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Post by burrunjor on Mar 5, 2021 13:55:54 GMT
The Daleks, the Cybermen, the Master and Davros out of the classic era. It's hard to say. The Daleks have unquestionably the highest amount of classic stories. Really there's no bad Dalek story in the entire classic era. The Chase, Planet of the Daleks and Destiny are all silly or generic or both, but they are still really enjoyable stories with some interesting ideas. All the others meanwhile range from classic to among the best in the shows history like Genesis and Remembrance and the first Dalek story and Power and Day. The Daleks however I think were a bit undermined in some later stories for Davros and in the 80s they faded into the background. The Cybermen meanwhile sadly I don't think are in the running at all. They had a few classic stories, but generally speaking they were wasted. The concept of them being humans turned into robots wasn't even explored that much after the 60s, and they were often undermined quite terribly as this thread on Archive points out LOL. www.thehiveforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?p=99412&sid=9112376e2a3235e706e6d44ec3d164ac#p99412The Master meanwhile it's a bit hard to say. He had probably the best story arc of all the classic villains. You can actually see him change, and the writers for such an old show were remarkably consistent in developing his character. I liked seeing him go from perhaps a well intentioned extremist as Delgado, to a bitter, deranged, hateful psycho. However he suffered from overuse in the 80s and was crowbarred into some really shitty stories like Time Flight. Davros meanwhile was used the least and might have been all the better for it. Like The Master he had a decent enough story arc. He was always treated as a legit threat unlike the Cybermen, and pretty much all of his stories bar Destiny are classics. Personally I'd say it's a toss up between Davros and the Daleks for who got the best treatment. The Daleks were occassionally undermined unlike Davros, but they have a higher average of classic stories, both of which result from them being used more. |
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Post by iank on Mar 7, 2021 1:46:53 GMT
Cybermen. All pretty good bar maybe Revenge.
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Post by burrunjor on Mar 7, 2021 9:15:14 GMT
Cybermen. All pretty good bar maybe Revenge. I do enjoy most Cybermen stories, but they themselves were often undermined. Take the Five Doctors for instance. Good story but they get curb stomped by ONE android and turned into doofuses by the Master. Similarly in Silver Nemesis a woman with a slingshot wipes them out. |
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Post by RobFilth on Mar 7, 2021 9:17:53 GMT
Cybermen. All pretty good bar maybe Revenge. I do enjoy most Cybermen stories, but they themselves were often undermined. Take the Five Doctors for instance. Good story but they get curb stomped by ONE android and turned into doofuses by the Master. Similarly in Silver Nemesis a woman with a slingshot wipes them out. They're good in "Attack" though, they mash peoples heads and hands and make stupid looking aliens boil to death. |
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Post by burrunjor on Mar 7, 2021 9:28:32 GMT
I do enjoy most Cybermen stories, but they themselves were often undermined. Take the Five Doctors for instance. Good story but they get curb stomped by ONE android and turned into doofuses by the Master. Similarly in Silver Nemesis a woman with a slingshot wipes them out. They're good in "Attack" though, they mash peoples heads and hands and make stupid looking aliens boil to death. I never got the hatred for Attack personally? It might not be quite as good as Earthshock, but it's a solid story. People seem to pick it up for petty reasons. The violence for instance, come on here! If it had been made in the Hinchcliff era people would be saying "DW had finally grown up." Also I don't get the criticism of the Doctor being too easy on Lytton? People say Lytton was just working for the Cyrons; for money but that's not true. He could have sold them out when they captured him and cut a deal with the Cybermen, but he withstood torture and conversion to buy the Cyrons and the Doctor time, and his last action was to save the Doctors life. Given he was only working for the Daleks under duress and possibly mind control, I think it's fair for the Doctor to think that maybe Lytton who gave his life for the earth, had maybe not been as bad as he thought. . |
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Post by RobFilth on Mar 7, 2021 9:53:39 GMT
Also I don't get the criticism of the Doctor being too easy on Lytton? People say Lytton was just working for the Cyrons; for money but that's not true. He could have sold them out when they captured him and cut a deal with the Cybermen, but he withstood torture and conversion to buy the Cyrons and the Doctor time, and his last action was to save the Doctors life. Given he was only working for the Daleks under duress and possibly mind control, I think it's fair for the Doctor to think that maybe Lytton who gave his life for the earth, had maybe not been as bad as he thought. . I think it's only because Lytton's backstory was never fully revealed in "Resurrection", so we never saw the extent of programming or duress he had undergone under the Daleks which makes people suddenly think, "Huh? But hold on a minute, he's a bad man innit? Wut's the Doc doin' chatting this chit for at the last hour when he's bad man innit blud?" by the end of "Attack". Yeah, it's a bit of character reversal at the last minute some people find a bit difficult to swallow, particularly when he's portrayed so strongly as such a merciless killer to begin with. Some people just can't accept the moral ambiguity or quick character turn around. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 9, 2021 13:21:29 GMT
I'd say Davros. Even though he's not really in Remembrance until the end, he's still scheming behind the scenes. I think he's great in all of his appearances and I think he comes across better than The Master does.
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Post by burrunjor on Mar 10, 2021 10:53:15 GMT
I'd say Davros. Even though he's not really in Remembrance until the end, he's still scheming behind the scenes. I think he's great in all of his appearances and I think he comes across better than The Master does. Agreed. Davros' appearance in Remembrance is a highlight for the character actually. It's a brilliant conclusion to his arc. He creates the Daleks in Genesis and they reject him because he's not quite one of them. In Destiny he thinks they have seen the error of their ways and accept him, but he later finds out they are just using him, and in Resurrection he decides to build a new race. He finally does in Revelation, but his new race are useless because they are too dependent on him. So in Remembrance he changes himself to be more like a Dalek and finally wins round the approval of at least some of his Daleks. Clearly there has always been a kind of twisted affection for Davros from the Daleks, as they could have just killed him at the end of Genesis, but instead they let him live in a state of suspended animation for centuries in case they needed him. At the same time Davros ironically ends up dooming the Daleks just as much as he did the Kaleds and having him beg the Doctor for pity like he did the Daleks is a genius touch. The reason for why Davros and the Daleks were consistently great though I have to say was Terry Nation. Lots of people hated him because of how precious he was with the Daleks and Davros, always demanding first approval over scripts, forcing writers to make changes (like Resurrection was originally supposed to kill off Davros, until he demanded they change it around. ) Whilst Nation might have been annoying for JNT LOL, ultimately I think that Nation ensured that his villains were always treated with respect and more importantly never over used. The Master sadly because the creators didn't have any rights and because they could bring him back whenever they wanted. He became their go to guy for whenever they wanted to bring an old villain back, which resulted in him being crowbarred into stories like Time Flight, and Kings Demons just to beef them up. It's a shame other writers didn't get a chance to protect their characters the way that Nation did. Even today the Daleks have overall been treated a lot better than the other classic era villains in New Who thanks to the Nation estate who similarly are very protective of them. (It's a myth that they force the Fitzroy crowd to have the Daleks in it every year. They've reused the Cybermen, the Master etc just as much at various points.) Sure the Daleks have had some crappy stories like the notorious Missy one, but even then they haven't had their origins, characters etc been f*cked over like the Master and the Cybermen, and they have had the highest number of good stories in New Who and never been undermined. Meanwhile Terrance Dicks the co-creator absolutely despised Missy, calling it the worst idea in the history of DW, but sadly there was nothing he could do about it. Similarly the Cybermen being curb stomped by the Raston Warrior Robot would NEVER have been allowed by Nation. |
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