How Shou Yung and Ace strike up a friendship so quickly on the way to the beer garden is quite something. Christopher Bowen is tasked with almost literally laughing his head off at reasons the viewer isn’t made privy to. Where exactly was Morgaine? Why did she need the ritual to bring her back from her crystal ball? Things in Battlefield simply happen, one event after the next with little explanation, reasoning or drama. However, it is still utterly charming, in the same way that The Daemons is charming. Angela Bruce’s Bambera is the only Brigadier substitute ever to be successful. I’d’ve loved to have seen another UNIT story in 1990 with her at the helm of operations. The Destroyer is frightening and grotesque. The fight scenes, undeservedly derided, work surprisingly well and there’s a keen sense of adventure here. And the Brigadier is back and Nick Courtney kicks arse. Far less than the sum of its parts, Battlefield is nevertheless a summer holiday of a story. It’s badly designed, clumsily written, and there’s that dreadful video effects snake, but it’s so much fun that it doesn’t really matter.

6. THE TV MOVIE

Whilst the attendant problems of the TV Movie are well noted (its lack of monsters, its poorly thought-through time travel plot, its over-indebtedness to the old series), it still – like it or not – represents the big budget Doctor Who of the 1990s. It looks like The X Files and feels like ER. The Doctor’s death on the operating table is harrowing and tragic. Geoffrey Sax directs with perhaps undeserving swagger – look at the shot that bleeds from the TARDIS in vortex, to the fish eye, panning backwards through the window of the Chinese restaurant. This is a director thinking about how his shots interconnect and it’s still the most filmic the show has ever looked even almost 25 years later. Paul McGann makes for a majestic Doctor, like Matt Smith, nailing it on his first go. He’s gentle, playful, sweet, funny, confident, vulnerable and by the end is letting out the best screams since Zoe Herriot. In about an hour’s worth of screen-time, he does enough (and so very well) for this incarnation to be enjoying countless adventures through Big Finish and for once in 2013, seven more minutes of television. Perhaps the problem is that the movie sees itself as a continuation of where we left off in 1989 rather than where we’re starting from in 1996. Far better to open with Grace in the theatre, being rushed into surgery because a mysterious patient has just been wheeled in, than the off-putting voiceover which essentially says, “If you’re late to the party, don’t bother.” Still, we then get to spend some more time with an amazingly relaxed Sylvester in the costume he’d always wanted in the TARDIS set he always deserved. It’s best to celebrate the movie for what it did give us, rather than what it failed to achieve as a “backdoor pilot.” Because there’s so much in it to treasure.

5. THE CURSE OF FENRIC

Like Dragonfire, Ian Briggs has overwritten his script which is full of allusion, but really needs to nail its flags to the mast and tell us what is bloody well going on. Just what is Judson and Millington’s history together? Just why do the decryptions of an old curse (which it has to be pointed out has already been decrypted) summon the dead bodies of victims of future chemical bombs from the sea? Just why does Ace telling Judson that the logic diagram is for a computer change things and just why does she consider talking about watches and undercurrents good flirting? There’s so much nonsense in Fenric but it has one vital thing over Dragonfire: a director who creates one of the strongest senses of atmosphere the series has ever had. This is the man who directed Paradise Towers so quite how this turnaround happened, I’ve no idea. Briggs and Mallett are telling a frightening vampiric story about faith and belief – on that score, Fenric is a hit. The frenetic pace helps iron out any creases in logic and we can allow ourselves to become immersed in this grand melodrama. The final episode, it has to be noted, is one of the very best the classic series produced. It’s manic, nightmarish, and the showdown between the Doctor, Fenric and Ace is nail-biting material. Typically of the Cartmel years, there are one or two drafts to go before true greatness but Fenric doesn’t seem to care. It races towards that conclusion with aplomb, its characters living and dying with us on their side. And Reverend Wainwright addressing an empty church in the centre of this thought-provoking yarn is a welcome and powerful moment of reflection.

4. SURVIVAL

Rona Munro’s scripts always betray her true class as writer. Her theatre work is magnificent. Each play has its own language, its own metaphors. Here too, characters speak thematically, even Ace’s charity worker friend, Ange is “hunting saboteurs.” The Sergeant talks about nothing other than the art of survival and the Master’s relationship with the possessed Mitch is one of animal owner and animal. Andrew Cartmel is famously critical of the cheetah people costumes but the masks are beautiful; it’s only the hands that don’t quite work and the protracting fingernails left an indelible impression on this four year old so they were doing something right! The planet itself is striking. It seems to have been shot on an actual alien world, the heat blistering, the habitat rarefied. Dominic Glynn’s evocative guitar music gives the place a feel all of its own too and Perivale looks even more hauntingly ordinary against the otherness of the cheetah planet. This is a Doctor Who story which, despite being exciting and relevant, manages to explore its themes without the need to be high brow or exclusive. That’s something quite spectacular.

3. THE HAPPINESS PATROL

Much maligned at the time, The Happiness Patrol is a tight, witty, original three-parter offering genuine scares, intelligent satire and in the Kandyman, an unforgettable, brilliant villain. I don’t care what the naysayers believe. So he looks like Bertie Bassett? Yeah, and isn’t Bertie Bassett a bit bloody frightening? If he were coming at me, stomping like a tantruming child up a pipe, I would be straight out of there. There’s a fairytale darkness to the executions – the cogs and valves slowly spinning, heralding the arrival of the sweet mix which will drown the accused is the stuff of the richest Doctor Who. The cast are terrific: Sheila Hancock excels as Helen A and Harold Innocent is a suitably repulsive Gilbert M. The lingering crane shot as Fifa dies is a thematically resonant moment as is Ace’s re-painting of the TARDIS, order restored after Terra Nova’s happiness finally prevails. The cliff-hangers are scary and funny at the same time, illustrated that Graeme Curry has totally “got” Doctor Who and his clever work across these three episodes should be far more celebrated. Perhaps it’s that fans saw it as a hangover from the previous year’s showy style, but here there’s a darker undercurrent and an all too real parody of our human societies, however you want to interpret it. Aside from that bloody go-kart, I’d say The Happiness Patrol is some of the very best Doctor Who ever made.  

2. THE GREATEST SHOW IN THE GALAXY

Stephen Wyatt’s second Doctor Who script is another imaginative and vivid affair, full of larger than life characters and a language of its own. This time, however, Alan Wareing is directing, Mark Ayres is composing and John Nathan-Turner is determined that this thing get made. There’s a verisimilitude to the circus tent, itself erected in a BBC car park at a time of dire straits. You wouldn’t think this production was one associated with so many behind the scenes problems. It oozes quality. The scene in which Bellboy commits suicide, programming his own robots to strangle him, is an assault on the senses: Christopher Guard screams his commands over Ayres’s stirring music as Ian Reddington smiles and issues his customary clownish salute with a devilish smile. There are similar moments of immersive rapture throughout. Mags’s coruscating wails as Captain Cook reveals “that old devil moon” are literally and metaphorically hair-raising. The moment Sylvester raises his hat in slow motion as the dark circus falls down around him; the desperate kiss between Bellboy and Flowerchild; the pathetic last words of the Whizzkid: this is Doctor Who filled with moment after moment of strange, upsetting, exciting and bravura thrills. In its own wild and unconventional way, unlike the circus it presents, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy never once stops entertaining us.

1. GHOST LIGHT

Of course, this is a marmite choice but I’ve never stopped loving Ghost Light. Marc Platt’s script is the richest in the entire Doctor Who canon. No, it doesn’t work first time round; it demands more careful study. Like an onion, it reveals more beneath every layer, each viewing exposing another delightful Marc Platt morsel. His allusions are wide-ranging and sometimes unexpected. He references Alice in Wonderland, The Origin of the Species, My Fair Lady, William Blake, Franz Kafka, even Douglas Adams. Unlike other stories of the McCoy years which seem overworked, Ghost Light has been cooked to perfection, each element fusing with and enhancing those around it to create a work of art of profound beauty. Like The Greatest Show in the Galaxy and The Curse of Fenric, the experience is immersive. The scenes at the start of Part Two, Ace’s rescue from the cellar, are relentless and energetic, Mark Ayres’s organ-like, almost demented incidental music punctuating them mercilessly. Never have 75 minutes of Doctor Who been so full of plot, allegory, atmosphere, scares and gags. You think the new series moves too quickly? Ghost Light was the forerunner. It’s years ahead of its time and probably, guiltily, a bit too good for Doctor Who. Alan Wareing, Sylvester McCoy and the rest of the fabulous, immaculately well-cast actors know that this is the best and at the very end of the programme’s classic life, that’s exactly what they manage to produce.

JH