Biggest mistakes of Classic Who

[rushy]

Compared to all the blunders made in the new series, Classic Doctor Who can sometimes seem like a golden era where nothing went wrong. But it has its own share of faults. What are your least favourite aspects about Classic Who? 

Here's some of mine: 

*Davros - He works wonderfully in Genesis of the Daleks, but all of his appearances after that grate badly on me. All the nuance is lost, and he just seems to be there so the Doctor could have someone to talk to in Dalek stories... which is exactly why Nation brought him back, as he thought that Daleks talking to one another was boring. I do NOT agree with this at all, I thought the intelligent Daleks in the 60s were very interesting and much more menacing than their later "exterminate, exterminate, exterminate" appearances. 

*The Fifth Doctor - Davison will be the first to admit that he was too inexperienced. For a lot of his era, he looks desperate for direction and comes off as being bland and feckless. I love the sarcastic, devil-may-care groove he eventually finds, but it takes two entire seasons to get there. 

*The Sixth Doctor - I think Colin is a lovely man and always had his heart in the right place (and I'm not blaming him for the costume or the writing), but as time goes on, I've liked his cartoonish acting style less and less. Tom was naturally insane and had this bohemian charisma. Colin puts so much energy into blustering and raving. It always feels, for the lack of a better word, performative.

*Anthony Ainley's Master - His appearance, primarily. It draws too many unfavorable comparisons to Roger Delgado. The character also became a caricature for a lot of Ainley's run. 

*Not bringing back the Monk - I feel like there's so many more stories that could've been told with this character, both comedic and dramatic. He's not explicitly evil, which makes him more interesting than most foes the Doctor faces. 

*Not letting Steven leave in The Massacre: It's a far better departure for him than The Savages. Having him immediately return feels like a massive cop-out. 

*Base Under Siege: Although I love Troughton's run, the amount of times this format gets used is a little ridiculous, and the show feels kind of like a shallow comic strip during his run. 

*Dropping the tone of season 7: I still want the UNIT family of course, but they could've kept the grittiness at least partially. 

*Kamelion: Why bother with the robot prop? Just get different actors to play him and use silver makeup. Or don't add him at all. It was such an obviously bad move, especially since they gave Kamelion next to no personality. 

*The continuity in seasons 20-22: It's ridiculously lore-heavy, and I'd argue the main reason why Dr Who's reputation began to deteriorate. The writing just wasn't up to par with the easily accessible Tom Baker years. 

[burrunjor]

1/ Not knowing the limitations of its budget. This is really a JNT problem. Other eras would usually have one or two stories like this, such as the Web Planet or Invasion of the Dinosaurs. JNT meanwhile would often try and have DW compete with big budget shows, thinking he could just wing it and the results from the Myrka to the Mara to the bat monster from Caves are some of the most laughable monsters in sci fi history. 

2/ Some preachiness in the Pertwee era. As much as I love the era, and it certainly never got as bad as Jodie, there absolutely could be some instances of Pertwee going on a lecture, like the end of Invasion of the Dinosaurs. 

3/ JNT's desire to get back at feminists in the 80s by making the female companions girly and wimpy. I get that he wanted to wind them up, but ultimately he just proved their point! The two companions affected by this were Peri and Mel, both cringe inducing caricatures of female characters, either being written like little girls in women's bodies like Mel, or being sexualized and abused in really awful ways like Peri. (The worst of which was her being tied up on a leesh and menaced by a monster that can only be described as a penis with teeth in Timelash.) 

4/ Attempts to make the show too edgy, like Colin choking Peri and in the Two Doctors, where that guy gets stabbed. That to me felt nasty and pointless. 

5/ Overuse of the Master in both the Delgado and the Ainley era. 

6/ No explanation for how the Master survived his death in Planet of Fire. Worst bit of writing in the original show. 

7/ The resolution to the Key to Time story arc. Dreadful anti climax.

8/ Overuse of the Time Lords in the 80s. 

9/ No explanation for why the Doctor doesn't remember multi Doctor stories. 

10/ Colin Baker's costume. I don't think I need to explain this one. 

[Deleted]

I agree with most of yours. Here are a few additional ones I picked out.

The Deadly Assassin and its consequences: The Time-Lords were at their best in the War Games. Mysterious, austere and eerily otherworldly; the declension of this effect begins with the Deadly Assassin, in which far too much information is revealed about the Time-Lords' society. I love the story on an individual basis but when you consider that it essentially laid the groundwork for stories like Hell Bent, you start to wonder whether it was such a swell idea after all.

Getting rid of Liz: Season 7 is Pertwee's greatest string of stories, arguably. Most of his stuff is pretty mediocre (not his fault, obviously), but the home-run streak of Spearhead, Silurians, Ambassadors and Inferno is just glorious to behold. Getting rid of Liz was the catalyst for the slow evanescence of that effect. That season is just so classy.

4th Doctor not regenerating at the end of season 15: With the exception of City of Death and a few other hidden gems, most of the post-series 15 Baker run is dogshit. His act becomes tiring and predictable; the bohemian novelty has worn off and it's just not that fun anymore. 

The casting of Doctors 5,6 and 7: I love them all but realistically I just don't buy into them as actors. McCoy is arguably the best of the bunch but the director really ought to have told him to calm down at certain points, especially with the R-rolling and the overdramatic vocations and gesticulations whenever he gives an impassioned speech. Colin Baker is a great actor but, at least on the TV show, he is woefully unsuited to the character. Davison is just a wet lettuce.

[iank]

I do agree with the dropping the season 7 tone. It's such a shame we didn't get more of that, and I do prefer it to the more juvenile comic book tone of the rest of the era (even though there are some good stories in there).
I don't think it's the lore continuity that's the issue in seasons 18-20 so much as the continuity between stories, where the characters begin a new story whinging about what happened in the previous one. Bidmead's technobabble over actual dialogue doesn't help in 18 and early 19 either (Tom and Lalla at least make it seem they know what they're talking about, even if we don't, but the likes of Waterhouse and Sutton clearly don't have a clue).
The overuse of the Master in season 8. Some of the music in the Pertwee is terrible, and let's not even start on Carey Blighter.
Much as I defend JNT, him throwing out the baby with the bathwater in season 18 does not look good. Replacing Lalla and K9 with three lumps of wood was a serious error, and you can serious things up again without removing all humour. Decay is how to do it right; Hive, Traken and Logopolis are how to do it wrong.

[Spark Doll King]

The revolving door of female companions in season 3 comes to mind. Vicki gets the boot, Catarina is dead within a few episodes, Sarah Kingdom is great but also killed, then we’re lumbered with bloody Dodo for the rest of the season until she buggers off off screen.

The giant green knob & balls in Creature in the Pit. Though this is of the so bad its hysterical kind of f*ck up and the story it’s in is actually pretty good.

The Sontarans in Invasion.

Tom’s general attitude at times sadly made the show quite unpleasant for some of the caste and crew.

[RobFilth]

Biggest mistake of the Classic Series was the decision to not have the lot shot on film instead of Video Tape.

Next biggest mistake: Junking the archive.

Bad, annoying, wrong footed or irritating production decisions fade into insignificance compared to those two mistakes for me personally.

[iank]

The first is not really a mistake, though. That's just how things were done. Even high-end award-winning adult dramas like Callan were part film, part video. The only shows shot all on film were those with overseas money like The Avengers.

[RobFilth]

Jan 12, 2023 21:04:48 GMT iank said:

The first is not really a mistake, though. That's just how things were done. Even high-end award-winning adult dramas like Callan were part film, part video. The only shows shot all on film were those with overseas money like The Avengers.

Yeah, I realise it was a budgetary consideration, but I still maintain it was a mistake.

For an expensive show employing as many props and special effects as Doctor Who, the extra expense of mounting it on film wouldn't have been much more.

This decision along with the junking of the archive shows that the BBC never had a high opinion of it in the first place.

[iank]

Again, that's just plain not true, sorry. Pretty sure ITV had a very high opinion of Callan, but that's not how TV was made then. Even in the 80s it was only rare productions in the UK with overseas co-producers that all got made on film, like Miss Marple and the Brett Holmes. Even the late 80s Jack the Ripper mini-series started life as the usual studio/film production, until a co-production deal at the 11th hour saw them get enough money to shoot the whole thing on film with the likes of Michael Caine. 
I'm sure all UK networks would have loved to shoot every show they did all on film, but it simply was prohibitively expensive and just wasn't done. 

[RobFilth]

Yeah, I realise it was out of the budgetary limits of the tightarse BBC Ian, but when I look at all that Gerry Anderson puppet shit, UFO, Space1999, Avengers, Catweazle, Wurzel etc plus all the rubbish American SciFi shite like Planet of Giants, Lost In Space etc, it does beg the question why a superior programme like Doctor Who wasn't all shot on film?

If they could manage it with "Spearhead from Space"(because there weren't available VT colour cameras at the time), then why the hell not for all of them?

Film is definitely more costly when it comes to the cutting/editing stage, but I wouldn't have thought it THAT prohibitive in costs.

It's just a load of flannel the skinflint meany BBC have fed us for years just to justify their inappropriate use of public funds.

Just think, if they hadn't have hired Wogan or talentless idiots like Noel Edmonds, their ludicrous salaries alone would have probably budgeted the whole programme on film.

[Deleted]

I think the opposite, Rob. I would have preferred the show to be shot entirely on video like the McCoy era was. Video, particularly when used outside, is easier on the eye than film.

[Deleted]

The whole Trial season was a mistake. There were some good ideas in there, but unfortunately a lot of it was a complete and total shambles.

[RobFilth]

Mar 18, 2023 20:03:29 GMT @kengrubshaw said:

The whole Trial season was a mistake. There were some good ideas in there, but unfortunately a lot of it was a complete and total shambles.

Trial was the point for me when the Classic series really jumped the rails of a having a natural continuitive flow.

The forced regeneration into McCoy for no narrative reason at all just messed things up even more. Everything felt so forced afterwards.

Grade and Powell sure buggered the whole thing up.

[burrunjor]

Jan 13, 2023 21:12:17 GMT RobFilth said:

 all the rubbish American SciFi shite like Lost In Space etc, it does beg the question why a superior programme like Doctor Who wasn't all shot on film?

Here I must protest. Lost in Space was not shite. It is probably the most misunderstood sci fi classic. 

Seasons 2 and 3 of Lost in Space were really the first attempt to merge sci fi and comedy as well as fantasy on mainstream television. Whilst it could still be a bit twee, thanks to its family slot, the show's humour could still be really anarchic, outrageous, and unlike anything on tv. Dr Smith was a hysterical character who could get away with the most outrageous things and still be lovable. 

Lost in Space's 2nd and 3rd seasons were a huge influence on Red Dwarf in the following ways. 

The premise was the same, a group of people trapped out in deep space, who wanted to get home. 

Dr Smith and the Robot are Rimmer and Kryten. In both cases we have a cowardly, self serving, egocentric, backstabbing Judas, who is despised by the rest of the crew, causes all of their problems, is hilariously obsessed with the military, but faints, runs away and cowers at the first sign of danger, paired with a robot who is a great guy, brave, noble, useful and beloved by the rest of the crew. In both cases however the robot has to endure the awful human's abuse because of his programming but now and again both are able to slip in a little insult against their cowardly human master. 

The insults they trade are even similar, Dr Smith and Rimmer making a joke about the shape of the robots head, the robot/Kryten pointing out how cowardly they are. 

Some episodes of Lost in Space even inspired Red Dwarf episodes.

There is one Lost in Space episode where Dr Smith is put on trial by aliens and found guilty and the only way they can get him off, is to say that he is mentally incompetent, which the egocentric Dr Smith can't stand.

There is also a Lost in Space episode where Dr Smith creates clones of himself who eventually stab him in the back because they are all clones of a backstabbing, two faced weasel of a man. 

Then there is another one where there is a double of Dr Smith, who in contrast to the real one, is likable, humble, brave, honest, hard working, and beloved by the crew much to the real Dr Smith's chagrin LOL. 

On top of that Lost in Space also influenced Futurama too, in terms of its design, look, robots and sense of humour. Lot's of jokes in Futurama like robot wrestling, robot acting, a robot dress up as a woman to win a contest, robots having sexuality, robots getting drunk and having hangovers are all in Lost in Space. 

The thing about Lost in Space was that its humour was quite a clever send up of the sci fi genre. The Robot is the classic story of a machine learning what it's like to be human, but he learns what it's like to be human in silly ways, like getting drunk, being petty and jealous, vain, etc, which again became the premise for Kryten and Bender in Futurama. 

Meanwhile its merging of fantasy and sci fi and using both to just go crazy would have a huge influence on the likes of Legends of Tomorrow and Rick and Morty. All of these shows get praised as being original and quirky for doing things Lost in Space did 50 fecking years ago, it's so frustrating.  

Lost in Space should be celebrated as much as any other 60s classic. Personally I find it far more watchable, creative and interesting than Quatermass. To me that gets undeserved praise. Not saying it wasn't important, but it's utter bullshit that DW wouldn't exist without it. DW owes far more to Dan Dare and Doctor Omega and HG Wells. It's only really one period, the Pertwee era that owes much to Quatermass. Beyond that Quatermass I doubt has even as much influence as Lost in Space. 

What other classics owe a lot to it? Blake's 7? No. Star Trek? No. Buffy and the X-Files? No. Xena? No. Red Dwarf? No. Primeval, well a bit, but even then there are other  more important influences on Primeval, like Dino Crisis, DW and Jurassic Park.  Ironically Torchwood is probably the only modern show that I'd call a Quatermass clone, and inspiring Torchwood is nothing to be proud of LOL. 

Sadly Lost in Space is kind of like Classic Who in that its fans let it down. LIS fans are sadly even bigger self loathers. They always whine and bitch about how "only the first season where it took itself seriously is worth anything," They are terrified of being seen as idiots for liking a silly sci fi show, as opposed to Star Trek, and completely overlook the ways in which it was ahead of its time. Sadly the bad reputation it gets as a result causes a lot of people who haven't watched it properly, or maybe have vague memories from childhood to think the same. 

Meanwhile Nigel Kneale because he was an arrogant arsehole who constantly beefed his own stuff up, get's more praise for doing even less than Lost in Space does. 

It's the same with the Hammer Dracula's. The last couple of films, like Satanic Rites and Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires were far more ahead of their time and creative, and arguably influential than the majority of the other sequels, but they are regarded as the worst, because at the time fans were embarrassed by them trying to cash in on modern trends. 

Honestly fans can do far more damage to something than haters ever can sometimes. 

[rushy]

I'm convinced that Satanic Rites of Dracula was a rewritten Pertwee serial.