DOCTOR WHO: SEASON-BY-SEASON - A REVIEW OF SEASON EIGHT

Warning: 

The next few reviews will be from an era that is greatly loved by most - if not all - fans. 

Except me. 

While I don't completely despise the rest of Jon Pertwee's Era, I'm not all that fond of it, either. Basically, I view it as a bit of a creative low-point for the show. 

These next few reviews may incense some of you to no end. How dare I speak poorly of The Great Jon Pertwee/Barry Letts/Terrance Dicks Era?! Clearly I am a heretic and should be stoned or hung or burnt at the stake. Or a combination of the three with a severe beating or two worked in just for good measure. 

This is why I am posting this warning. So that you may be braced for my heresy. You can take a deep breath before reading any further and focus on remaining calm as I spew my unpopular opinions. 

I know I should be even more responsible and encourage you to just skip the next few entries. That would be the kinder, more responsible thing to do. But the truth is: I like getting a lot of views on these posts. So, instead, I ask you to merely focus on remaining calm as you take in a slew of comments that you will, more-than-likely, savagely disagree with.     

KEEPIN' IT SIMPLE WITH SOME ENUMERATION

In my usual ongoing effort to introduce variety into these reviews, I'm going to simply list all the things that have their beginning in Season Eight that go on to mar my enjoyment of the rest of the Pertwee Era. 

My biggest objection to this period of the show is how formulaic it became. And much of that formula started here: 

1) The UNIT Family has Too Many Tropes: This concept didn't truly begin here, of course. We can even see hints of it that go all the way back to Web of Fear. The problem is that, in Season Eight, the use of UNIT in a story becomes a series of somewhat overused traits. As this Season begins, we now have the Brigadier, Captain Mike Yates and Sergeant Benton firmly established. From this point onward, there will always be certain moments that we see over and over.  Every story, for instance, will involve Yates doing something cheeky, Benton having a spot of bad luck and the Brig having to yell at them both. Of course, every attack that UNIT attempts through sheer military force will prove completely useless. It will always be science that saves the day! And various other recurring ideas of this nature. For me, it starts getting tiresome.quite quickly. UNIT could have been used so much more effectively in this era. But, instead, it just becomes a redundancy. They are just the same plot device continuously used in the same way. 

2) The Master is Always up to the Same Thing: I've brought this up before when I discuss Delgado's Master. Magnificent portrayal, don't get me wrong. The actor excelled at laying the foundations of the character. But the writers really could have come up with some better storylines for him. Pretty much every story involving this incarnation is just the Master meddling with something that he thinks he can control and will give him great power. The Doctor warns him that he's out of his depth. The Master doesn't listen and the powers he's tampering with become his undoing. It happens five times in a row in Season Eight and continues to play out this way almost every time we see the Master in future seasons. 

3) The Return of the Damsel in Distress: I loved Liz Shaw on so many levels. A great companion who really should have stayed on. But then, Caroline John did warn them that she only wanted one season! With the introduction of Jo Grant, the female companion goes back to being largely useless. This will even continue on with Sarah Jane Smith. Ironically, she talks quite a bit about feminism, but does little to actually demonstrate it in her stories. But it starts with Jo Grant in Season Eight. Time and again, she just seems to get into some sort of trouble that the Doctor will need to, constantly, get her out of. 

4) The Brigadier Becomes a Joke: In Season Seven, the Brigadier and the Doctor would butt heads from time-to-time. But, overall, they have a great respect for each other. Lethbridge-Stewart does any number of very helpful things for the Doctor. He even shows genuine friendship for him during scenes that are legitimately touching. One of my favorite examples of this is in Ambassadors of Death where he takes a moment to say bye to the Doctor before the Time Lord heads off into space. 

But all that changes in Season Eight. The production team decides they must absolutely mock the Military Mentality every chance they can get. And they do it by making the Brig look like a total buffoon. We see it for the first time right in Terror of the Autons. The Brigadier is trying to stage a briefing during Episode Three. The Doctor treats the whole moment in a way he never would have in the previous season. He seems to have little or no respect left for the man, now. Things continue to get worse for the character, of course. He's, pretty much, an absolute idiot in The Three Doctors. But the poor treatment of the character from the writers begins here. 

5) Pertwee Starts to Phone it in: Again, we go back to Season Seven as the basis of comparison. As I mentioned in my Review of that period, Pertwee is less certain of himself as an actor. Which means he tries much harder to make the character seem very real in every scene he performs in. Which causes the audience to fall madly in love with Doctor Three. 

But it does almost seem like the success of his first season may have gone to his head. He appears to be putting less effort into the role as we enter Season Eight. Admittedly, there are still times in this year where he is definitely injecting something new and interesting into the role. But, overall, his interpretation of the character becomes far more calculated, To the point where Doctor Three almost feels sedate, at times.  Pertwee is just using a series of reactions that he has employed over and over in earlier stories. He doesn't offer much to expand the interpretation of the character. From Season Eight onwards, he just keeps giving us more of the same.   

Jon Pertwee is still a very gifted actor with incredible amounts of charisma and presence. But it does seem that, after Season Seven, he starts to rely a bit too heavily on those traits and not enough on actually applying himself as an actor by finding new and interesting things to do with his character.

THINGS THAT OCCUR EXCLUSIVELY IN SEASON EIGHT THAT ANNOY ME

Just a little bit more enumeration to engage in. Having discussed negative attributes that began in Season Eight and continued for the rest of the Pertwee Era, I'd also like to point out a few problems that happen exclusively in this set of stories. 

1) An Adventure That Would Have Worked Great Out-of-Context!  Fans seem to have a lot of mixed feelings for Claws of Axos. Most seem to find the story to be a bit of a low point in the season. Whereas I think it's a tightly-written little four-parter. The aliens are quite interesting. The Master is well-used. Guests like Chinn and Filer are quite fun in their supporting parts. There's even some interesting themes at work: The Axons exploit humanity for their greed and the Doctor uses the same trick against them as they seek to gain time travel from him. I even love the fact that this is the first time the show introduces us to the concept of a Time Loop. 

So what bothers people so much about Claws? I think it's the fact that, while it is a well-put-together adventure - it's re-hashing sooo many things we've already seen in the Jon Pertwee Era. Once more, there's an alien invasion in progress on Contemporary Earth (so many attempts to take over the Earth happen in such a short period of time!). Again, we're at a nuclear reactor that might go critical at any moment. We're dealing with another government minister that, for the most part, is just causing problems. There are strongly-dedicated scientists working on important projects. The Master is back yet again. And so on... 

If Claws of Axos had existed in a vacuum, we would appreciate it so much better. But because it's relying so much on conventions the show has already abused so heavily, it receives a lot less appreciation. It's a very strange phenomenon that really burdens the story and the season, in general. 

2) Way Too Damned Much of the Master: Speaking of the redundancy of the Master in Claws of Axos, we need to talk about just how overused he is in this season. 

To be honest, the production team nearly gets away with it. He is a great villain and I almost don't mind that he's in all five stories that year.  But I do still recall the first time I saw this season. As we get to the revelation of who the new Vicar is in Episode One of The Daemons,  I really did find myself thinking: "Not again!" 

It probably didn't help that I really didn't like The Daemons. It's about 3 episodes longer than it needed to be. The fact that The Awakening told, more or less, the same story in just two parts certainly helps to re-enforce my point!    

But even if the final story of the season had been outstanding, it really did feel like I'd had enough of the Master. Terror of the Autons and Mind of Evil tell decent little stories that are linked together by the Doctor stealing his rival's dematerialisation circuit. Once that saga had been complete, the Master should have disappeared til the end of the season. A return appearance by that point would have not felt too excessive  Of the three other stories of that season, Colony in Space would have been the one I would have kept and used to wrap up the year. The third and fourth story of the season should not have involved the evil Time Lord in the slightest. 

SOME RAYS OF SUNSHINE... 

Thus far, I haven't been very kind to this season. So let's get into some stuff that I, for the most part, enjoyed. Enumeration has been fun, so let's keep it going: 

1) The Mind of Evil:  I've actually gone on quite a bit about this one in an Unsung Classics entry I did a while back: (https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2021/03/unadulterated-boorish-opinion-unsung.html). As usual, I will resist repeating myself too much. Go to the link I posted if you want something more detailed. 

Much of the story feels like a throwback to Season Seven (written by the same guy who gave us Inferno - which is probably why a reference is made to it). Season Seven is how I would have liked the entire Pertwee Era to have worked. It still uses some of those conventions I dislike that Season Eight gave birth to, but it also maintains a lot of the standards of quality of its predecessor. It's also probably my favorite Roger Delgado Master story. Aside from slipping endlessly on a puddle of water, he's really great, here! 

2) Colony in Space: The story does not always get the greatest amount of love from fans. I can see some of their points. It runs into a lot of the same problems that many Pertwee 6-parters have. But it does set a very important precedent: 

The Doctor can escape his exile, sometimes.

Season Eight, to me, was showing that trapping the Doctor on 20th Century Earth was really not working. So when Colony begins with the Doctor getting his TARDIS working again and sending him off to a fairly half-decent adventure, I'm quite ecstatic! It represents an escape from a formula I was getting quite tired of. I was so glad that the Time Lords would continue to send the Doctor on missions. The more time he gets away from his exile, the less I have to deal with the core problems I have with this latest iteration of the show! 

3) There is still some variety: While I have complained quite extensively about how formulaic Pertwee Who becomes in Season Eight, there is still some degree of diversity that makes it enjoyable. Even just the general plots of each story have a pretty good range. Yes, Terror of the Autons and  Claws of Axos are straightforward invasion stories - but the methods of invasion are quite different. Mind of Evil is a political intrigue. The Daemons is about an ancient evil that has been with us throughout history. And Colony in Space, as already stated, is just-plain beautiful because it gets the Doctor off Earth! 

So there is still a degree of creativity going on, here. I can't just totally slam this season for its lack of originality. 

FINAL VERDICT

While I have just given this season a few compliments, they were scant. There are a lot of things about Season Eight that I'm not particularly pleased with. 

Would I call it a legitimately "bad" season like I did Season Four (https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2022/07/doctor-who-season-by-season-season-four.html)? I don't think so. I wouldn't quite go that far with my criticism. But I will say that Season Eight comes perilously close to being a bad season. 

The quality of the stories is a bit tenuous. Terror of the Autons.is a fun adventure - but very troubled, in places. There are certain elements of the story that make little or no sense. Mind of Evil is the jewel of the season. Colony in Space is half-decent too (but would have worked better as a four-parter). Claws of Axos has that weird out-of-context appeal to it. 

And then, there's The Daemons. This one baffles me. It seems to get a lot of love - I'm not sure why, though! To me, it's just a pretty big mess! 

I'll admit: It's off to a decent start. There's a very nice homespun charm to it during the first episode or so. But, somewhere during Part Two, it just starts to drag...  And drag... And drag! Azal makes three appearances when he only needs one. He does so for the plain and simple reason that the story needs padding out. Osgoode is horrifically baffled by what the Doctor wants him to build so that it will also buy a bunch of time in the plot. I'm, pretty much, done with the Master by this point in the season. I also think it's quite ridiculous that they actually gave him a cliffhanger. The helicopter chase scene also feels, for the most part, pretty silly. There's just problem after problem, here. And yet, every fan seems to speak of it with great nostalgia. 

The ultimate resolution of the story is the silliest part. You're really trying to convince me that Azal, a being that has lived for countless years, has never witnessed self-sacrifice before? And that it confounds him so much that he self-destructs?! It's a pretty damned cheap cop-out if you ask me! 

The last few minutes with the May Dance does bring back some of that charm that we were getting at the beginning but there are just too many episodes where this really is a poorly put-together story. The Bookends can't save it. 

I went to the trouble of digging a bit deeper into Daemons because it really symbolises so many problems that occur over the bulk of the Third Doctor Era. During the Classic Who Days, fans loved using the term "pantomime" whenever they disliked a story. For the most part, the term was too harsh. However, I do think this particular period comes closest to giving us that. A mustache-twirling villain who is overused (he even dresses in black and has a goatee!). A pretty damsel in distress. Characters and plot elements that work to a complete formula every time. If this doesn't feel like panto, I don't know what does!   

Overall, the qualities of Season Eight do outweigh the negatives. But the balance is very precarious. And it will continue to be on shaky ground for the duration of the era. Things will look up a bit when the Doctor breaks free from his exile but there are still problems that persist even after the show returns to its old format. 

Everyone has a period of the show that they enjoy the least. For many, it's the late 80s with Six and Seven. Or, in New Who, it seems to be the Chibnall Era. This, however, is where I feel Who is at its lowest point. Yes, it was very popular when it came out and fans that weren't around when it was on the air seem to be quite fond of it when they watch it retrospectively. I, however, am not one of those people. There are certain things that I really love Doctor Who for. This era seems to have thrown most of those things out the window and given me quite a bit of the stuff that I genuinely dislike about science fiction.  

I will gladly defend Pertwee's first season with all my heart and soul. But, from Season Eight, onward, I'm not happy with a lot of what's going on. 

So, brace yourselves, Fans of Three. The next few reviews are going to be a bumpy ride!