Agree with every word!

Season 2 is the weakest of Tennant's era IMO, but is still MILES above the whole of the Smith tenure.

Thankfully with Capaldi the show has nearly returned to the heights of the Eccleston/Tennant days.

As if no one's complained about the use of "season" over "series" and moaned that we're not Americans, or made a joke about season 2 having been on in 1964 or something! Where are all the loopy pedants and Ming-Mongs?!

Well, Season 2 was indeed brilliant. Loved The Web Planet, The Time Meddler and The Space Museum. Was sad to see Susan go but had to love Vicki Pallister.

I can get on board here! Love The Rescue. Heroic, funny, vulnerable Doctor. One of my favourite Hartnell performances.

I think The Rescue gets overlooked a lot for its short length and Koquillion's very in-your-face design, but it was a very enjoyable story. Vicki was the first companion to take over from somebody else and unlike Susan she was human, so it was the first we saw such an innocent and naive lead character but it helped make her such a lovable addition. In contrast, Barbara, Ian and the Doctor also had grown into much more confident characters by this point which helped cement their strength.

The Romans was quite fun too, though I didn't quite know what to think of rapey Emperor Nero spending half the story chasing Barbara around his palace.

Season 2 is the best Hartnell Season by far!

The Romans was awesomely funny, The Crusade was awesomely written, The Time Meddler was just plain awesome but The Web Planet was awesomely awful!

I do personally think it was very much about tone, yes. The Idiot's Lantern is an excellent example of that - Maureen Lipman was fantastic as The Wire and as a concept it was delightfully creepy. But in terms of delivery it then played as such an inconsequential romp for Ten and Rose to have a bit of gawking over, and the script left a lot to be desired - "it took my face, my soul!!".

Love & Monsters similarly plays the tone all wrong in the end, which is a shame as I'd concur with others that the episode was actually largely inoffensive and even rather good in places. It proved itself capable of substantial drama as well as laughs, with the superb scenes with Jackie. Camille Coduri gave her finest performance here I feel, and it was a testament to RTD's sublime writing of character. I wasn't lamenting the absence of Rose in this story, this was Jackie's moment and I was enjoying it for that. This was Elton's story and I was enjoying it for that. But then the alien was revealed at the end, and it was played up to laughs in a way that totally mismatched the drama going on. The laughs were awkward and largely non-existent, with Peter Kay quipping that the love interest of the piece tastes like chicken. It wanted to have its cake and eat it, pull at the heartstrings whilst also having you laugh at how preposterous the whole thing was. It was tonally all over the place by the end.

It was a problem found with various stories throughout the series, in small and large doses, right through to its very last scene (I love Donna, but her debut in Doomsday needlessly jars in an emotional conclusion. The show needs to have the confidence to run with sadness, but it so seldom does... that much remains true all the way through to Series 9). And for me, personally, it wasn't able to then fall back on the strength of its lead duo - because even they felt tonally mismatched, a romantic far cry from the more mysterious dynamic from the series before.

Loved it when the Doctor beat up the assassin. Absolutely priceless.

At least he chased Barbara and not Vicki.

Yay! Sanity is restored!!!

Nah if you want to see a decent parting scene between a Doctor and his companion you should watch the last 5 minutes of the Green Death. None of this balling your eyes out like a big girls blouse nonsense, Pertwee's Doc had far too much dignity and class for that sort of thing (he may well have been blubbing as he drove off into the sunset with Bessie but we the audience don't need to see that). Also the viewers are free to read whatever they like into the Doctor and Jo's relationship without being hit over the head by a hammer with it. Personally I would always go for understated. It probably helps if you watch a few more episodes with Jo and the Doctor as well to understand their dynamic. In fact I would recommend watching the whole of the Green Death. The effects are laughable of course, and at 6 episodes it tends to plod along but the plot feels like it could have been written yesterday, quite remarkable for something which was written over 40 years ago.

Also special mentions to Susan, Tegan and Mels departures too. The premise of most classic series companions is quite ludicrous of course, with them usually behaving completely out of of character or falling in love at the drop of a hat to suddenly up and leave but that was part of the charm of the classic series, and at least their final scenes were nicely done

No characters off the top of my head left suddenly and "out of character', couple come close like Leela, but not even her. Susan fell in love, The Doctor didn't let her leave with him, Ian and Barbara always wanted to leave if they arrived at there own time. Like Ben and Polly, Dodo. Victoria's heart was never in it to begin with, she was dealing with her father's death, Jamie and Zoe got there memories wiped. Tegan couldn't go on anymore because of all the death and destruction, which becomes increasingly evident after Adric's death, same can be said for Nyssa. Etc etc etc

I would disagree about Leela slightly. I would suggest her falling in love was totally out of character as she was a savage warrior. You look at the scene in Underworld were she gets zapped by a ray that makes her all loved up for a few minutes The Doctor points out that it isn't her at all.

Dodo's departure was for me quite sudden as there was no goodbye scene, she was just written out via exposition from other characters. She just walked out of a scene never to be seen again. I didn't like the character but still feel she deserved better.

Jo's exit is easily one of the most heartbreaking in terms of execution. It didn't feel the need to force it down your throat that you were supposed to be sad, like Doomsday, it was just a simple and quiet ending, which made it all the more effective. IMO, the Third Doctor and Jo were just a much better pairing too, having such a solid bond without resorting to the cheapness of a love plot.

Tegan's exit never gelled with me, though. She said she was leaving the TARDIS because it had "stopped being fun" but I never got the impression she had ever had fun travelling, when she was always moaning about it and wanting to get beck teh the Tairdis.

Okay i can agree about Leela, i haven't watched Dodo's time for a while now, so i could be wrong. But i never got the impression she was part of the TARDIS forever crew, she entered the TARDIS by accident, and i assume like Ian and Barbara, would stay on Earth if she ever got there in the right time.

Yes, I probably did exaggerate a little when I said most of the classic companions suddenly left for out of character reasons as I was thinking mainly of the four examples that I gave when I wrote that. I guess the great love affairs of Susan, Jo and Leela played out better over the course of several weeks but when watched back to back it sure does seem that they make life changing decisions rather quickly, especially with Leela who barely shared half a scene with Andred. I don't really buy Teegan suddenly having enough of the violence either as there was no build up to it and as for Mel deciding to stay behind with Glitz, well I think most people were just so glad to be rid of Mel that they didn't really care what the reason was but it does seem like rather a strange choice for her to have made. But like I say although the reasons for their departures were sometimes a bit whacky they all did have very nice final scenes.

I agree, I love the subtly and ambiguity of it all. This isn't really a direct criticism of series 2 or of RTD as Moffats Who can be the same at times, it's more of a general comment about TV drama these days but I do despair that everything has to be spelled out for the viewers. You don't need to see the Doctor being heartbroken to tell that he is, and that one look that Jo gives the Doctor as she sees him leaving the party and she clutches Jones arm tighter for comfort is worth 1,000 lines of dialogue. It's all done with the looks and the pauses and the silences and it's beautiful in it's simplicity.

Also what was the relationship between the Doctor and Jo? Was there a sexual chemistry between them? Was it paternal? Were they just mates? It's never defined and it doesn't need to be, allowing the viewers to make up their own minds and read what they like into it. I love that sort of thing. It fires up the imagination, it gets the creative juices going and I think it's a shame that so much of that is missing in today's TV.

Yep, scenes like Bad Wolf Bay, Tennant's regeneration, Amy and Rory's exit, all done in a way that's far too "in your face" that it just made my eyes roll (though I did think the latter was well-written). You don't need all the overbearing music and the spelling to make something so emotional, but that's what people want these days.

There was indeed a lot of ambiguity with the Third Doctor and Jo, but I think it's also safe to say the Doctor played a very paternal role to her, almost like he was the crazy uncle and she was the lovable niece, and I find that a far more interesting dynamic than the overdone love story which I personally think crops up far too often in fiction. I think the Doctor makes for a much more enduring character when he's written as a "crazy uncle" rather than boyfriend material, which is what they sometimes seemed to go for with Tennant and Smith.

I have always found the 3rd Doctor/Jo dynamic fascinating. I guess it's open to interpretation how you view them and decide if there really was something else a little extra going on. There are certain scenes in certain stories where they get a little too cosy and The Doctor's reaction to her departure and the way he jealously acts when Professor Jones is around in The Green Death is all implied, imo, that there was something of a love interest there. However it was never explicitly stated and that's the beauty of it.


Yes, I agree about Mel but it was Ace that was supposed to go off with Glitz and not Mel before BL decided to leave so that's why that departure sometimes doesn't ring true for me. Even if I didn't know that, it still seems unlikely Mel would ever want to go with Glitz anywhere!


Yeah, I see where you're going on that point. I think Ian and Barbara for me made better companions for the First Doctor than Dodo, they had more stories as well. I never thought Dodo had enough time in the show to cement her character where as Ian and Barbara had the best part of two Seasons to do that. I think if those two had been written out the way Dodo had it would have been an extremely disappointing end to their time on the show!

The Leela exit would have made more sense if she'd fallen for one of the non-Timelord Gallifreyans from outside the citadel (I forget what they were called: shaboygans?). After all, such a person would be a perfect fit for her: somewhat 'savage' and wild, from an outdoors, survivalist culture but also intelligent, scientific and rational, the traits she was learning from and so admired in the Doctor.

She would fit perfectly into that culture. If they had done that and, you know, given them scenes together interacting, then I would think it credible. It would also pay off her 'journey' nicely. This seems almost so obvious that it's apparent that this serial was written by the producer (Graham Williams), with his script editor (Anthony Read), rather than than a proper, professional writer who WOULD have realized this. Just goes to show: producers shouldn't write, because they approach a plot with the same kind of thought process and mentality with which they approach a filming schedule: prioritizing ease and efficiency and getting it in the can.

I agree but don't see the need for her to have fallen in love at all, she could have decided she wanted to live in Outer Gallifrey as that was her natural habitat. That would have been a more believable departure for her.

Sure. I just meant to say that the love angle could have worked better with more thought (or indeed any thought :P) put into it.

But yes, simply deciding she wanted to live that lifestyle with the Shaboygans(?) would have been perfectly adequate without a man having to be at the centre of it.

Totally agree it would have made more sense if she'd fallen for one of the Shobogans, not just for her character but in the context of the story.

Big Finish's Gallifrey spin-off did play off it well though, with Leela being sort of half-integrated into Time Lord society despite being the polar opppsite of them.

Yes I would agree, I really liked series 2. Not my favourite since Dr Who returned, that would probably be series 4, but still excellent.