Just watched this again last night. Very underrated in my opinion. Conveys a good message about freedom of choice, about good & bad being inseparable, running to one extreme leading to another, & no amount of changing the outer world solving problems inside yourself. The Candyman is a great character, as well.

Anyone else agree, or not?

If you can live with the fact the baddie is a one note Margaret Thatcher impression, yeah, I like Happiness Patrol.

(I should say series 25 is the first one I have clear memories of the original broadcast of, so I could well be biased, but the hell with it, it's great. )

EDIT: Sorry, for some reason I thought this topic was about 'Delta and the Bannermen' ... so all of the following is totally irrelevant discussion of that serial. I thought I'd leave it rather than have a post simply reading 'Edited: please ignore'.

So, my thoughts on 'DELTA AND THE BANNERMEN' (not 'The Happiness Patrol', which I actually do regard as being one of the very worst Doctor who serials):


I do feel it succeeds very well on its own terms. The contentious element is whether its the kind of serial that should be commissioned for Doctor who. I have a broad tolerance in that regard (I like Love and Monsters for instance) but even I watch it and am somewhat unconvinced it was appropriate.

It's cartoonish. Deliberately. And the production captures that really well. The Bannermen design is sublime. As long as you can get past 'Doctor Who shouldn't be like this' it really is a damn good set of scripts too. Technically they're hard to fault and they have a fair amount of knowing wit.

Unfortunately, it's gone down as a misstep because it wasn't accepted tonally or stylistically by fandom. And although I am an ogre towards perceived wisdom and narrow-minded fans I can have some sympathy for fandom in this case. Particularly as it happened to hit at a time when fandom was very sensitive to the accusation that Doctor Who was a foolish pantomime. I can understand why there would be a backlash.

This many years on however... I give the serial it's due for being well conceived and very well realized and quite a bold story from a new script editor (Andrew Cartmel) who really didn't want to play safe in his attempts to revive the show. And when you do that you find it's actually an entertaining series of episodes.

Happiness and Delta both treasured dearly in the Chuff household.

"Have a nice death!"

I watched Delta for the first time yday but couldn't get in to it at all. Perhaps because the little kandis were running riot, I will give it another go at some point.
I watched The Happiness Patrol this morning and loved it. I actually enjoy all the Ace stories!

I don't remember what happened in the story but I do remember being very scared by the Candyman as a child and thinking it was an amazing monster. Now I look back at the clips, he doesn't look half as scary. But I do think it's a good concept for a baddie, to have something that is supposed to be "friendly" and making it sinister. That's why clowns are creepy, because of the weird painted smiles.

Unsurprisingly, "Greatest Show In The Galaxy" scared the bejeezus out of me. And when I look back at clips of that episode… still terrifying.

I agree about it conveying messages, but I don't think it conveyed them very well. I'm afraid I don't agree that it was very underrated.

I will say that in my opinion Ian Reddington made an amazing villain, but I thought he was wasted on that story. I never found it scary in the least.

I too can remember this on original transmission and I can remember being gutted the dog get killed. I assumed the memory would cheat and bought it thinking I would hate it (I'm a doctor who fan we do that sort of thing.) I love it. I know. I know its the candyman but umm I love him too.

It's bloody awful. It's the nadir of classic Who. The McCoy era was atrocious, but this was scraping the barrel even for those dark times. Having watched the show since the 60s, I recall watching these eps and knowing it was time the show was axed. It was beyond help or hope. What's most telling about it is that the production team clearly believed they were being bold, innovative and cutting edge by making a Thatcher parody. But by then, Thatcher parodies had been done to death and were hopelessly old hat. As a result, the story just lies there and dies there.

Not even Tom Baker or Jon Pertwee at the height of their powers could have saved this one. And McCoy was certainly no Baker or Pertwee.

Almost agree with all of this. The only good thing I can say about The Happiness Patrol is that it's not Paradise Towers.

The first time I ever saw any doctor who,was a bit of this. My. Brothers were watching....

Sylvester McCoy being restrained by, what look to me at the time, a evil bertie Bassett.

It left quite an impression on me.

It's quite a sharp story, let down. By shoddy production values.

Love the doctors armed stand-off, 'you like guns, don't you'.

Well it certainly isn't dull and unmemorable as it's cropped up as a talking point a few times. I think it's great fun, personally, however flawed the production. I'd say the same about Delta. And Greatest Show...is a personal favourite of Eighties Who.

To be fair, Candyman seems like a pretty credible villain when you compare him with Peter Kay's "Abzorbaloff". Not to mention stuff like the Adipose, Empress of the Racnoss, or the Professor Lazarus monster. IMHO Candyman has one up on many monsters simply due to the fact that he was a real actor in a costume and not some fake-looking CGI.

It was excellent and McCoy is the best Doctor to me and I loved his era, at the time I never thought the story was political
It's a sad and haunting episode

I know what you mean. After all, it's the McCoy era. They're all duds and there not one I'd endure ever again. That said, I recall Richard Briers' performance in Paradise Towers was so blindingly awful that it almost had a surreal effect. Like a car-crash in slow motion. You know you shouldn't watch, but you can't take your eyes off something so hideous.

The Happiness Patrol has no such redeeming feature for me (if you can call Richard Briers that). All I recall is witnessing the show I'd loved for so many years dying a lingering, ignominious death. Had it been a sickly dog, it would have been put out of its (and our) misery after the Trial Of A Time Lord. But no, they kept trying to animate the corpse to grind on remorselessly for three more years. There was just a moment when I thought there was a glimmer of hope with that Dalek thing. But no, the whole sorry enterprise crashed back down again to become an insulting, pantomimic caricature of what had once been great.

I've always had a bit of a soft spot for The Happiness Patrol. As a story it holds together well, it's a good character piece for Sylvester. I recorded it off the telly when it first went out (it’s probably are still at my parent’s) so have watched it many time since then (I also bought the DVD).

Seventh is the best and the Bbc was sabotaging Dr Who and wanted it cancelled
Seventh had excellent stories and Ace and an arc

I don't think I've seen this one since it was first on TV but I remember enjoying it.

I certainly remember thinking at the time what a massive change in direction the show was taking.

I don't think the show ever got to be quite as clever and surreal as Hitchhiker's, but it was fun and weird. I think a lot of that casual weirdness is evident in new Who.

In fact its strange to say but whilst there is no way Peter Davison's 5th Doctor would ever have been handed an adventure like this, I could well imagine Peter Capaldi facing off against the Candyman.

I've heard it described as a satire on Thatcherism. Really? Just because the dictator is female, & Thatcher was around then? What was being portrayed was a dictatorship in which people could be jailed or executed for having the wrong attitudes, not a society in which unions were being emasculated and an extreme anti-inflationary policy pursued.

This thread sparked my interest so I actually bought this on iTunes and just watched it again.

I was pleasantly surprised all in all.

Some very dodgy special effects (that wolf thing was terrible!) and its a shame that the sets looked so fake. I didn't believe for a moment these were the darkened streets of a sprawling city!

But Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred were quite bearable in this one (they're not my favourite actors) and the overall idea and delivery was actually pretty good I think.

The Candy Man definitely needs to come back in New Who!

Oh yes!

It could happen because the basis of his physique was a robotic metal skeleton over which a body built of sugary hard confection had been constructed. It could happen because, if you recall, he ended up with his body melted by a stream of his own hot confection, while trying to make an escape in the pipe he used to deliver the molten sugary liquid he drowned execution victims with. His skeleton ended up being deposited down a chute, seemingly incapable of motion after being immersed in the hot liquid. It was implied there might be some sort of real brain inside this framework, which seemed borne out by how emotional he was. His framework was still in one piece, so, if one assumes his circuitry alone was damaged & it could be repaired, & the brain inside revived, he could come back. He could have a more major part, this time, as he was basically a cameo character before. It is definitely something I would like to see.

It was aimed at parallelingThatcher and people who wrote it etc were anti-Tory