Sorry Mr Fipps-beat you to it!

For a start, I would upbraid Sylvester McCoy's incumbency by not commencing it with Time and the Rani then Paradise Towers. In my opinion, they were both quite poor and gave the impression the story had been turned into a semi-comedy drama. However, subsequent stories, for me, did mark a general improvement on the commencement of this Doctor's first season.

Season 24. End of thread.

Apart from Delta and the Bannermen, and I still think there is some cringeworthy moments in this, but it is entertaining on the whole.

Sylvester got better over the course of his era, and it's quite good to see his development from Time and the Rani to his Season 26 performances.

Glad we got Ace in place of Mel. So again no changes there.

A couple of things I would change in the stories. In Silver Nemesis the Cybermen are too easily and unrealistically beaten. Did we really need The Destroyer in Battlefield?

I would get someone with acting ability to play the Doctor.

That is all.

Handily they cast someone who could then!


The word you are looking for is dislike or similar

I was literally about to click the "New Thread" button.

Oh well, onto the topic.

The main thing I would have changed would be to simply staff with show with people who cared about the show, or at least interested in trying to put it back on the right path. Most of the people at this time were either phoning it in, or just waiting for their paychecks. This resulted in a number of stories that were not very good, and the ones that were good were failed by poor production. I love "The Happiness Patrol", but it simply looks awful. No one was really willing to try and make the show better.

It seemed to be picking up speed again in the final season, but sadly it was too late for it.

Poor writing, storylines & acting were the name of the game by the 7th incarnation. As has already been stated, by this point no one cared about the show & it became an embarrassment. The dr had been scripted as some comedy buffoon. The show did redeem itself by the last season but by then it was too late.

I'd change the producer, script editor, writers and lead actors.

Would have let jnt leave. He had been wanting to leave but they wouldn't let him. Would have had the first season a lot more serious. Would have ditched bonnie in the first story and went for ace straight away. The 6 eps bonnie had appeared in she just didn't work for me. Put it on a more sensible time slot away from cs. Love Sylvester as an actor and have no issue with how he was played s25 and 26 when he figured how to play him.

The only way the Seventh Doctor's era could be improved would be if someone managed to get hold of a TARDIS, go back to the 80s and somehow make sure the whole sorry mess never happened.

Failing that:

1) Cast someone who could act, not gurn, as the Doctor; when your eponymous hero is a charisma-free black hole, you know you're in trouble.
2) Go back to the drawing board with Ace.
3) Have a new producer
4) Employ a complete set of new writers...
5)...and a script editor who actually had some TV experience.
6) Above all else, stop pandering to the fans which always makes the general audience feel excluded.

To say I loathed, and was embarrassed by, this era would be putting it mildly.

Acting ability seems to be a running theme here

If you did that, she'd probably write out a formula for a particularly lethal form of gelignite!

It's the scripts I can't stand. But I wouldn't rate the acting that highly either, or the management at the BBC. They deliberately let it all get that bad.

It should never have come back after TOAT. It was like watching your favourite pet die a horrible death.

Indeed. It was a relief when they finally put it down out of our misery.

That's about the fifth time I've seen you use that phrase.

Having made Mel a computer programmer it might have actually been nice to give her the skills etc to go with the job title.

So give Mel some computer skills & given we never saw when on earth she came from make her from the future so she could actually have been more useful and less underdeveloped.

Having watched the first two parts of the Curse of Fenric on the Horror Channel I wasn't really that impressed (and this and Remembrance are supposed to by the high points of the Seventh Doctor). It felt lightweight scriptwise and the acting lacked conviction. It had a CBBC feel to it. And sorry although as much as I like Sly and Sophie they were poor actors but they were not helped by poor writing and cheap production

I agree with a lot of this.

Obviously I'd had preferred Colin Baker to stay on but we've had that discussion in the other thread.

However, as said above, I'd have let JNT leave as he wanted and get an entirely New Production team in for Season 24 and totally redo it with 4 completely different stories. I'd also have let Bonnie Langford go straight away. She didn't have a proper introductory story so it would have been in keeping with the character to not give her a proper departing story either.

Saying about a complete rewrite for Season 24, I think I would have kept Edward Peel as Kane from Dragonfire and just write a better story around him. Thought he was a very effective villain and with better scripts could have been even better.

So yes, I'd have had Ace from the start and once The Doctor had overcome his usual regeneration trauma, I'd have him becoming the Dark Doctor almost from the off. And that's all I would change about him. I think McCoy was never the problem in his era it was the stories he was given. Never had a problem with Ace either so I think having them both together from the off would be ideal.

Aside from that I'd get rid of all the silliness and outlandishness in stories like The Happiness Patrol (and the Kandyman certainly wouldn't look like Bertie Bassett) and give them some dignity and upgrade them to more traditional stories in keeping with the show's history.

I'd make the Seasons slightly longer so we could have all four-parters, get the theme music back to where it was and have The Master back earlier than he did so Anthony Ainley could continue his positive revival of the character.

Curse of fenric ranks as one of my all time favourite stories. That said, it has been a while since i watched it. I have recorded the first 2 parts of todays story so i will pass judgement afterwards. I have a feeling though rozes in fairness to you that your comment regarding CBBC kind of acting could be a correct one. But i will pass judgement later.

I was 27 by the time this era started - and I probably was most embarrassed by this time admitting that I still watched it! Atrocious cheap tat!! Well - not ALL of it, I found Delta quite good fun and Remembrance! was a good adventure.
I didn't like the OB set-up........I preferred when they used film for locations. Video-tape looked so cheap. At least on film, even the crappiest of stories could look more convincing!
Nothing against McCoy personally, but this was the last straw in my book. I was sadly relieved when it was 'rested'.

I know. But if you hit on a catchphrase, ya gotta stick with it...

I think they are incredibly over-rated. I cannot actually bring myself to watch them again, personally, so I'm pretty glad I never bought the DVDs.

No JNT - he should have been replaced

No Keff McCulloch theme music or incidental music

No winking

Not scheduled against Coronation Street

No Bonnie Langford

No Ridiculous Bertie Bassett look-alike monsters

No casting Nicholas Parsons or Richard Briers

No ridiculously stupid cliffhanger endings that make absolutely no sense.

More special weapons Dalek!

More Stories featuring the Master

The whole scene with the 1963 continuity announcer from Remembrance of the Daleks would have been edited out

Like Colin Baker, I think Sylvester McCoy suffered from poor writing and a show that was trying to be light hearted and less violent.

It's good to see others with a similar view. Curse of Fendric, Remembrance of the Daleks, Survival and GhostLight are suppose to be a return to form. But Ghostlight aside (I haven't seen it yet so can't comment), for some of us at least, they simply don't come close to the height of the classic era across the first 5 Doctors as measured against the best of their stories.

There's just so much wrong with the 7th Doctor's era I don't know where to begin. To me it really had become one big joke. If I was Nicholas Courtney back in 1988/89 I would have to really question the merit of coming back to appear as he did in Battlefield after what had just gone on television across the first 2 seasons.

I think I mentioned this a few weeks ago but worth mentioning again.

I think with most people(can't speak for everyone, only by what I've read) the improvement in Seasons 25 and 26 is really in comparison against the earlier part of the Era, which most people agree was dire.

I don't think many people would claim Season 26 is up there with the best of the Classic Era, just that it had improved a lot from the start of the McCoy Era and those stories you mentioned are for me the best stories in this period.