DOCTOR WHO: SEASON-BY-SEASON - SEASON FOUR

Well, it had to happen. Any sci fi TV show worth its salt will, eventually, do this. Particularly if it's always trying to progress and move forward. Or explore new ideas and experiment with its own format. But I still didn't think it would happen quite this soon. 

After only three years, we get our first bad season of Doctor Who. 

You can, sort of, see it coming. Things are getting a little bit worse with every new season. It's almost like the show needed to hit a bottom before it would pick itself up by its bootstraps and get its ass back in gear. Unfortunately, the production team doesn't learn their lesson before giving us a season that is, for the most part, below standard. But that's often the way it goes with hitting bottom. There needs to be, at least, a bit of public humiliation before you regain composure. 

THE BEGINNING   

Like Season Three, things start off on a bit of a whimper. Of all the Historicals made in the 60s, I would say The Smugglers was the weakest (at least, from what I was able to piece together of it from the novelisation and suchlike). It's still not an absolutely terrible story. But it is a bit lacklustre. Which makes it stand out all-the-more since most Historicals were so above-par during this period. 

After doing cowboys last season, Production decides to do another historical figure often loved by the legions of young boys that would now be watching the show. This time, they went for pirates. The story wasn't as ill-received as The Gunfighters was when it first came out. But Gunfighters is still intact so that we are able to re-evaluate it. The best memory Smugglers seems to inspire was that it was somewhat mediocre.  

THIS SEASON'S CENTERPIECE 

Like Dalek Masterplan in the previous year, this season also possesses a series of episodes that really stand out from the rest. That draw way more attention to themselves than anything else the season has to offer. It's not one long story, this time, though. But, rather, two stories that would mark the most significant change the show would ever undergo. 

For the first time, the Doctor regenerates. 

Some fans do actually complain about The Tenth Planet. They feel the First Doctor should have been more active in his final story. That he should have been given some sort of valiant final battle that would have defeated the Cybermen and saved the world. And then, on that Note of Glory, he transforms into Patrick Troughton. 

Tenth Planet, instead, emphasises the Doctor's frailty as he reaches the end of his first life. So much so, that he spends an entire episode unconscious while Ben and Polly get up to all sorts of business without him. Personally, this works just as well for me. In fact, I wish more Doctors were written out this way. It gets particularly tiresome in New Who when almost every Doctor seems to have to end on some sort of epic world-threatening and/or universe-threatening crescendo (thank-you, Mister Moffat, for deciding to finally write a simpler tale for Capaldi's demise). I think it's perfectly acceptable to turn him into a more vulnerable character as he reaches the conclusion of an incarnation. As long, of course, as he doesn't become an annoyingly angsty emo-kid like Tennant's Doctor did!

The Cybermen are also quite awesome in this story. The suits are extremely clunky and would look much better in later models. But the Mondasians' ridiculously ruthless logic is as eerie as their otherworldly voices (and the way their hands are still organic - so creepy!). I love how their emotionless state turns them into ironic-sounding philosophers. When Polly, for instance, wants to rescue the astronauts from dying because she cares about them, it's great the way the Cyberman points out: "There are people dying all over your world all the time. You do not care about them!" I love the interpretation that is given of them in this tale. No other recurring foe gets as good of an introductory story as these guys do (okay, maybe the Weeping Angels tie them!).    

The fact that the Daleks get equally-good treatment in the next story really makes the whole difficult transition the audience had to go through feel as smooth as possible. Power of the Daleks, as far as I'm concerned, is the best Dalek Story of the 60s. In so many other tales that feature them, the Daleks rely more on raw power to achieve their goals. They are domineering to the point where they will actually blunder their way through things from time-to-time (ie: a Dalek trying to menace a mannequin in Dalek Invasion of Earth), 

In Power, they are genuinely cunning. Biding their time by appearing friendly to the humans until they can increase their numbers and overrun them. It's really the first time that we see them using such tactics. And it's utterly terrifying. As Lesterson has his mental collapse in the latter episodes, we're almost tempted to join him. The Daleks are represented in a whole new way, here. And it really is quite chilling. 

Troughton, meanwhile, takes the bull by the horns as he asserts a whole new identity for the Doctor. In doing so, he gets the audience to accept him as quickly as possible so we can actually get to all that good stuff with the Daleks. But there's some fun to be had as Ben and Polly both question if this man is still actually the Doctor. And I love that the Doctor, himself, plays upon those doubts.  Even talking about himself in the Third Person during the first few moments of his creation. It was a very bold tact for the production team to take but it worked quite well.  

ONE LAST BIT OF QUALITY BEFORE THE DIP TRULY BEGINS

As fans, we should be quite happy that the First Doctor's last story and Second Doctor's first story are of decent quality. Changing the lead in a show is always a risky venture. But because both stories really are quite good, saying goodbye to Hartnell and hello to Troughton becomes an easier process. Bringing a well-loved recurring foe like the Daleks back for Two's first adventure also helps a lot with the transition. The fact that the Daleks already recognize this incarnation as being the Doctor was another nice technique to help us to accept him. 

This is a pretty solid regeneration. There are better ones, of course (as my Ranking the Regenerations entry would show: https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-book-of-lists-ranking-regenarations.html) but the stories are strong enough to keep the show alive during a difficult time. The Centerpiece of Season Four is as enjoyable as the one in Three. 

Fortunately, the standards continue just a little bit longer. Once more, I can only base my opinion on what still remains of a lost story - but what I have seen of The Highlanders looks quite good.  It is a bit strange that Jamie becomes a companion at the end as he is featured only so much in the plot. But I am, nonetheless, very thankful that he comes aboard the TARDIS. He would still get pushed aside a lot while Ben and Polly were around. But, once things shift to a two-companion dynamic, Jamie becomes one of the greatest companions the show ever had. 

Troughton is great fun to watch in this one. While he does seem a little over-the-top with some of his more comedic moments in Power of the Daleks, he tends to get the tone right, here. Even when he's actually pretending to be a woman! His assortment of silly disguises throughout the tale is an utter delight. Particularly as we reach the end of the story and one of his disguises is really put to good use. He's also just having a great time with being quirky and unpredictable. The sudden power-nap he takes in the middle of the adventure is another fun moment. 

Of course, the actual plot involving the Highlanders and Redcoats is decent enough. Things even take a particularly-interesting dark turn as the story starts focusing more on the slavery that was going on at the time. It is nice when these stories are willing to show less-romanticised versions of our past.   

The Highlanders would be the last "true" Historical for Doctor Who for quite some time. Thanks to the quality of the production, this whole type of story finishes off on a very high note. 

AND NOW THINGS REALLY GO TO CRAP - PART ONE: THE ABSOLUTE WORST

You may actually be starting to wonder why I refer to this season as being "bad". Sure, the first story was a bit on the forgettable side, but the next three seem quite solid. The season is going pretty good, so far. What's the problem?!

Well, from this point onward, things go seriously downhill. There are some high points here and there in certain episodes. But, for the most part, we're dealing with some very substandard content. 

And it starts with the next story. The Underwater Menace just might be the only Doctor Who tale from the 60s that I'm glad is still partially missing. The two episodes that do exist are pretty difficult to watch. Particularly Episode Three. That one is a legitimate embarrassment. And I mean that quite literally. 

I remember when I bought the Lost Stories DVD boxset. My older sister had taken an interest in New Who and wanted to see some older episodes. She happened to be over when I brought the set home so I just popped in the first Patrick Troughton disc. I felt she would probably like him better than Hartnell. The first episode on that disc just happened to be Part Three of Underwater Menace. I had heard legends of how awful it was but had only seen snippets of it. As we started to watch, I realized I couldn't put my poor sister through more than a few minutes of it. She just sat in front of the TV, aghast. Finally she had to say: "Is all Old Doctor Who like this?!" 

I tried to assure her it wasn't. But it was too late. She decided she would just stick to New Who! 

Underwater Menace is, in my opinion, the very first Doctor Who story that is genuinely bad. There had been stories that came before it that were problematic, in places. The Chase even comes perilously close to being a total flop.  But there had been enough redeeming qualities to these tales to make them still passable. Nothing spectacular, but watchable. 

Not so with Underwater Menace. It's all just pretty awful. The whole thing looks ridiculous on several levels. The budget appears to be horrifically low. As usual, though, I won't hold that against it. But so many of the outfits that were made for it do appear genuinely comical. Making it legitimately difficult to take anyone in the production all that seriously. It's almost like the costumiers were thinking: "How ridiculous can I make everyone in this story look?!". 

The actual plot is quite ludicrous.  Its various elements all sound like a badly-written Childrens' Panto. The lost city of Atlantis is relying upon someone who is evidently unhinged to restore it to glory. A mad scientist wants to destroy the world just for the sheer bragging rights. Fish People are being exploited by their human tormentors. It's, pretty much, the cheesiest premise a Doctor Who story has ever had. 

But what truly propels this whole thing into complete drivel is the infamous Professor Zaroff. To say the character was performed with camp sensibilities would be too generous. That would insinuate that the actor playing him appeared to have some sort of skill that enabled him to appear kitschy. The truth is: he is just doing some really horrible acting. In the actor's defense, the dialogue for him is so badly written that it's impossible not to perform it horribly. There really is no way to proclaim: "Nothing in ze world can shtop me now!" in a way that doesn't cause some serious cringing! 

Zaroff, himself, is another notorious first for the show. There would be other Doctor Who villains that would get horribly hammed up. Soldeed from Horns of Nimon or Tekker from Timelash. But Zaroff was the original. And - hands down - the worst! 

There are few stories in the show's history that I consider genuinely bad. That I would be happy if they had just never been made. I'd even go so far to say that most fans probably have a bigger list of stories like this than I do (some fans have a list of this nature that is so big that one almost wonders why they call themselves fans!). It takes a lot for me to say that there is really nothing about the story that I like. But Underwater Menace manages to achieve that! 

AND NOW THINGS REALLY GO TO CRAP - PART TWO: MARGINALLY BETTER

With Underwater Menace still leaving a foul odor in the air, we move on to a few stories that really aren't all that much of an improvement. 

The Moonbase isn't quite my least favorite Cybermen story. The Next Doctor and Revenge of the Cybermen are still probably worse. But Moonbase really is only marginally better. Admittedly, it does have some good points. The "Evils in the Universe" monologue the Doctor delivers in Part Two is probably one of the best speeches of the Troughton Era. The new costume for the evil cyborgs is a vast improvement over the old one. There are a few well-executed creepy moments here and there.   

But there are any number of problems with the plot. The biggest one being: why do the Cybermen go to such contrived methods to overcome the Moonbase when they could have, easily, just marched up to it right from the beginning and overtaken it?! On top of that, why do they even really care about the Moonbase? They seem to have a decent enough fleet of ships. Just attack the Earth directly. You'll do the same level of damage that you would with the Gravitron. 

The science is a bit wonky in places, too. How certain holes that are made in the Moonbase's structure get sealed up against the vacuum of space aren't really all that feasible. Some pretty silly sequences, in general, occur, too. How many times, for instance, can a Cyberman change his mind about abducting Jamie?!  

The Cybermen, themselves, are more like those generic intergalactic conquerors we have been seeing over the years (Drahvins, Moroks and Monoids during the latter episodes of The Ark) rather than the creatures of cold logic that we got in their first adventure. In general, this isn't so much of a triumphant return of a great foe as it is a bit of a disappointment. 

Ultimately, the whole thing comes across as a desperate attempt to try to fuel "Cybermania". They  brought the evil cyborgs back as quickly as possible without really caring too hard about the actual quality of the story. Production had found a new monster that seemed to rival the Daleks in popularity and wanted to exploit them for all they worth. If anything, though, the story cheapens their reputation. 

The Macra Terror, on the other hand, is a bit more coherent than The Moonbase. In that sense, it is less of a mess. But the story is so horribly lacklustre. Particularly the ending. Basically, the Doctor just yells at Ben through a door to turn off a few taps and the whole conflict is resolved! There is very little about this story that I find all that particularly engaging. It's so mediocre that I really don't have much to say about it. I can barely give it more than a paragraph in this review! 

Macra Terror holds itself together better than the two tales before it. But, because it's a fairly plain story that followed two pretty bad ones, it maintains the downward spiral the season is now moving in. 

PICKING THINGS UP SLIGHTLY

After three solidly disappointing tales, we really needed to step things up if we were going to finish up the season on a high note. A nice effort gets made in the final two stories - but it's really not enough. And there are still some serious problems with some of the plot mechanics we see going on in the writing.

The Faceless Ones does manage to rise above mediocrity for much of its telling. I would be given to believe this has something to do with Malcolm Hulke being a co-writer of the script. He is able make the Chameleons into something more than just the latest alien baddie out to get humanity (and will continue to do so in future scripts - which is why I believe it's his involvement that contributes so much to the success of the tale). The whole way in which these aliens are trying to steal bodies for themselves isn't too contrived, either. We don't have to suspend our disbelief so much as we did with the Cybermen's attack on the moonbase a few episodes earlier. The Chameleons' method of infiltration does, for the most part, make some degree of sense.  

Overall, the plot works fairly well. Its biggest problem probably lies in the fact that there really isn't quite enough to sustain six episodes. There's a fair amount of just running around the airport to pad things out. Also the Doctor tries multiple times to get some evidence on Chameleon Airlines but they just keep managing to cover their tracks in the nick of time. This recurring plot strand starts getting a bit tiresome. Clearly, it's also there to just add to the run-time rather than actually achieve anything.  

But I would still say this is better than the last three stories we had to sit through. But only marginally. Not enough, at least, to get me excited, again, about where the season is going. I'm still happier to just see the whole thing brought to an end so that everyone can, basically, re-charge and start with a clean slate to make something better next year.  

Unfortunately, there's still one more story to go.   

Evil of the Daleks, for me, feels quite similar to Dalek Invasion of Earth. There seems to be a certain degree of high regard for the tale that I'm not really seeing, myself. There are some nice moments here and there.  Particularly as we get to the Dalek Civil War towards the end (always love me a good Dalek Civil War!). But there's also quite a bit of nonsense going on that works against the story's effectiveness. 

Part One can, literally, be ignored. It's a bunch of Jamie and the Doctor walking around trying to find the TARDIS until we can get to the Cliffhanger at the end. Even though the surprise appearance of a Dalek doesn't really matter since we know from the title that they're going to be involved!   

The tests that get done to determine the Human Factor also seem a bit ridiculous. Getting Jamie to run around in a Victorian Manor in the 1800s seems like a very silly way to create a controlled experiment. There's got to be better ways to run this series of tests. Pretty much any other way, in fact, would have been better! 

Things do improve as we move the setting completely to Skaro. But the story does suffer the same problem that Faceless Ones does. There's a big need for padding. So we get a bit of a runaround before the Doctor's efforts to do anything all that really effective against the Daleks truly flourishes. The Dalek Revolution that he initiates is very cool, I'll be the first to admit. But I do feel it's too little, too late. By the time we reach this moment, I've gotten fairly bored with things. Most of the story comes across as pretty flat. Or even a bit ludicrous, in places. 

It's funny, my first real encounter with this (mainly) lost story was its novelisation. After reading it, I really thought it was the Classic that everyone labeled it it to be. Only as I watched the reconstructions and the one existing episode did I realise just how much John Peel had cleaned the whole thing up!  

 

 ACTUALLY TALLYING HOW BAD THE SEASON IS

Since I am claiming this is the first bad season of Doctor Who, I thought I would actually try to do some solid math to support my viewpoint. 

The season begins on a very mediocre note. There's nothing all that particularly engaging about The Smugglers. You just, sort of, sit through it as you hope for something better to come along once the TARDIS takes off again at the end of Episode Four. 

The same can be said for Macra Terror. But it's lack of entertainment value feels compounded because we've sat through two very problematic stories just before it.

Ultimately, however, that's 8 episodes of fairly flat and uninteresting content. 

Then we get to The Moonbase and Evil of the Daleks. Two stories that are quite messy and seem to rely more heavily on the excitement a return appearance of a popular monster generates rather than actually creating a coherent narrative. Both of these adventures are, I feel, very low in quality. 

So that's 11 more episodes that are probably just a bit below mediocre. Not completely awful. But not all that great, either. Bringing my negative experiences with this season up to a total of 19 episodes, thus far.

Then there's the legitimate atrocity that is Underwater Menace. Fortunately, it's only 4 episodes. But it should almost get a double-point value! Still, we'll bring our tally of unimpressive episodes up to 23. 

The Faceless Ones does do a bit better than all the other stuff I've been covering, thus far, in the tally. But it is still troubled by padding issues. Which makes it feel a tad disappointing. And, just like Macra Terror, we are becoming desperate for a vast improvement over what we've been getting during the latter half of the season. Because it doesn't rise as well to the occasion as it needed to, we have to put these 6 episodes on "the bad pile". Which now brings the negative score up to 29. 

Then, of course, we do get some actually solidly-put-together adventures in the early section of the season. Tenth Planet, Power of the Daleks and Highlanders can all be considered "good". Which brings us to 14 episodes of decent enough quality that we do feel a genuine lift in the season. Particularly since all three stories are back-to-back. 

In total, we have 43 episodes to this season. Only 14 of them really are much of anything to brag about. The rest of it veers from mediocre to downright terrible. That amounts to only about a third of the season really being worth watching. The rest is largely disappointing. 

We can't say that Season Four is completely bad. But then, there are "great" seasons of Doctor Who that still have problems, too. To me, it's all a game of percentages. And there is just too much content in this season that is pretty unwatchable. Thus ruining the overall entertainment value of the experience. Season Four suffers from just too many poor choices made in its crafting. The show is definitely at a low point, here. 

Fortunately, something vastly superior is just around the corner....