DOCTOR WHO: SEASON-BY-SEASON - SEASON TWENTY-TWO

Easily, the most controversial season in the whole history of the show. Lots of things happen in this particular set of stories that upset a lot of people. Debates raged on among fans and even casual viewers about the extreme levels of violence. Or a Doctor who seemed to be acting out of character. Or even just the, overall, quality of the writing. While the term "hot take" had not been coined yet, a lot of them were going around during Twenty-Two!   

For some, there was no controversy.They had just decided that this was a terrible year for Who and couldn't be convinced, otherwise. They feel the same way about Season Twenty-Two as I do about Seventeen. 

In general, Season Twenty-Two drew a lot of negative attention to itself. It didn't help that, halfway through it, the BBC announced that they were putting the show on hiatus. Which creates the image that the season had gone so badly that the show needed to go off the air for a bit to fix itself. 

For quite a few years afterwards, Twenty-Two seems to leave a bad taste in most peoples' mouths. A lot of folks weren't happy with the direction the show went in that year. General audience, fans and even Executives at the Beeb were displeased. Mind you, it was a bit of a snowball effect. Certain individuals in  influential  positions denounced it and this created preconceptions for the rest of us. As a Canadian waiting for the episodes to make their way overseas, I can remember hearing what was being said about it by British fans and bracing myself for the worst. By the time I could get my eyes on the content, I watched it with a fairly large bias. I was, essentially, expecting the stories to be bad. 

Because of all this, Season Twenty-Two might just be the most turbulent time in the entire history of the show. 

RE-EVALUATION

I was still a very young lad when this set of adventures reached my eyes. I was naive enough to believe that if General Fan Consensus thought something on a matter, they were probably right. Quite a bit of time and reflection would pass before I realised that this particular group of fans were often just a very vocal minority. But I didn't know that, yet. So, as I said in the last section, I expected this latest of batch of tales to be bad. 

I learnt a very valuable lesson during the Colin Baker Era: Quite often, General Fan Consensus was a load of crock! I really liked these stories. Sure, they had flaws (most stories do!). But they were bold and different and loads of fun. Quite a bit of the rest of fandom, however, lacked my positive outlook. Most people seemed to feel that Season Twenty-Two was largely troubled. Not necessarily awful, but heavy with problems. Many seemed to even feel that the show genuinely merited the hiatus and needed  to re-evaluate itself. This would be the general sentiment directed toward this run of stories for many years to come. 

It was not until the show came back on the air in 2005 that feelings on Season Twenty-Two would start to take a strong shift. Fans of New Who that wanted a better idea of where the show came from started diving into the past. Many were warned about Colin's period. To which quite a few responded with: "What are you talking about?! This is good!" You even had people like Wingy Media on YouTube who passionately defends Season Twenty-Two. Praising it for its willingness to be so different. 

After years of practically having to hide my affection for this season, it was nice to finally feel a bit of affirmation. 

THE COMPLAINTS I AGREE WITH....

Before this whole entry turns into some kind of "I was right the whole time" diatribe, let me actually point out several significant recurring flaws that do happen throughout the season. Oddly enough, they're not usually the complaints that I hear when people criticize this period. Nonetheless, they do irritate me quite a bit. 

1. No Longer Giving a Crap About "How They Got Out of It"

This has been a problem for quite some time with the Master, of course. Stories that feature him conclude with the evil Time Lord in a terrible, seemingly inescapable plight. The next time we see him, however, no explanation is given on how he escaped such a horrible fate. 

The one we get in Mark of the Rani feels like a bigger cheat than usual. The last time we saw the man, he was being burnt to a crisp. This one really needed something more than just: "I'm indestructible. The whole universe knows that!" But, alas, no such luck. Credulity gets thrown out the window and we care, even less, about whatever nasty thing will happen to him at the end of this story. The Master will just come back. That's all there is to it. 

Now, if this had just happened with the Master, that would have been bad enough. But something similar happens with Davros in Revelation of the Daleks. We do get a partial explanation of how he survived the events of Resurrection. He made it to his escape pod, after all. Good for him. But he was in the process of dying from the Movellan virus, too. How did he get out of that?!    

Yes, the Doctor didn't actually know the full extent of the Mad Kaled Scientist's suffering. So Davros might not care to give him a complete explanation. But, surely, the writer could have done a bit of "fudging". Make Davros want to brag all-the-more about his brilliance by explaining to his rival that he didn't just escape from an exploding ship. He cured himself of a terrible virus, too. Or something like that

This one is especially bad since both Resurrection and Revelation were written by the same person. I can get why one writer might not want to clean up the mess of another. But there's no excuse for this level of laziness. 

But that's still not enough. The Doctor, himself, is a victim of such negligence during Timelash. It seems especially ridiculous that a story that is running short on time can't be bothered to have a bit of a denouement where the Doctor tells Peri how he survived a direct hit from a Bendalypse Missile. I would have been much happier to get that scene than the completely awful filler that they did squeeze in. 

I get it, of course. In some ways, the explanations are hardly necessary. We just need the Doctor and his various enemies to live to fight another day. Does it really matter how they do it? 

I think it does. And I hate that this season abuses this issue so much. 

2. End-of-Story Supporting Cast Slaughterfests 

I've gone on about these endlessly, of course. So I won't dwell on them too much. 

Once more, we get three stories that resolve themselves by just killing off, pretty much, all of the secondary characters. That's now six stories in the last two seasons that have used this trick. By this point, it's gotten extremely tiresome. 

I'll even admit that, sometimes, you can actually end an adventure in such a manner. Horror of Fang Rock, for example, did exactly this.. But, because it's not surrounded by five other tales that concluded in the same way, we barely notice it. And it actually suits the plot that the lighthouse will be found with no survivors. I also think that, for similar reasons, it's acceptable for Warriors of the Deep to use this device. Everyone lying dead except the Doctor and his companions was meant to make a point about the futility of the Cold War. It worked. But the poignancy of such an ending is ruined by the fact that so many other stories will be executed in a similar fashion over the next little while.  

I actually find myself appreciating Vengeance on Varos, Mark of the Rani and even Timelash a little bit more because they don't just use "everyone dies in the last twelve minutes" to resolve all their conflicts!  

THE COMPLAINTS I CAN'T GET BEHIND 

Okay, I have conceded that Season Twenty-Two is not some perfect work of art that, back in the 80s,  everyone-but-me was wrong about. It had some real flaws. But now, let's look at some common criticisms that were levelled at it that I feel have little or no merit. 

1. It's Too Violent

Kindly note that I underlined the word: "too" for emphasis. By no means am I claiming Season Twenty-Two is not violent. Season Twenty-Two is, in fact, damn violent. This was the whole intent of Production during this year: They wanted to make a very dark and gritty version of Doctor Who. Things were moving in this direction in the previous season. But they were reaching their ultimate depths, here. 

I will go so far as to admit that there were a few occasions were lines came perilously close to being crossed. Oddly enough, the instance that probably bothers me the most was making Lytton's hands so bloody after the Cybermen squeeze them too hard. It just seemed a bit too gory for something like Doctor Who. The other sequence that rankles me a bit is the "Your just desserts!" gag in Two Doctors. Yes, Sixie was fighting for his life and was in a kill-or-be-killed situation. Yes, Shockeye was an incredibly horrible creature who had done all sorts of terrible things over the course of the three episodes. So this fate does look a bit good on him. But the bad pun feels just a tad too callous. I think it might even have something to do with the delivery. As I don't feel that the very similar "You'll forgive if I don't join you!" gag in Vengeance on Varos bothers me in the slightest. Colin gets that moment to work. Whereas Shockeye's mothballing just seems to have the wrong tone. 

I do feel, though, that the violence in this season never truly goes too far. It gets very close during the sequences I mentioned (and a few others), but it never quite crosses the line. 

I would even argue that, although Season Twenty-Two has some highly disturbing content, I still wouldn't consider it the most violent season of Doctor Who. Seasons Thirteen and Fourteen, I feel, earn that title. As much of a crank as Mary Whitehouse was, she actually had a point, sometimes! Lyttons's bloody hands, for instance, are nothing compared to Condo's stomach blowing open in Brain of Morbius. And throwing a Horda at a member of the Sevateem because he slapped Leela is a far worse "Violence trying to be funny when it shouldn't" gag than the murder of Shockeye could ever hope to be. I actually consider throwing a land-based piranha at someone to be the most brutal thing the Doctor has ever done. No, he didn't kill the guy.  But, in many ways, he kinda did worse, More than likely, the poor soul was maimed for life. 

I'd even go so far to say that a lot of the Pertwee stuff was a bit too violent. He wasn't killing anyone with his Venusian Karate but he certainly beat the crap out of a whole lot of people. It wouldn't help that, decades later, we'd see Thirteen also using the same self-defence techniques in a manner that kept the harm to her victims at a bare minimum.  Which rather gives the impression that Three was a bit of a sadistic bastard that liked handing people their asses! 

So there are several seasons that I would find to be far more violent than Twenty-Two. And, during those seasons, things were definitely taken too far.  But Twenty-Two, itself, stays within some pretty healthy boundaries with how it handles the action in its stories. 

2. This is Not a "Proper" Doctor!   

Another big complaint that circulated around this time. It was first spurred on by how the Doctor was portrayed in Twin Dilemma. A lot of fans, I think, hoped that the Time Lord was behaving in such a way only because he was unstable from regeneration. Many were mortified to see he was still being arrogant and largely unpleasant as Attack of the Cybermen started. 

Throughout the entire season, the Doctor is more of an anti-hero than a proper protagonist. Sure, he fights for what's right. But he does it in the rudest of manners. On top of that, he's not strangling Peri anymore, but he's still berating her on a fairly regular basis. 

Many viewers felt that this was all way too uncharacteristic for the Doctor.  His attitude was not in keeping with how other incarnations had acted. 

The great irony to this sentiment is that Colin was staying truer to the core character than most. Essentially, he'd gone all the way back to how the role was fashioned for Hartnell. There are, in fact, several moments where he's doing a perfect impression of the original Doctor (with hands on his lapels and everything!). 

Hartnell's Doctor was very much an anti-hero at the start of his period. He wasn't the easiest individual to get along with, either. Particularly in his treatment of Ian and Barbara.

Just like the First Doctor, the intention right from the start was to move the character out of the anti-hero mold and make him more likeable in later seasons. In much the same way as Thirteen starts off much more happy-go-lucky and gets put under more and more stress as her era progresses. 

It's odd how audiences seem to have a hard time understanding starting points. A realistic character isn't just arrogant or carefree for twenty minutes and then moves into a new range of emotions. They have to spend a while in that state in order to convincingly evolve into a new one. It does almost feel like neither of these Doctors were given a proper chance in their first season. 

Whatever the case, I really don't feel Six was "not the Doctor" during Season Twenty-Two. Some might even say  he was "more the Doctor" than several other incarnations. He brought the character back to its original form and had a similar trajectory built into it that would enable our protagonist to grow over a period of time. 

Sadly, he was never given the chance to take the arc to its ultimate conclusion. And, instead, we are left with carrot juice... 

3,The Writing Was Bad 

This one baffles me.The writing, if anything, is a bit better than usual. The writers were given two substantial challenges this season. And, for the most part, they assailed both of them quite well. 

Firstly, there was the change in episode length. Something that I felt was a very smart decision (ultimately, New Who would agree with the sentiment and give the same run-time to their episodes). 46-minutes gives much more time for the story to "breathe" and feel less like a patchwork of intermittent cliffhangers. But, up until Season Twenty-Two, no one had written a story in this format. No doubt, this made things a bit more difficult for the writers as they had to sort out a new way to pace things. 

Secondly, there's this goal to make Doctor Who more dark and morbid than it's ever been. While doing this, authors still needed to be conscious of where "the line" was and make sure not to fully cross it. This could be a very tricky balancing act that had never been explored so deeply as it was in this year. Yes, the show had pushed the envelope in the past. But never with quite this level of resolve. This would be another strain on the scriptwriters. 

I do feel that, with both of these challenges, the writers succeeded. Sure there were some stumbles here and there. But there are plenty of stories from other seasons that pushed no boundaries and still floundered.  At least, on this occasion, there's an excuse for these errors in judgement. 

I think, if anything, certain people complain about the writing because they were handed something very different from what they had been getting in the past. We humans don't always adjust well to change, Rather than admit that, though, we claim something is "bad". That things are going in the wrong direction so that we can justify returning to our old ways rather than trying to explore something new. 

This, I feel, is the real source for a lot of the complaints about the writing. It really wasn't all that bad at all. Quite good in some places. But it was different from what we'd been getting for the last twenty-one years. And people don't always respond well to change.   

THE DUD 

Having just finished defending the writing on this Season, I'll contradict myself a bit by discussing the one plot that's a bit of a mess. 

Timelash is another one of those stories that makes it into my list of Top Five Guilty Pleasures (https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2016/05/book-of-lists-top-five-guilty-pleasures_11.html). Which means that I do like it but still acknowledge that it's bad. I've already briefly mentioned my two biggest issues with it. 

1) No explanation is given on how the Doctor escaped what he was sure would be certain death at the hands of a Bendalypse Missile 

2) We are forced to endure what is, without-a-doubt, the most blatant piece of padding in the history of the show. I know I've complained a lot about some of the stuff in Frontier in Space, but it still can't touch the Arguing With Peri and then Herbert in the TARDIS scene. I have, on occasion, even just fast-forwarded through it! 

Having said that, however, a lot of the rest of the story is fairly well-constructed. There's a nice piece of timey-whimeyness with a burnt-out android and the Borad is a pretty fun villain. The tacked-on That Was Just a Clone You Killed scene was even okay. A bit of a cop-out, I'll admit. But throwing the Borad down his own Kontron Tunnel made for a more suitable end to the character (even if it contradicts Established Continuity about the Loch Ness Monster!). 

I guess what I'm getting at is that Timelash may be a bit of a clunker. But it's not that much of a clunker. It's almost passable, in fact. But there are just enough problems in it to give it a failing mark. 

Before I move on from Timelash, however, there is one last Great Flaw that bears mentioning: Paul Darrow. I have been able to accept that Classic Who's poor budget affects more than just the special effects. They can't always afford the best actors, either. It doesn't help that sci-fi can actually be very difficult to act in. If you're playing a grocery store clerk, for instance, you can go out and study people who work in that type of job and get a feel for what they're like. A Reptilian Prince from the Sulphur-Rich Planet of Mixquarkios Seven, however, can be a bit more of a stretch for an actor to get his head around! 

But there was no excuse for Paul Darrow. The man had played one of the most amazing characters in science fiction history on Blake's Seven. To come over and crap the bed on Doctor Who with some weird Richard the Third impersonation was an absolute embarrassment to watch. "When do you think that style of acting will come back into fashion, Paul?!"is still the best line from a DVD Commentary ever! 

THE MID-RANGERS

I do think a lot of the middle-of-the-line stuff in this season is actually above-average. Not quite Classics, but still quite strong. 

Attack of the Cybermen sits on slightly shaky ground. It's got a bit of a Resurrection of the Daleks vibe going on in that it is trying to do a little too much at once. Some folks like to point out that depending so heavily on the history of previous Cybermen stories was not a good move. But I actually love that they did this. It probably helps, of course, that I was already a hardcore fan and not a casual viewer. But I still think it's cool that the show consciously built on its own Lore in this way. It's Production's way of saying: "Hey fans. We do actually care about you guys!" 

Mark of the Rani shows a great sense of tonal awareness. Making every story super dark and gritty might have been just a bit too much for an audience to handle. So we are given one story that feels a bit lighter. Even whimsical, in places. And all the in-fighting between the Master, the Rani and the Doctor is great fun to watch. "He'd get dizzy trying to walk in a straight line" and other barbs like it are all quite amusing. 

The Two Doctors is, perhaps, the most curious specimen of them all. Here we have a veteran writer who could have easily said: "I'm God-damned Robert Holmes. I'll write whatever way I want! " And everyone would have allowed that because we're just so happy to get a script from him. But he does make a sincere effort to embrace the themes of the season. He really goes for some gruesome stuff in this tale. Shockeye catching and eating a rat was an extremely memorable visual! 

I should note that, while he is the most wretched of villains, I also absolutely adore Shockeye. John Stratton plays the part with just the perfect level of relish. An extremely twisted version of a bon-vivant who gets great lines like: "I'm not interested in the beliefs of primitives. Only in what they taste like!"

I'm also very impressed by how Holmes presented his vegetarian views. I'll admit, I'm still a merciless carnivore. But reversing the stakes and causing us to be the hapless creature on the plate was a great way to make his point without hitting us over the head with it in the way most vegans do. He does almost make me consider vegetarianism because of it. Unfortunately, I just love the taste of animal flesh too much!    

None of these mid-rangers are perfect, of course. I do agree, for instance, with the idea that there was little or no point in having the Sontarans in Two Doctors. But then, not being perfect is what makes them mid-rangers. And I do feel that a lot of the flaws some of these stories have are blown ridiculously out-of-proportion. Fans are really starting to watch the show under the harshest of microscopes. Picking the stories apart to such an extent that we almost can't call them fans, anymore. They're more like detractors. 

It becomes even more ridiculous that many of the flaws that are being denounced and causing the stories to be "awful" also exist in other stories from the past that have been labelled "Classics" Shouldn't they be considered terrible too?! Fandom is genuinely becoming hypocritical during this period. 

THE CLASSICS 

And then, finally, there are the Classics. Stories that are either perfect or near-perfect enough that the flaws barely matter. 

There are two of them in this Season. That's right, this "terrible" season, as far as I'm concerned, produced two absolutely marvellous tales. This rarely happens on the show. At least by my reckoning. These Reviews have, no doubt, shown you that there are certain stories that most of fandom consider Classics but I'm not of the same opinion.  And, of course, the reverse is sometimes true, too. In fact, this might actually be the case with Season Twenty-Two. You might not like either story that I consider to be a Classic!   

I've said quite a bit about Vengeance on Varos (https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2016/01/book-of-lists-top-ten-who-stories-3.html)  and Revelation of the Daleks (https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2022/12/book-of-lists-top-five-dalek-stories_27.html) in previous entries. So I won't dwell on them too much, here. 

Varos, of course, is my third-favorite Doctor Who story, ever.  I adore it that much. I just find all of it so gripping. For me, it's an absolute masterpiece. Right from the opening shot of Jason Connery being tortured by a spotlight to the final scene of the Varosian couple (one of whom will, eventually, be Clara's Nan) staring, bewildered, at a blank screen. It's all absolutely beautiful. 

Revelation's greatest strength is that it takes everything that Season Twenty-Two is doing and gets it all absolutely right. The grittiness, the gore, the dark tones and the violence are all in perfect proportion. Because this is such a different direction for the show, there were some missteps here and there. But Revelation has ironed out all the kinks. There's even an unusually high survival rate in the End-of-story Supporting Cast Slaughterfest!   

FINAL EVALUATION 

As I reached the end of this season for the first time, I was quite mystified. I'd heard so many terrible things about it, but I didn't see any of it, myself. For the most part, I really enjoyed this year of Doctor Who. If I were to compare it, once more, to the seasons before it that JNT produced. I would say that it's, at least, tied with Season Nineteen. I might even like it a little bit better. 

Like Nineteen, it has two Classics in it. A rare occurrence. But we must also acknowledge the "clunker" (putting the word "time" in the title of the story appears to be a curse!). Which takes away a few points, of course. But those mid-rangers are all so solid. So we can't hate on things too much. I think Twenty-Two triumphs that little bit more because the whole season has such a unique theme to it. It went for something really different throughout the entire season. Nineteen is quite unique, too. But it lacks that predominant vision that Twenty-Two  has. 

So, just for fun, here are how the seasons of JNT are currently ranking: 

Eighteen

Twenty-Two 

Nineteen 

Twenty and Twenty-One (tied).    

Overall, I'm finding all of these seasons to be above-average in quality. This feels more like a Golden Age of Doctor Who than the Hinchcliffe Era. The stories are fresh. The ideas unique. I could never, for instance, see the Fourth Doctor taking on the Mara back in the 70s. The story doesn't contain an entire episode of the Doctor just dealing with traps! It also doesn't have enough captures-and-escapes in it! 

Kinda is the sort of adventure that only JNT had the courage to produce. To me, that speaks volumes about his character. 

Was he a perfect producer? Of course not. He's human and is bound to make mistakes. But he certainly does not deserve the attacks he was starting to get during this period of the show. I believe it was at this time that DWB printed it's notorious issue that had "JNT Must Go!" on the cover. An absolutely atrocious thing for any fanzine to do. I can't even see someone like The National Enquirer running a headline like that. A truly tasteless gesture that makes me embarrassed to be a fan.  

In the same way that JNT doesn't deserve the hate he was getting, Season Twenty-Two also didn't merit the reputation it got. If you can strip away all the politics that toxic fandom was creating at the time, I think you'll find it really is an outstanding season. It's very different from what came before it. Which I can see might make it difficult to accept. But the experimental nature of Doctor Who is one of the traits that I love best about the programme. So I can't help but applaud it. 

No doubt, some of you will probably disagree savagely with what I've written, here. And I'm expecting that. Just like I said at the beginning of this entry - this is the most controversial season of the show, ever. 

It doesn't really matter what opinion I express, I'm going to get some push-back!