Originally Posted by outside:
“Agreed. I love the Sixth Doctor. I loved him at the time but BF have really given Colin Baker the chance to shine.
He was always great but the scripts and storylines let him down. Personally, I think JNT and Saward were the worst combination the BBC ever flung at the series and I blame them for Doctor Who's shameful reputation in the 80s and 90s.
Saward had no idea of what made the programme special, no inkling of how to tap its potential and no vision of its progression. For me, he just thought it was "action/sci-fi". To be fair to him, he knew enough to realise that the show was unique - ie., you couldn't just adapt a "Blake's 7" script and expect it to flow in a new format - but he didn't have the writing or editing talent to make the series special. When it transcended his talent, it was due to the directors or writers like Robert Holmes or Christopher Bailey. He's blamed JNT for all the faults of 80s Who (so has Ian Levine so who knows?) but Holmes and Terrance Dicks managed to rustle up a consistent string of stories as script editor so why couldn't he?
At the time, I loved the series, but no-one else I knew did. I was regarded (fondly, I have to admit - this isn't a tragic tale of my misguided life as a teenage anorak) as an oddity, clinging to a series well past its prime and cinging to its place in the schedules by its fingernails.
TV "Sci-fi" was a dirty word back then, full of men and women in lycra and capes spouting unspeakable dialogue and the director's cousin pretending to be a robot. It was awful.
But enough about "Timelash".
Doctor Who was deeply unfashionable and totally out of kilter with its contemporaries. Its cancellation in 1985 and the subsequent media furore was more a reflection of its cultural significance than its contemporary significance, as far as I'm concerned.
I'm fiddling with your comments here, Crazzy, but I have forgiven Mr Grade.
My, how magnanimous of me!
As a naive fanboy, I despised him (I still do for practically forcing me to purchase the 12" vinyl of "Doctor in Distress", the swine. Oh, the shame) for not realising that Doctor Who was amazing but he has eaten his words so... let him live. Call off the dogs!
The scripts were planned with the Sixth Doctor in mind, weren't they? Not so sure about "The Flight of the Chimeron" (Delta) and "The Pyramid's Treasure" (Dragonfire) but "Strange Mattter" (Time and the Rani) and "Paradise Towers" were. I'd have loved to have seen Colin Baker in Season 24; the scripts were so much fresher and experimental under Cartmel. I'm not saying that they'd have been any better with the sixth incarnation but... if wishes were changes...
At the time, fanzines used to foam at the mouth that the series "brought in more money from sales than it cost to make!!!" but, if you were in charge of BBC1 and were seeing desperately old-fashioned scripts by Pip and Jane Baker being wheeled out on a Monday night by the Doctor Who production team, would you have doubled the budget? Would you have cared enough about the series to have thought it could improve in any way?
I think Jonathan Powell was, at the time, quite right. I hated him as much as Grade but Doctor Who became a niche show for a dwindling audience and was making no attempt to broaden its reach. It should have went back to basics - even Sydney Newman tried to tell that to the BBC.
I think times have changed. People still slag me off for my love of Who but, as they all watch Lost, Heroes, True Blood, etc, I'm not viewed as a total anorak. "Genre" isn't the sad little insular world it used to be.
I know so many ladies/girls/wummen now who love the Doctor yet, back when it was "Classic" I knew absolutely none. I worked with a female sci-fi geek in the early 90s but she loved *spit* Star Trek TNG and thought Who was for spotty anoraks.
I stuck pins in a voodoo doll of her for months and months afterwards.
I met him once and he took the p*ss out of me. My second favourite Doctor, too! The bounder.
Mind you, after "The Twin Dilemma", I sent him a rambling teenage fan letter, asking him a thousand and one daft questions and... he replied, with a signed photo, and a letter answering every single one of my silly queries! Gent.”
“Agreed. I love the Sixth Doctor. I loved him at the time but BF have really given Colin Baker the chance to shine.
He was always great but the scripts and storylines let him down. Personally, I think JNT and Saward were the worst combination the BBC ever flung at the series and I blame them for Doctor Who's shameful reputation in the 80s and 90s.
Saward had no idea of what made the programme special, no inkling of how to tap its potential and no vision of its progression. For me, he just thought it was "action/sci-fi". To be fair to him, he knew enough to realise that the show was unique - ie., you couldn't just adapt a "Blake's 7" script and expect it to flow in a new format - but he didn't have the writing or editing talent to make the series special. When it transcended his talent, it was due to the directors or writers like Robert Holmes or Christopher Bailey. He's blamed JNT for all the faults of 80s Who (so has Ian Levine so who knows?) but Holmes and Terrance Dicks managed to rustle up a consistent string of stories as script editor so why couldn't he?
At the time, I loved the series, but no-one else I knew did. I was regarded (fondly, I have to admit - this isn't a tragic tale of my misguided life as a teenage anorak) as an oddity, clinging to a series well past its prime and cinging to its place in the schedules by its fingernails.
TV "Sci-fi" was a dirty word back then, full of men and women in lycra and capes spouting unspeakable dialogue and the director's cousin pretending to be a robot. It was awful.
But enough about "Timelash".
Spoiler
Doctor Who was deeply unfashionable and totally out of kilter with its contemporaries. Its cancellation in 1985 and the subsequent media furore was more a reflection of its cultural significance than its contemporary significance, as far as I'm concerned.
I'm fiddling with your comments here, Crazzy, but I have forgiven Mr Grade.
My, how magnanimous of me!
As a naive fanboy, I despised him (I still do for practically forcing me to purchase the 12" vinyl of "Doctor in Distress", the swine. Oh, the shame) for not realising that Doctor Who was amazing but he has eaten his words so... let him live. Call off the dogs!
The scripts were planned with the Sixth Doctor in mind, weren't they? Not so sure about "The Flight of the Chimeron" (Delta) and "The Pyramid's Treasure" (Dragonfire) but "Strange Mattter" (Time and the Rani) and "Paradise Towers" were. I'd have loved to have seen Colin Baker in Season 24; the scripts were so much fresher and experimental under Cartmel. I'm not saying that they'd have been any better with the sixth incarnation but... if wishes were changes...
At the time, fanzines used to foam at the mouth that the series "brought in more money from sales than it cost to make!!!" but, if you were in charge of BBC1 and were seeing desperately old-fashioned scripts by Pip and Jane Baker being wheeled out on a Monday night by the Doctor Who production team, would you have doubled the budget? Would you have cared enough about the series to have thought it could improve in any way?
I think Jonathan Powell was, at the time, quite right. I hated him as much as Grade but Doctor Who became a niche show for a dwindling audience and was making no attempt to broaden its reach. It should have went back to basics - even Sydney Newman tried to tell that to the BBC.
I think times have changed. People still slag me off for my love of Who but, as they all watch Lost, Heroes, True Blood, etc, I'm not viewed as a total anorak. "Genre" isn't the sad little insular world it used to be.
I know so many ladies/girls/wummen now who love the Doctor yet, back when it was "Classic" I knew absolutely none. I worked with a female sci-fi geek in the early 90s but she loved *spit* Star Trek TNG and thought Who was for spotty anoraks.
I stuck pins in a voodoo doll of her for months and months afterwards.
I met him once and he took the p*ss out of me. My second favourite Doctor, too! The bounder.
Mind you, after "The Twin Dilemma", I sent him a rambling teenage fan letter, asking him a thousand and one daft questions and... he replied, with a signed photo, and a letter answering every single one of my silly queries! Gent.
”
I was going to add a few comments....but have to go right now so will say that is very informative...thankyou...
