What did you think of the Sylvester McCoy era, companions Mel and Ash, and the stories of that time?

McCoy was the Seventh Doctor. (Unless you're one of those weirdos who finds a tenuous reason to discount an entire incarnation.)

And it was Mel and Ace.

Okay, Pedants' Corner corrections noted, but your answers to my question are...?

Only if you ask the question again, but this time with the highlighted errors corrected

The 7th doctor for me had some of the worst stories in the shows history especially in his 1st series. Though IMO i blame that more on the writing & poor quality of the show at the time (in much the same way i always felt colin baker (THE 6th doctor BTW) was given a rough deal by the writers/producers. However towards the end of mccoys & the shows reign, the stories improved & COF remains one of my all time favourites.

As for sylvester as a doctor, he went from a comedic buffoon & a OMG what has happened to this show kind of a doctor (but i stuck with the show & sylvester out of loyalty) but redeemed himself to be a good actor to play the role & brought a very dark & cunning side to the doctor i had never seen previously.

Although tom baker remains my favourite doctor of all time, i have enjoyed every single actor to have portrayed him who have all brought their own unique style to the role.

For me, the only real gems during the Seventh Doctor era were Remembrance of the Daleks, Battlefield and The Curse of Fenric. The rest were crap by comparison.

Oh, and Mel's screaming! It was like long finger nails running down a school blackboard!

Tom is my all-time favourite too! The Brain of Morbius being my most favourite Fourth Doctor story.

I think The Fourth Doctor was the most alien of all the Doctors so far. Very Time Lordish. That's how I see Peter Capaldi playing the Doctor when he comes along properly at the end of August.

i found mel's screaming, in most part, obligatory and completely unnecessary rather than to emulate fear or dramatic point.

i don't get the 'time lordish' comparison a lot of people make. I think the doctor's character is very un timelordish and the reason why he ran away.

i will agree that that 4 was the most unhuman like of the incarnations at that point.

I loathed it all. I'm not one of those people who thinks it got better as it went on, I thought it was amateurish, ill-conceived garbage all the way through. I could only bring myself to watch it again for Nicholas Parsons and some quite good scenes with Daleks blasting things.

The doctor, unconvincing; the companions, unbearable; the scripts, unspeakable. It was a relief that it was cancelled really.

I stopped watching. I was a lifelong Doctor Who fan but I just couldn't watch it anymore.

There were some great ideas, some of which have been continued in New Who; a darker Doctor hiding a long hidden secret; a complicated companion from a troubled family; and the suggestion that Ace hadn't met the Doctor by chance after all.

But there simply wasn't the sophistication in the writing or the production to effectively realise them at the time. What we ended up with was a Doctor and companion who couldn't act, cheap production values and desperate attempts to be quirky that just didn't work.

I watched Survival again recently. There are whole segments that feel like a cheap fan-made movie. That's pretty much how I felt about the show at the time.

It wasn't even worthy of CBBC. Just awful!

Classic who died for me in episode one of the twin dilemna. Bits of trial of a timelord was interesting. Slight improvement in the mccoy era but only remembrance of the daleks and curse of fenric of any watchable standard.

Sure I've said similar on a recent thread, but personally find a lot to enjoy in Seasons 25 and 26, particularly Remembrance, Greatest Show, Ghostlight and Fenric. Also got a soft spot for Delta.

Don't get me started on Ash though, OP. Genuinely can't put into words what I thought about that character.



Oh, that reminds me, personally think Survival has it's moments too.

Yes, I think at times during The Seventh Doctor Era, there are some pretty crap stories.

The sets aren't all that, either. Looks like Mark Curry and Yvette Fielding knocked them together in one afternoon! (They presented Blue Peter during Seven's era).

I concur with all of the above.

I also stopped watching after being a fan since I could remember (from Pertwee era) and while it was never cool to be a Doctor Who fan it did have a degree of kudos. After McCoy took over, even that degree of kudos vanished.

I never did get ghost light. Delta, survival,silver nemesis and dragonfire.had their moments but overall poor. The hale and pace appearance in survival was very much a gimic, similar to peter kay in love and monsters.

I would say the first two stories of McCoy's era represented a low point. In the first story, you had the Rani (female time-lord) pretending to be Mel to a Doctor disoriented by regeneration. This impersonation included trying to dress and talk like her, while not having changed her physical shape, The next story, set in the block of flats, and featuring rival girl gangs, Nazi-style caretakers, murderous cleaning robots, and the disembodied mind of the flats' architect in the cellar, was, for me, the definite plateau. From these, I concluded that they had turned the series into a comedy-drama, maybe due to McCoy being best known for his appearances on kids' shows Tizwas and Jigsaw, at the time he first took the role. However, subsequent adventures during McCoy's era did show a marked improvement on the first two, in my opinion, and the show continued to have its moments throughout the rest of McCoy's incumbency.

A TV program does not need to be very good at all to be a marked improvement on Time and the Rani. I didn't totally hate Paradise Towers though. If anything I'd rather watch that again than supposed "classics" like Ghostlight or The Curse of Fenric. I consider both of them to be a jumbled mess of motifs, themes and right-on "issues" cobbled clumsily together for no other reason than for the writers to show off just how clever and avant-garde they supposedly were. Anyway, even if there had been one or two good stories in Seasons 25 and 26 (I don't think there were any but that's by the by), they wouldn't make up for the unmitigated crud of The Happiness Patrol, Silver Nemesis and Battlefield. If I'd been BBC1 Controller I would have cancelled Doctor Who myself after watching them, and then I'd resign for allowing any license fee money to be wasted on them.

A concession to feminism, one presumes, by having a female assistant who is feisty and fights back, rather than just getting herself lost or kidnapped, scream for help and having to have things explained to her. Also an attempt to create a young character a lot of teenagers would find cool-although an internet check on Sophie Aldred, who played her, shows she was 25 to 27 years old, during her years with the show.

There were some terrible stories, with terrible budgets (and course the dated 80s costumes, music and 'street slang' is always going to bring on a cringe) but McCoy did as well as anyone could.

The writing and performance in Ghost Light, where you can absolutely see the Doctor transition from trying to puzzle out what's going on in the house, to being the one pulling the strings and making the house play by his rules, is beautiful to watch, and I think should be more of a template for modern stories - the Doctor shouldn't just suddenly have a revelatory insight that solves all the problems.

Tbh, I was being facetious there as there is no companion called Ash.

This was the era that put the final nail in the coffin!
No direspect to McCoy - he tried his best, bless him. He still has fond memories and speaks well of it today!
But the BBC weren't exactly helpful were they?
I was quite relieved when it was rested to be honest. It's the ONLY time in my life that I felt embarrased admitting to watch it to my friends!! (I was in my late 20's)

I didn't really see them all first time round,and have watched a few recently.
I quite like McCoys doctor I think he plays him well but is let down by the writers who do actually come up with some good ideas but seem to struggle with having them play out on screen.

Ace was alright she was a prototype Rose really,the big problem once again was the writers,they clearly didn't have a clue about how a teenage girl would speak and it showed.
On the whole I thought Sophie Aldred did the best she could with some often cringe worthy dialogue