Doctor Who: Season 22: Reassurance and Bravery

Guest post by John Rivers

I was inspired to write this post firstly because I realised that season 22 was still being maligned by fans, but also because when asking fans about their DVD purchases one of the most common lines I hear is “I still don’t have all the Colin Baker ones”. I also wondered what these opinions would do for fans of the new series, wanting to learn more about the old.

Colin Baker’s first season as the Doctor is held up as a nadir of the show by some, highlighting what was wrong with JNT-era Doctor Who and supposedly causing the 1985 hiatus that resulted in the Trial of a Time Lord season (in which characters in Doctor Who watch ‘Doctor Who’ and determine whether he should live or die. As Nev Fountain put it - “A show trial”). But before the madness of Mel Bush and spurious morality there was a season that attempted to a) do something different with the Doctor and b) still reassure us that we’re watching the same show. This is a trick that’s still being pulled-off today.

At first glance it looks like the Production Team’s tried to cram as much from the past into this season to remind us that it’s still Doctor Who. The gang’s all here in season 22: Cybermen and Daleks bookend the season with the Master, another Doctor and the Sontarans all thrown in for good measure. In fact only one story - ‘Vengeance on Varos’ - makes no reference to the Doctor’s past (unless you count the TARDIS failing), but creates in Sil a villian so memorable he returns in the next season. Viewed this way you could say season 22 is more of a celebration than season 20 was - what would you rather have in an anniversary season - ‘Terminus’ or ‘The Two Doctors’? Actually, don’t answer that question. The point is that in order to keep the audience still aware that this is Doctor Who they’re watching, albeit in new 45 minute chunks, the production team seems to think that multiple elements from the past are a great idea and to give them their credit they at least try something different with these elements.

Let’s start with the biggest difference to the show - the Doctor himself. Bravely, Colin Baker’s performance as the Doctor ranges from the psychotic to the charming, with plenty of opportunities inbetween for standing against the injustices of the universe. The problem is that those ‘brave’ moments of the Doctor being angry, pedantic, borderline deranged are the ones we seem to take with us from the stories. Rather than tell us anything about Baker’s portrayal of the Doctor as a whole, these moments stick out painfully like sore thumbs. Witness the Doctor telling Peri “Don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you,” in ‘Attack of the Cybermen’ and Nicola Bryant looking like she’s ready to run out of the TARDIS the minute it lands, taking the audience with her. Thankfully we can’t see the expression on her face while Colin is shouting “Unstable, unstable, UNSTABLE?!” at her.

Perhaps even more disturbing are this Doctor’s lapses into introspection and even depression. While Tom Baker’s Doctor did this usually for comic effect and David Tennant took self-reflective to new levels of glumness, Colin Baker has the sixth Doctor despairing at the finality of existence, see how morose he is at the TARDIS shutting down in ‘Vengeance on Varos’ and his supposition that he’s at the centre of a universal collapse in ‘The Two Doctors’, the hands goes in the pockets, the stare fixes off somewhere in the distance, he feels utterly alone.

The Doctor’s unstable personality could have been the perfect opportunity to reintroduce some mystery to the character, but perhaps what the audience wants is reassurance rather than mystery in a hero and even as way back as 1985 they needed it established quicker than one whole season. ‘The Twin Dilemma’ certainly hadn’t given the audience that feeling that Doctor Who was going to be a comfortable viewing experience and so it was probably a high-risk strategy to introduce the season with a complex, continuity-reliant story in ‘Attack of the Cybermen’.

The opening story aptly demonstrates those elements it thinks are brave: Colin’s still unstable Doctor, tinkering with the TARDIS shape, a baddie being a goodie in Lytton and a ‘harder-edged’ feel to the show (represented by Terry Molloy playing Serpico). The reassuring elements seem to be: the Doctor, the Cybermen and some confused mixture of the past’s references and continuity (‘The Tenth Planet’, ‘The Tomb of the Cybermen’, ‘The Web of Fear’, ‘The Invasion’). However this isn’t enough for audiences, those stories being referenced are about twenty years old and even the Target reading 13 year old won’t feel any direct connection with those touchpoints. In fact ‘disconnected’ seems to be a very good word to describe ‘Attack of the Cybermen’ it assumes you know things you might not, it asks you to care about people you might not and asks you to accept some concepts you might not (like mad time travel ideas).

If any of this is sounding familiar one might see similarities between this story and say ‘The Impossible Astronaut’. While this story’s points of reference may only have been from a season ago, it again pays no concession to the first-time or casual viewer, it has some crazy time travel plotting and the lead character is not just unstable, he’s dead. The difference is here that thanks to the current received wisdom in fandom ‘The Impossible Astronaut’ is a complex season opener for a show that knows its audience, it might therefore be applicable to say that the 1985 production team thought the same thing about their version of Doctor Who. Let’s examine the rest of the season.

Much has been written about the post-modern take on watching Doctor Who in ‘Vengeance on Varos’  (so I won’t dwell on it here, Google it). It’s cleverly done and as we’ve said was repeated as a method for framing the story in season 23. In Sil a villain is created who is so repulsive you wince watching him (and then wince at the S&M slave costumes his attendants are wearing) and Martin Jarvis plays a perfectly pitched character in the Governor, wanting a better world for his little planet and yet terrified for his own life too. All of these elements could be put in the brave category. Reassuringly the Doctor is still willing to champion rebellion over tyranny, especially when it comes to big business (or in fact taxation, see ‘The Sunmakers’ for similar), there’s lots of corridors to run down and yes, the Doctor is still prepared to fight to defend himself, Baker properly echoes Pertwee here and it works.

‘The Mark of the Rani’ is our pseudo-historical for this season with the sort-of ruthless Rani who wants our brain chemicals only for the Master and the Doctor to both interfere with her plans. I would class this story as the least brave out of this season as the team seem to be relying on Ainley’s Master to antagonise the Doctor without giving O’Mara and Baker the proper face-off both should have had. Reassuringly though, the Doctor’s willing to put a stop to mucking-about with earth history and of course it looks fantastic due to excellent design work by Paul Trerise and direction by Sarah Hellings at a great location.

In fact, what is the Master up to? According to his conversation with the Rani he has decided he can enslave humanity through interference with the Industrial Revolution. However he only seems to have formulated this plan after visiting the Rani’s abandoned planet of Miasimia Goria and then following her to Earth. Why then, for the love of Omega’s interstellar pants, does he choose to drag the one person he knows will completely stuff-up his plan into the scenario? He admits to the Rani his vendetta with the Doctor drives him, but that he has a ‘greater purpose’ in the ruling of Earth. He’s certainly demented, just not quite ‘Time-Flight’ demented.

At this point it’s probably pertinent to talk about ‘the tree’. By and large the special effects in season 22 are pretty good. With the exception of the Bandrils, the aliens look fascinating and repulsive - Sil, the Borad even the Cryons are effectively strange. Peri turning into a bird is, at least memorable as is the burning Android in ‘Timelash’. The model effects in the stories are all good - we see Sontaran ships ‘roll’ through space! It therefore seems a little odd that they dropped the ball with Luke turning into a tree in ‘Mark of the Rani’. He becomes an embarrassingly shaped black stump, that really just gives Peri a cuddle. Anyone who tuned in at that moment would have have reasoned that Doctor Who had indeed lost its way.

Robert Holmes’s contribution is of course ‘The Two Doctors’. Multi-Doctor stories had been done before, but this one doesn’t have any anniversary to hang its hat off (it later turned out to be the ‘100th DOCTOR WHO NOVEL! INTRODUCTION FROM JOHN NATHAN-TURNER!’) and brings us the Second Doctor on a Time Lord mission to prevent illegal time experiments and ends up being Floyd on Cannibalism, in Spain, with the Sontarans. The first six-parter (basically) since the unfinished ‘Shada’, ‘The Two Doctors’ operates with two incongruous settings - the space station Chimera, for the first two episodes and then the house in Seville, Spain, for the next four, which frankly you wouldn’t get in any other show, at least not on TV in 1985.* Not only does Patrick Troughton get equal opportunity to play light and shade, but also the comic antagonism that marked the couple of appearances he had with Jon Pertwee is echoed here in his performance with Colin Baker. Fraser Hines does well too, clearly enjoying the scenes he has with Troughton, less comfortable when trying to act like a traumatised battle survivor. However they’re both overshadowed by Jacqueline Pearce and John Stratton who Holmes clearly enjoys writing more than anyone else. Consequently the story seems unbalanced and the Sontarans come-off worst, playing second fiddle to the Androgums. You only have to watch ‘The Time Warrior’ and ‘The Sontaran Experiment’ to show how neutered they are here.

So, in theory, there is plenty that is reassuring here: a cosy old Doctor and companion, an old alien menace and Robert Holmes telling us something new about the Time Lords. On the brave side the show films abroad once more (but can’t find anything better to do with it rather than have an elongated chase sequence, see ‘Arc of Infinity’) and Shockeye is as repellent a new villain as Sil is, but that seems to be about it. It’s also twenty minutes too long, with everything after the restaurant scenes in Seville seemingly tacked-on. ‘The Two Doctors’ wants to be the ‘event’ story in Season 22, but it has at least two other stories competing for that title too, hence it will never be the classic the production team thought it would be.

Things didn’t look good for the season’s next story from the beginning. The Radio Times listed ‘Timelash’ as ‘On Karfel the Borad rules, but all is far from OK.’. The season’s penultimate story ‘Timelash’ probably has the worst reputation amongst fans probably because it borrows several motifs from very recent stories. The idea of a rebellion on an alien planet against a tyrannical dictatorship was prevalent in ‘Vengeance on Varos’, the idea of dangerous time experiments was in ‘The Two Doctors’ and a masked, disfigured scientist had been seen in ‘Caves of Androzani’, ‘Vengeance on Varos’ and for those with even longer memories ‘The Talons of Weng-Chiang’. Not only that, but Sharaz Jek, Quillam and the Borad all want to do things to Peri.

Poor Peri. She is woefully under-used in this story, chained up with a neck collar (not seen one of those since the kink-fest Secretary) and generally used as a bargaining object. Amazingly though this is all done in sensible clothing, rather than the shorts Nicola Bryant had been made to wear prior to this. She’s also menaced by the Morlox, a hideous creature that has the head and neck of a dinosaur and... well just that. However, that’s nothing compared to the Timelash.

Looking like the magic door on Stars in their Eyes the Timelash itself is a time-corridor to nowhere, used as an execution device (does that mean that those who fall into it suffer from Karfel Tunnel Syndrome?), which in itself is a neat idea. The colliding of the TARDIS with Vena who has been thrown into the tunnel causes her to arrive on Earth and into the arms of HG Wells.

Remember this: In the post-2005 series the Doctor has met: Charles Dickens, Queen Victoria, Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth the First, Madame du Pompadour, Agatha Christie, Winston Churchill and Vincent van Gogh, this is a marked change from the original series where the meeting of famous people from history were a matter of anecdote rather than realisation onscreen. Having HG Wells in the story may seem like an obvious choice for a guest appearance, but at this point in Doctor Who it’s a pretty unique thing to happen. A brave move, then. The references to The Time Machine and The Invisible Man are at least pretty lightly handled compared to how Russell T Davies might have written them.

A light touch isn’t something that Paul Darrow understood, but his performance of Tekker isn’t as nearly as bad as fans seem to remember it or as bad as if Darrow had been allowed to perform it with the full-on Richard III hump. In fact he’s so oily and evil that you really do want the Doctor to chin him at the end of episode one - in fact that would have been so much better than the awkward elbow-push that he ends up giving the Borad into the Timelash.

The final story of the season is the best. Some may say this accolade should belong to ‘Vengeance on Varos’, but really this is the finest distillation of Eric Saward’s plan for the series and his obvious hero-worship of Robert Holmes. This adoration extends to blessing ‘Revelation of the Daleks’ not only with shades of Evelyn Waugh and Harry Harrison, but also three double-acts: Kara & Vogel, Orcini & Bostock and Lilt & Takis. It’s amazing the DJ is only the DJ and not Smashie & Nicie.

From the snow on the ground of Nekros to Tasembaker’s desperate whining and of course Davros’s opinions about ‘consumer resistance’ ‘Revelation of the Daleks’ is a dark, horrible joy to watch. It’s Saward’s opinion that the director Graeme Harper was the only one doing Doctor Who any credit in the mid 80s and while that may not be strictly true, his energy for the programme certainly comes across here. The corridors of Nekros are dark and hide numerous horrors, the Glass Dalek is a particular favourite. What seems reassuring here is the echoing of Hinchcliff era Gothic overtones tainted by capitalism (lots of season 22 is about the control of commodities, even ‘Mark of the Rani’) grotesque characters skulking in the shadows. The brave elements of the story seem to stem from the new levels of desperation that the characters find themselves in, whether it is feeding a galaxy or unrequited love - by contrast, the Doctor’s task of stopping the creation of a new Dalek army from humans seems relatively straightforward.

There’s another idea new viewers might recognise, the idea of using humans for Daleks occurs again in ‘Parting of the Ways’. By the time ‘Journey’s End’ comes around Davros is using his own tissue to create a Dalek army, which still turns on him and keeps him locked in a basement. One would hope that by now he’s given up creating Dalek armies from anything.

The series ends with the Doctor telling Peri “I’ll take you to B-” which was supposed to be ‘Blackpool’, though might as well now be ‘Brian Blessed’. However it was not to be, Doctor Who went on hiatus and was issued the ultimatum that resulted in season 23’s trial.

Season 22 may not be the fan’s favourite or fondly remembered, but nowadays there’s lots there to enjoy. Yes, Colin Baker’s shouting was a serious mis-step in characterisation (that he grew out of) and yes there’s some bad structuring with writers both new to the show and highly experienced struggling with the 45 minute format, but look at the recurring themes of commercialisation, capital punishment, violence and video culture - it’s very 80s, but its themes also have relevance today. To ignore season 22 is to miss an important part of Doctor Who’s history, a show aware of its past but trying new things and is perhaps closer to the post-2005 version of the programme than we would care to say.

*At least as far as I’m aware - we traditionally think of Doctor Who’s main competition as being The A-Team which had debuted in July 1983 and was firmly established by early 1985. Robin of Sherwood was being broadcast on ITV too. The big success story in 1985 was the BBC’s own Eastenders and arguably dictated the direction the BBC wanted to go in from the mid-80s onwards, alongside the classic Edge of Darkness which was broadcast in November 1985.