Well, I don't recall them actually showing it. But just think about it, though. The Doctor clearly hasn't formed a liaison, either with his companions or anyone, and he doesn't have one-night stands. Yet he's travelling about everywhere with attractive young women (or in Mel or Ace's case, people with obvious female characteristics, at least). Presumably he's going to develop feelings, and feel the need to relieve them in some way; solitarily, if not possible otherwise.

Oh, sorry-you said WINKING!

Snort. I'm really glad I wasn't drinking any liquids or I might have damaged my computer

I wouldn't have said there was much improvement, especially given that I consider The Happiness Patrol, Silver Nemesis, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (with the exception of the Chief Clown) and Battlefield to be every bit as putrid as anything in Season 24. The other stories in Seasons 25 and 26 might indeed be the best of the McCoy era, but in my opinion that's not saying very much.

IMO there was improvement. I feel much more comfortable watching Season 26 than the two previous Seasons( Dalek and Cyberman story aside) as they didn't contain the awful outlandishness and sillyness of the previous two years.

I guess it's a matter of opinion whether people think there was an actual improvement but in that sense I think there was. As I said, still not the Doctor Who as it was even then but it least it was enjoyable in some aspects at this point.

Well, I'm not surprised that this era is getting a bit of a kicking (again) and fair enough, it's all obviously subjective, but really cannot agree with The Greatest Show...being "putrid." Personally find it surreal, thoughtful, interesting concepts and very well directed. Probably my favourite performance by McCoy in the role too. Then again, I also am quite fond of The Happiness Patrol so there we go...

Admittedly, there is a lot that could've been improved in this era. More care, more money, more focus...but I have a soft spot for McCoy's Doctor and at least the programme was trying to move away from the continuity-fest and cynicism of certain Saward-era stories.

Well, I tried. On with the kicking.

Ok!!

Actually I can't be bothered. I despise this era, For me Doctor Who died upon the first cancellation, so always stop on a rewatch at Revelation of the Daleks.

No redeeming features at all. I was glad when it was cancelled.

Fair enough!

Personally, it still gives me more enjoyment on rewatching than Colin's era. (Like Colin himself, mind, as I said in his thread.)

But compared to the eras of William or Tom or Peter D, etc. No, it's not in the same ballpark. But still enjoy Delta, Remembrance, Happiness, Greatest Show, Ghostlight, Fenric and Survival myself.

Surreal, thoughtful, interesting concepts and very well directed.. yes, fair enough, but I still think that in spite of all that it pulled off the remarkable feat of not being very good. But as I said, I did like the Chief Clown.

I wasn't glad but I wasn't surprised either, given a continual nagging feeling that what I was watching was third rate, amateurish and basically not good enough to survive.

Definitely modelled on the MC from Cabaret.

Just watching Remembrance now on the Horror Channel and some of the acting is cringe worthy. The Daleks wobbling around the streets are hilarious. Who really was poor post 1985 cancellation

I think it's very good. Bellboy's suicide is a truly chilling moment and when I saw the story originally, as soon as I saw the opening shots, including hearse-driving clowns, thought "Now then....this is interesting." The whole Sixties idealism v Eighties empty consumerism resonated with me at the time. Still, Ian Reddington's performance seems generally highly regarded, which is well deserved IMO.

Right. Will now stop banging on about that particular story.

Though I would agree it was never as good after Season 22, I would disagree it had no redeeming features at all.

For me, it was the overall stuff that seemed to work better and these are what I consider to be redeeming features:

The Sixth Doctor's improved persona in Season 23 and his (short-lived) improved friendship with Peri.

The Valeyard, a truly brilliant villain worthy of The Master.

The Seventh Doctor/Ace relationship, I loved the whole Professor thing and the quirky friendship the pair of them had.

Anthony Ainley-An improved and better Master, not a sign of panto anywhere in Survival. As said in my last post, shame he didn't come back earlier.

And imo, McCoy himself was a good Doctor, he just had a lot of crap stories to contend with.

Most stories also have one redeeming feature. It was stretching it to the limit to find one in Season 24 but for me it was mainly McCoy himself, especially in stories like Paradise Towers.

Hmm.. okay there was a wobbling Dalek in Remembrance of the Daleks, but I think it is a good Dalek story. There is mystery, some decent Dalek scenes and battle scenes considering the budget around at the time. Ahem, at least they stretched to a Dalek ascending some stairs .
There is some mush after the hiatus, but there is more than enough for me to watch a fair bit of it. The trial series while not a great series by any means has some good moments, agree that the Valeyard is a superb villain in concept and execution.
Moving on Season 26 is a quality season, with character development, decent science fiction ideas and pace in the scripts. Other eras I would agree are better of course but for it to contain nothing of note I would disagree with.

As I said a few weeks ago in a similar thread, I think that everyone involved in this era had Good Intentions.

They were all clearly trying to bring the show back to form, with some actually quite good scripts (considering that none of them were TV writers really, just people that Cartmel had met on courses etc.) and a very noble attempt to make the show less... "angry" (for want of a better word) than it had been during the insipid Saward era. And Cartmel clearly wanted to forge a new mythos for the show rather than simply look back at the show's past in a mastabatory fashion like previous eras had become more and more inclined to do.

Also, I've found it very interesting to discover that Cartmel was perhaps the most adept of the script editors at "reigning in" JNT and putting a stop to his stupid ideas (never knew until this month's DWM that JNT was pushing to have The Greatest Show In The Galaxy set at the Doctor Who exibition... Thank f*** that never happened...)

So while - and I cannot stress this enough - I don't think that the era itself was any good (Rememberance, Fenric and [for personal nostalgia reasons only] parts of Battlefield aside), and while - bless them - I don't think that anyone could argue that Sylv, Sophie and Bonnie were particularly good actors, I actually wouldn't change much about the scripts/creative team at all.

Rather I'd change all of the backstage nonsense. Because while the end product was inarguably bad, I'd really like to have seen the Who that these guys were trying to make.

Well, having said that I'd keep the stories the same, actually I'd completely scrap Time And The Rani. Utterly irrideemable in every way (even the always delightful Kate O'Mara couldn't offer a beacon of hope for this bilge) - that scene where Seven wakes up post-regeneration and does a few dreadful pratfalls... that was when Who got cancelled, really, as I can imaging hundreds of thousands of viewers switching it off in their droves. Everything from that moment on was borrowed time. It should have been a more serious story - the first epiosode of a new era is like a missino statement, and while there's nothing wrong with a bit of the daft, or a touch of the pantomime, sticking Time And The Rani first was the production team saying "This is what we're gonna do this time round" - no wonder the show died after that.

Also, on a perhaps more petty note, I think that Whizz Kid was a dreadful mis-step on the part of the writing team. By this point it must have been painfully obvious that only the hardcore fans were still watching. I can imagine kids being teased at school for being fans of the show (hell, I certainly was), and having to make excuses as to why they still liked Who. Only for the makers of Who to throw in a character that was so openly, smugly mocking the only people who were still watching. I wasn't necessarily offended by it, of course, but I do think the second you start taking the piss out of your core audience - who were, face it, putting some seriously undeserved faith in the show by that time, you've shot yourself in the foot and lost all hope you have of winning fans back. Love & Monsters got away with it because the "mocking" of Who fans was sort of an "inside" job - it was writtin about fans, by fans, for fans - we could see things, recognise them, and while we laughed at them, it was friendly and self-depricating. Whizz Kid just seemed... spiteful, for want of a better word.

But otherwise, I'd keep the scripts the same (even Paradise Towers... though I'd probably change Silver Nemesis up a bit so it wasn't quite as obviously "Rememberance Of The Cybermen") and just... do them right.

What the show needed was for the people at the beeb and in the more mundane backstage jobs to give just half a f*** about the show. It needed somebody to take a look at those godawful opening credits and point out how cheap and tacky they looked. It needed a composer who actually made half an attempt to match the incidental music to the tone of the episodes. It needed casting directors who actually read the scripts before just throwing in any old person who was cheap (to take Paradise Towers as an example again, the Caretakers were all supposed to be the people too fat to go to war, the Kangs were supposed to be kids, Pex was supposed to be Rambo... the second that the entire cast sans the Rezzies became bland generic twenty-and-thirty somethings, the entire point of the script was already lost). The show needed effects supervisors who didn't just think "we'll turn the sky pink in post, that'll make it look alien...) It needed to be shot on film rather than looking like it was shot by a bunch of fans on their weekends. It needed a good time slot. It needed the Beeb to actually tell viewers that it was back on the air each season. It needed at least a pretense of a budget.

It needed people to actually care.

If it had been produced better, with a better budget, better guest actors, better effects (note I'm not saying that it needed modern effects, just things that put it on a par with other shows from that era), a better timeslot and better promotion, then who knows - those three seasons may still have turned out to be a bit crap.

But at least the show would have gone down fighting.

Whilst you'll see up thread that I'm more positive about the era, I think that's a v good post with a lot of good points, Batmannequin. Concede the point about Whizzkid, even though I like the story. Was the character down to JNT, Cartmel, or was Steven Wyatt still smarting from fandom's reaction to Paradise Towers, I wonder? Still, went out on JNT's watch. It was what Doctor Who seldom is....mean-spirited.

Thank you. To be honest, I find the seventh Doctor's era to be the one that I can talk about at most length for some reason - while (as you can no doubt tell) I don't like it, unlike other eras that I dislike (again, looking at you, Saward), there is a definite sense of at least trying to do something special, even if (IMO at least) it doesn't really work. More than any other era of the show, it's one that I really want to like, at least.

And you've summed up my thoughts on Whizz Kid perfectly - "mean-spirited" is exactly the way I feel about the character.

Actually the whole toning down of the continuity was another redeeming feature I'd like to add to my above post.

I love a bit of continuity but even I have to admit it got out of hand especially during the Sixth Doctor's Era and it was good it was curtailed back, save for a few stories.

Aside from most stories being crap in Season 24, and that was definitely a huge factor, I wonder if the huge changes and lack of references back to the previous Seasons alienated viewers as well? (Though Time And The Rani did contain a few I admit)

However, regardless of whether that was a factor or not, you could say at least the vast majority of McCoy Stories were at least original in their thinking, even if the execution onscreen was crap at times. Not many of them were based on previous stories to create a new one.