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Post by Cherry Pepsi Maxil on Sept 5, 2024 20:33:37 GMT
There's very little to complain about during the Tom Baker period of the show, but what's the one decision you'd change? Mine would be having more Cybermen stories. I can't believe he had over forty stories and only faced them once. I don't see why he couldn't have faced them at least one more time after Season 12 like he did with the Daleks.
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Post by UncleDeadly on Sept 5, 2024 20:43:52 GMT
Well, it's got to be the relieving of Philip Hinchcliffe, i would think...
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Post by rushy on Sept 5, 2024 21:11:46 GMT
*Tom becoming increasingly less grounded (his performances in seasons 14-17 are very hit and miss)
*Letting Chris Boucher write Robots of Death and Image of the Fendahl. He's not good with anything longer than 45 minutes.
*Not having Williams leave a year earlier. Two JNT/Bidmead-run seasons would've been fantastic, and we would've been spared of pointless dreck like Destiny of the Daleks. Tom might've been whipped back into shape earlier too.
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Post by Cherry Pepsi Maxil on Sept 5, 2024 21:18:30 GMT
I would have actually liked another Tom/Lalla season under Williams with Adams as script editor.
Destiny of the Daleks is ace, Rushy.
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Post by rushy on Sept 5, 2024 21:23:37 GMT
Destiny of the Daleks is ace, Rushy. I'm glad this mouth-foaming madness is contained in this forum... |
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Post by iank on Sept 6, 2024 5:57:27 GMT
Agreed, I would have loved another Tom/Lalla/Williams season.
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Post by burrunjor on Sept 6, 2024 7:02:53 GMT
The only problem with another Tom and Lalla season is getting them to work together for another year LOL. Might have been impossible from the sounds of things. You'd probably have had better luck getting Lalla to actually regenerate into another actress.
Meanwhile I'm with Maxil that the Cybermen absolutely should have had another story in Tom's time. They were so unlucky to get two snobby writers who couldn't see their potential in a row running the show.
Again though I wouldn't have minded more Dalek stories. Sorry I disagree with the snobby approach that recurring foes are bad. Like everything else, multiverses, superheroes, etc that people say is shit, they are only bad when you overdo them. I'm not saying I want a Dalek or Cyberman story every year, but they absolutely did not have to use them as sparingly as they did during this era. As always the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I think that we maybe should have used the model they did for the Daleks for the first four Doctors eras, where there are cycles where they appear in a semi recurring capacity and then vanish for a few years. That's the best model.
I'd much rather have had a Cyber romp than some of the dire one offs like Leisure Hive, Meglos, Underworld, Creature from the Pit etc.
It's funny how certain myths can just become received wisdom without anyone questioning it? How many bad returning foes stories are there in classic who?
Personally I think there are only three recurring foe stories that would make the bottom 20.
Time Flight, Warriors of the Deep and Time and the Rani. Two of those also aren't terrible because it's an old foe, but because they are shit stories overall. (Warriors is therefore the only one I think you can say is bad because it's another returning foe story and in this case it is foes who don't have another story in them.)
Still most recurring foe stories are watchable at least, and the best represent the absolute best stories. Indeed whenever doing a top 10 best stories list, most people will have lots of returning foes list. It's actually hard not just to make a top ten list nothing but returning foe stories. The top 5 could be Dalek adventures alone for me.
Bob Holmes was a genius, but he was wrong about returning foes and ironically one of the best stories he ever wrote, The Deadly Assassin would be a returning foe story too.
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Post by Cherry Pepsi Maxil on Sept 6, 2024 11:19:26 GMT
the relieving of Philip Hinchcliffe If you've gotta go you've gotta go... |
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Post by rushy on Sept 6, 2024 13:43:48 GMT
The Deadly Assassin would be a returning foe story too. To be fair, if you were raised on a diet of Delgado episodes, it's barely a Master story. Aside from the basic fundaments - enemy of the Doctor, wants to conquer the universe - he's unrecognisable. Delgado's Master didn't even hate the Doctor. |
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Post by Cherry Pepsi Maxil on Sept 6, 2024 14:03:32 GMT
The Deadly Assassin would be a returning foe story too. To be fair, if you were raised on a diet of Delgado episodes, it's barely a Master story. Aside from the basic fundaments - enemy of the Doctor, wants to conquer the universe - he's unrecognisable. Delgado's Master didn't even hate the Doctor. I think you'd eventually start hating someone if they kept mucking up your plans. |
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Post by rushy on Sept 6, 2024 14:06:08 GMT
You get my point, though. The presentation was so vastly different. Holmes made the Master entirely his own.
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Post by Ludders II on Sept 6, 2024 14:49:52 GMT
The Deadly Assassin would be a returning foe story too. To be fair, if you were raised on a diet of Delgado episodes, it's barely a Master story. Aside from the basic fundaments - enemy of the Doctor, wants to conquer the universe - he's unrecognisable. Delgado's Master didn't even hate the Doctor. I like the Peter Pratt Master, but I do get this. He didn't seem like Master I grew up with. He was more like a Morbius type of character. But I just accepted him as the Master, there was logic behind why he was so different. |
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Post by Bernard Marx on Sept 6, 2024 15:09:25 GMT
To be fair, if you were raised on a diet of Delgado episodes, it's barely a Master story. Aside from the basic fundaments - enemy of the Doctor, wants to conquer the universe - he's unrecognisable. Delgado's Master didn't even hate the Doctor. I like the Peter Pratt Master, but I do get this. He didn't seem like Master I grew up with. He was more like a Morbius type of character. But I just accepted him as the Master, there was logic behind why he was so different. That, and in how his schemes are clandestinely calculated, there aren't many fundamental differences between Pratt and Delgado's Masters. Both use tissue compression devices, both operate in the shadows, both are erudite speakers, both exploit pre-existing political tensions to catalyse the Doctor's intended downfall (see The Mind of Evil, The Claws of Axos, Colony in Space, The Sea Devils and Frontier in Space) and both- like the Doctor- remain relative pariahs within Gallifreyan society. Beyond their physical impairments and their differing degrees of disdain for the Doctor (themselves often misinterpreted- Delgado still attempts to murder Pertwee's Doctor innumerable times), the differences are not irreconcilable. As such, The Deadly Assassin's narrative and characterisation-based mechanics still succeed when one considers the differences between both incarnations. Tangentially- and what could be an unpopular opinion- the same principle applies to the Time Lords too, at least in my personal opinion. As someone who loves The War Games more than most stories, I never had a major issue with Holmes' depiction of the Time Lords in The Deadly Assassin. Rather than viewing their bureaucratic and ineffectual veneers as an overhaul, I instead always interpreted it as symptomatic of the intellectual and moral decay which had escalated within Time Lord society over the years. Such decay- beyond the Time Lords' seemingly ineffable power and ghostly postures- already manifests in The War Games, with the Time Lords callously exiling the Doctor for engaging in positive action instead of capitulating to a tired establishment. As such, I saw Holmes' changes as implicitly- but not explicitly- rooted in deliberate continuity instead of thoughtless change. I'm sure it's no coincidence that Bernard Horsfall appears as a Time Lord in both serials. Perhaps Chancellor Goth is the very same Time Lord who condemned the Doctor to exile seven years earlier... |
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Post by Kimbergoth on Sept 6, 2024 19:29:33 GMT
When it comes to the Tom Baker era, there are definitely some missed opportunities that come to mind. For me, one of the biggest regrets is the lack of exploration into the Doctor's past and the Time Lords. While we got glimpses here and there, I always felt like there was so much more potential to dive deeper into Gallifreyan history and culture. Imagine if we had gotten more episodes set on Gallifrey, or stories that revealed more about the Doctor's early life and his relationships with other Time Lords! It would have added so much depth to his character and the overall mythos of the show. But hey, that's just my take!
#WhovianRegrets
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Post by RobFilth on Sept 6, 2024 19:30:26 GMT
When it comes to the Tom Baker era, there are definitely some missed opportunities that come to mind. For me, one of the biggest regrets is the lack of exploration into the Doctor's past and the Time Lords. While we got glimpses here and there, I always felt like there was so much more potential to dive deeper into Gallifreyan history and culture. Imagine if we had gotten more episodes set on Gallifrey, or stories that revealed more about the Doctor's early life and his relationships with other Time Lords! It would have added so much depth to his character and the overall mythos of the show. But hey, that's just my take! #WhovianRegrets Well there were two stories set on Gallifrey which were a lot more than any other incarnation previously, but yeah, maybe some more might have taken place. |
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