DOCTOR WHO - SEASON-BY-SEASON: SEASON TWELVE

The Season Reviews continue. At last, we've made it through my least favorite period of the show. I don't have to sound so much like a Negative Nancy, anymore! But how much more do I like this new era? 

I guess you'll find out....

A NEW DOCTOR (AND ALL THE TRAPPINGS THAT COME WITH IT)

What I consider a low point for the show is over. Finally, I can start enjoying adventures where the Master isn't always up to, basically, the same thing. Where the UNIT family don't keep doing the same type of jokes over and over. No more alien menaces invulnerable to bullets but can still get taken down by a MacGuffin that the Doctor builds in the last few minutes of the final part (that reverses the polarity, of course). No more kung-fu fights with stunt doubles in bad wigs. And, most importantly, no protracted chase sequences that never really looked all that great because you need a real budget to achieve a visually interesting car chase (or hovercraft chase, or whatever...). 

Jon Pertwee didn't just leave the show - the production team that worked with him the whole time went too. So Doctor Who should change directions. And, hopefully, I like the changes that are being implemented. 

We're off to a very good first impression, at least. Even though Terrance Dicks is the author of the script for the first story in the season, our show's protagonist is being treated very differently.Tom Baker doesn't just have fun with the part, but Doctor Four is being written to be a lot sillier than his predecessor. And it's a great time. No matter how often I watch the first episode of Robot, Baker has me cracking up every time. Doing skip rope with Harry, choosing ridiculous costumes, blowing crushed dandelions into the Brig's face... It's all absolutely delightful! 

But then these weird tonal shifts start happening. We'll see this occur over and over throughout the Hinchcliffe era. The Doctor just suddenly becomes much more serious as Ark in Space commences. We could say that the regeneration made him erratic for a bit and now he's stabilised, but Robot and Ark seem to flow into each other. The character, pretty much, turns on a dime. The whole thing feels a bit too abrupt. 

This harsh changes in Baker's interpretation continue throughout the season. The transition into Sontaran Experiment isn't so drastic, though. He does seem a bit more lighthearted, again, for this story. But it doesn't feel like as much of an about-face as it does from Robot to Ark. We can believe it's the same person that transmarted down to Earth that we saw on Nerva Beacon. 

Geneis of the Daleks, however, brings us back to a very grim Fourth Doctor. I suppose, in some sense, there's not much room for a lot of humor in the story. But it's still just feeling very disjointed. Especially as we get to Revenge of the Cybermen and the Doctor is as big a buffoon as he was in the first story of the season.  

All of these adventures seem to follow directly after each other. Had there been a few "unseen adventures" in between these changes in mood, they might feel more natural. But the Fourth Doctor seems to just jump into new personalities for little or no reason at the start of every tale. 

One could argue that the Fourth Doctor is just very mercurial. That it's part of the character. Sixie, after all, was subject to some pretty big mood swings, too. Particularly in his first season where he would frequently fly off into wild tantrums. But such harsh transitions definitely felt like actual elements of the character. The tantrums were written right into the script rather than seeming like choices the actor was just suddenly making with the character. It's especially odd that Tom Baker changes his approach at the beginning of a story and then, more or less, maintains that attitude until the end. And then, at the beginning of the next tale, it's a new interpretation. 

This, very much, has the feel of an actor who just doesn't know what he wants to do with the part. Which, for me, makes for a fairly uneven performance. I don't expect the Fourth Doctor to be entirely "one note" either, of course (indeed, that was one of my bigger complaints about Three), but this is a very strange approach to take if you're making the Doctor mercurial. The mood changes would seem a lot more natural or even believable if they didn't happen at such specific points in the story structure. 

So, while I do love that this new Doctor doesn't take himself so seriously, I am having some trouble with how Tom Baker is handling the role. Admittedly, this isn't the easiest role to settle into. But there has to be a better way to do things than just trying on a different predominant mood at the start of each new story. 

A CHANGE-UP WITH COMPANIONS TOO

Elisabeth Sladen also seems to be changing her approach to Sarah Jane in this new season. Which does make sense. Companions that are around when the Doctor regenerates will frequently go in new directions. After all, they must spark off a whole new personality that has manifested itself in the Time Lord. The changes caused in Sarah by the regeneration are, in fact, more subtle than some other occasions where companions have gone through this. Clara, for instance, tends to almost bully Eleven while they travel together. But, with Twelve, it's more of a power struggle between them where she's not always the winner. This change in dynamics brings out all sorts of nuances in the character that we weren't seeing when she was with the previous incarnation. 

The more significant alteration that we see in Sarah is how she's actually written. Whereas a conscious choice does seem to have been made during Season Eleven to make her a more capable female companion, she tends to go back to being a lot more of a damsel-in-distress with this production team. Dicks makes her a bit more useful in Robot. Her investigative skills as a journalist do cause her to unveil some important plot points. But, even by Part Four, she's regulated to just being carried around like a Fay Wray from King Kong. Throughout the rest of the season, she needs rescuing over and over. We're back to a female companion who is, ever-so-slightly, offensive to even the mildest of feminists. 

There is one more thing that influences Sarah Jane's behaviour.:The fact that Harry Sullivan is, now, also a traveller aboard the TARDIS. Harry seems to mainly frustrate her. She does snark at the poor fellow quite a bit throughout the season. Even seems to threaten him a few times. Thanks to Sladen's abilities, it never makes us truly dislike her. Somehow, she still seems charming in amongst all the verbal abuse! 

Harry, himself, is an interesting new twist on the male companion. It was originally anticipated that the new Doctor would not be as physical as Pertwee so Harry was meant to be a man-of-action that  would handle most of the violence in the story. In the tradition of 60s male companions like Ian, Steven, Ben and Jamie. But, since Tom Baker was plenty capable of scrapping, Harry develops in a very different way. He is, essentially, a bumbler. Put into stories principally for comic relief. This isn't something entirely new, of course. We did get plenty of good laughs out of Jamie, too. But Harry seems to go even further with this. To the point where Four, quite famously, proclaims: "Harry Sullivan is an imbecile!"  Poor 'ole Harry has to just take the criticism on the chin. He did, after all, just do something intensely stupid that nearly ended the Doctor's life. 

So there's quite a bit of changing up that happens with the companions during this season. Including, of course, the fact that there are actually two of them. Throughout Pertwee's Reign, it's really just him and one other companion. This is the first time we've seen three travellers aboard the TARDIS in quite a while. 

THE TRUE CLASSIC 

Some big changes happen with the leads of the show - but it doesn't end there. Some very curious things are going on with the stories, too. The whole vibe of the show is certainly less formulaic with this new production team in charge (for a time, at least). And the adventures are definitely becoming more space-bound, again. Aside from Robot, the Doctor goes nowhere near 20th Century Earth for the duration of the season. This certainly pleases me enormously. The more time away from that location and time period, the less things will feel like the Pertwee Era. 

But there's something else. Since Inferno, I've found nothing in the content of the show to be all that truly outstanding. Essentially, that was the last tale we got that I would legitimately label a Classic. There have been some decent stories - don't get me wrong. I'm not about to just crap on four entire seasons of Doctor Who. I'm quite fond of Mind of Evil, for instance  Curse of Peladon is a surprisingly good story, too. But there's nothing beyond Season Seven that really gets me to feel like I'm watching some truly exemplary Doctor Who. There's some really good stuff. But nothing that takes my breath away like a True Classic does. 

Finally, in Season Twelve, we get that again. And it happens, pretty much, right out of the gate. Robot, of course, is more like one last gasp from Letts and his Crew. But then we get Ark in friggin' Space. 

I love this story. Really, I do. It's in my Top Ten (https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2015/12/book-of-lists-top-10-fave-who-stories-8.html). Many people that have been influential in New Who also site Ark as being one of their favorites.  Everything about it is just so damned magnificent. Really, when a guy wrestling with green bubble wrap on his hand is still one of the most compelling things you've ever seen, you have to give a lot of praise to the quality of this story. 

Hinchcliffe delivering a Classic so quickly is very re-assuring. I never claim that Seasons Eight to Eleven are terrible - but they're still pretty rough, in places. It was quite difficult getting through that re-watch to write the entries about those seasons. I wanted so badly, sometimes, to just move on to a new era where I can be really impressed, again. At the risk of sounding harsh, I wanted to view content that could, once more, make me proud to be a Who Fan. Rather than just be saying over and over: "Meh. It's a passable runaround, at best!" (or, in some instances: "Good God! This is terrible! Why do fans like it so much?!") And I'm very glad I get that feeling back so quickly in Season Twelve. I needed Ark in Space so badly! 

THE FAKE CLASSIC 

There is still one phenomenon, however, that carries over from the Pertwee Era. The Infamous: "Why is Everyone Calling this a Classic?!" Scenario. We're still getting stories like The Daemons and The Green Death that fans have a love for that completely baffles me .Where I can't, for the life of me, understand what all the fuss is about. The whole tale seems very poorly constructed but, because a certain generation loved watching it when they were kids, it's considered outstanding. 

This problem definitely persists in the Tom Baker Era (and we'll see it, again, many years later when RTD resurrects the show). Childhood nostalgia seems to create rose-tinted glasses about certain yarns that, when viewed objectively by mature eyes, really aren't as good as everyone says. Some aren't, necessarily, terrible either. But they're still not written so tightly you can bounce a quarter off of it like Ark in Space was. The level of appreciation they get, as far as I'm concerned, is not merited. 

Genesis of the Daleks is one of those stories. 

It has an enormously cool premise. Which I think most fans get so caught up in that they ignore all the problems with its execution. That opening scene with the Time Lord sending the Doctor on his mission is great. It totally gets me hyped for what's to come. Particularly the first time I'd watched the story. By this point, I'd heard about the Greatness of Genesis of the Daleks and was expecting to be blown away. 

But then, a few minutes later, the Doctor steps on a land mine. That should be the end of the story, right there. The end of Doctor Who as a show, in fact. But, somehow, they get out of the predicament unharmed. And all I'm thinking is: "I don't think land mines work that way!" 

Then there's some capture-and-escape with Harry and the Doctor in the Kaled outpost to pad things out a bit. Which might not be so bad except we're still only in Part One! This is the first episode and, already, we need to mark time?! Things do not look promising... 

Which is probably the biggest problem with Genesis. Sending the Doctor back in time to prevent the creation of the Daleks is a great idea. But if you're going to make it a six-part epic, there needs to be enough plot to fill it. And there just isn't enough material to do that. You really feel it in Part Six where Davros seems to plead endlessly with the Kaled scientists to remain loyal to him. Those Daleks are just taking sooo long to come back from mopping up the Thal survivors. Will they ever fill up the episode - I mean - get there in time?!   

There are other problems, too (don't get me started on that Cliffhanger on the scaffolding!) but all the blatant padding is the worst. 

There are also some great moments in there. Davros presenting a Dalek to the Kaled scientists for the very first time is very gripping to watch. The "Have I the right?"Speech is excellent. And so on.... But my real point is: there are just too many issues with this story that, for me, prohibit it from being considered a Classic. It's pretty good, in places - but it's also quite awful in others. But, because it's just so awesome that we're seeing the Daleks at the Dawn of their Creation, fans tend to gloss over a lot of the bad stuff. 

It's for this reason that Genesis of the Daleks did not make it into my Top Five Dalek Stories Countdown that I just completed. It will, however, probably make it into my Greatest Hits series, sometime soon....

BAD BOOKENDS - PART ONE 

Aside from harboring another "Fake Classic", there is one other major problem that this season suffers from. Its first and last stories are, basically, not very good. 

I have spoken, already, of how much I enjoy Tom Baker's acting during Robot. Sadly, that's about all I like. He has so much talent that his charm, alone, almost manages to save the story. Which says a lot since this is his very first time in the role. Most actors are a bit more timid in the earlier stages of a performance. But Baker comes in with a very comforting bravado that firmly establishes, right from the onset, that he is the New Doctor. He's quite different from previous Doctors - but he's still definitely the Time Lord we all know and love. 

There almost seems to be a battle going on as the episodes of Robot progress. Baker is practically throwing his charisma at the production. Getting us to be so enchanted with him that we don't really notice how bad things are when they cut away to another plot thread. Slowly but surely, however, he loses the fight. No actor possesses the talent to make us forget how bad of a story Robot is! 

My biggest problem with the whole tale is that it has too much of an Invasion of the Dinosaurs Vibe going on. Another weird fringe group has devised the most impractical of ways to take over the world. Really, there could be no clumsier method to obtain secret launch codes to nuclear missiles than to send a giant robot traipsing around busting into places and stealing the components to a disintegrator gun. Can we draw any more attention to ourselves, Think Tank?! If you want to break into a vault, hire a burglar with safe-cracking skills. Your plans are much more likely to succeed. 

I get it, of course. The story needs a sci fi gimmick of some sort. So that's why we get dinosaurs last season and a giant robot, this time. The story would be pretty boring if Think Tank really did just do the most practical thing. But if putting in gimmicks makes your story highly implausible, then maybe you should be scrapping the premise altogether and giving us something better. 

There's also a bit of a cheat going on with Professor Kettlewell. Trying to distance himself publicly from Think Tank even though he is actually one of their leaders does make a sort of sense. But some stuff goes on in Part Two that's pretty illogical. He acts upset when K1 shows up at his home/lab and reveals that its Prime Directive has been altered. If someone else were there that he was trying to hide his involvement with the Scientific Reform Society from then this reaction makes sense. But he's alone with the robot. Apparently, he is the one who is truly responsible for K1's reprogramming. So why would he appear distressed about his creation being tampered with? Is it for the robot's sake?! No. It's for the audience, of course. So we can stay fooled until Part Three. Where it is, at last, revealed that he is the mastermind behind it all. 

A similar thing happens when Winters and Jellicoe come storming in menacingly through Kettlewell's front door later in the same episode. Why would they actually be so intimidating toward him when it's just them in the room? He's their ally. The man who is realizing their vision for them.  They're only acting sinister because, again, the audience needs to be fooled. This, to me, is full-on bad writing. An author is allowed to be deceptive with the viewers to hide a plot twist. but not at the expense of  realism. You can fool us, but you still have to make sense. 

And then we must deal with Part Four. We see another problem that this tale has in common with Invasion of the Dinosaurs. 

I try not to come down too hard on Classic Who for poor visuals. As I've said many times: the show was doing the best with the little it was being given. If you read my review of Invasion of the Dinosaurs, you may have even noticed that I don't mention how fake the dinosaurs look. I figured the Elephant on the Table didn't really need to be addressed, for once. We all know the dinos look bad. We should just move on and discuss the stuff that was fixable in the story (like the actual script!). 

But the effects in Part Four of Robot are just a bit too much for me to swallow. Michael Kilgariff stomping about among doll houses in a robot costume while carrying a Barbie dressed up as Sarah Jane Smith throws any credibility the story had out the window. The whole sequence just looks way more ridiculous than my suspension of disbelief can handle. Even smaller visual problems like the way they get Elisabeth Sladen to grasp a pipe done in CSO rather than giving her an actual set piece to hang on to just adds insult to injury. This is genuinely unwatchable. 

When folks talk about bad introductory stories to new Doctors, it's usually Twin Dilemma and Time and the Rani that come up in the conversation. Neither of these stories are great, of course. I also don't think they're that bad, either.. And I would rather re-watch either of those tales over Robot any day.  

BAD BOOKENDS - PART TWO

After being away from the show for quite a while, the production team decided it was time to bring back the Cybermen.  Understanding their behind-the-scenes background,  Gerry Davis was commissioned to write a story involving them. Davis, of course, had been crucial to their development way back in the early 60s. So it was kinda cool that they got a hold of him 

If Revenge of the Cybermen had been made back in the 60s, it would have probably worked quite well. But it doesn't really fit in with how science fiction was being produced at the time. One of the best examples of this is the amount of really forced dialogue we get in order to deliver exposition. Somehow, this sort of thing feels comfortable in 60s Sci-Fi. But, in the 70s, it comes across as horrendously unnatural. The argument that takes place when Vorus is summoned by Councillor Tyrum in Part Two, for instance, sounds more like a dissertation on the Abridged History of Voga than it does an actual debate between two rival leaders. 

Still, I will say that the first half of Revenge of the Cybermen is largely enjoyable. But as we reach the end of Part Two, two crucial problems arise that cause the whole thing to unravel: 

1) The Vogans are really stupid with gold: The mines of Voga might be chocked full of the valuable mineral, but how the gold is actually used once it's unearthed seems largely counter-intuitive. Firstly, there's the fact that Sarah and Harry can free themselves from their shackles because they're made of gold and are, therefore, fairly malleable. One would think that even the dimmest of Vogans would be like: "Hey! If we want to incarcerate someone, maybe we shouldn't make the restraints out of something they can easily break out of!" 

The stupidity, however, doesn't end there. Eventually, a few Cybermen come down to the planet and start slaughtering small armies of Vogans that are trying to defend the caves. Here is a civilisation that seems to make everything out of gold. A mineral that is lethal to the Cybermen. But the one thing Vogans couldn't be bothered to craft from the substance was their freakin' bullets! 

Vogan soldiers dropping like flies. A society that lives in perpetual fear of the Cybermen. They have the one thing that can kill them with relative ease. But no one thinks: "Hey! Let's keep some gold bullets handy in case those nasty Cybermen show up someday..." 

There's even supposed to be something called a glitter gun. No one had the idea to keep one of them hanging about?! Or how about just trying to jump the Cybermen and stuff gold dust down their chest grates like the Doctor, Harry and Lester eventually attempt? Nope. Instead, they just get endlessly slaughtered as they try to kill the Cybermen with regular damn bullets. 

So stupid. 

2) Silliest Cybermen ever: Right from their first appearance in the story, the Cyber-Leader does this weird hand gesture that almost looks a bit comical. As they board Nerva Beacon at the end of Part Two they start firing from their head units. This also looks a tad silly. 

It just gets worse in the final two episodes. There have been some complaints about how the Cyber-Leaders in 80s Who stories seem to show more emotion than they ought to. They have nothing, however, on the Cyber-Leader from Revenge of the Cybermen. This guy reads more like a villain from the 60s Batman TV Series  than the commander of an army of ruthlessly logical cyborgs. 

There's some serious camp going on here. And it's quite cringey to watch. The Leader vigorously shaking the Doctor like a martini after his cybermat attack fails looks almost as ridiculous as that "Giant Robot" from the beginning of the season rudely breaking all those nice doll houses. 

Not only do the Cybermen act very silly throughout the latter half of the tale, but their actual plot doesn't really seem to hold together very well, either. As the whole adventure comes to an end, things really do feel like they've fallen apart. Gold might be lethal to Cybermen, but I'm not sure why it would interfere with the radar signals their human bombs are giving off as they descend into the planet (especially since the radar system they're using is not the product of Cyber-technology. They're in Nerva Beacon control room as they track them). Or why the radar would keep following one person while the other two start coming back up from the mines. Twice the amount of signals getting closer to the surface should have a much better chance of being noticed than one signal that's going down deeper. 

None of this makes a lot of sense. 

Of course, the Vogans have become just as ludicrous by the end of the tale. Do we have to keep shooting people who want to launch the Skystriker? Can the three Vogans just standing around doing nothing actually grab somebody?! Was it really necessary to take that much life?! How about just knocking someone over the head with the butt of your rifle rather than firing it?!  

Hell, you could even just put Vorus in handcuffs that he will probably break out of within  minutes because, more than likely, they'll be made of gold (but those damned bullets aren't!). This would have still delayed things long enough for the Doctor and Sarah up on Nerva Beacon. And no one would have to die.   

Instead, however, everything just turns into a big illogical mess as Revenge reaches its conclusion. Again, the first two parts are okay. But it all falls apart after a while. 

Ultimately, a really bad way to end the season. 

FINAL VERDICT

As we come to our conclusion of the Review, I can already imagine what some of your are saying: 

"But Rob! You're writing the Final Verdict even though you've barely mentioned The Sontaran Experiment!" 

I am trying not to just review every story individually as I write these. But, rather, look at the Season as a whole. Sometimes, admittedly, story-by-story does work better. But I'd rather not get too formulaic with this. Nonetheless, I'll say something brief about Sontaran Experiment. You won't be happy with me if I don't! 

It's a decent little two-parter that stays entertaining, throughout. Nothing exceptional. But still good. Nice to see the Sontarans back again so soon. Returning this quickly helps to establish the long-term presence they will have on the show. 

Better? 

I have criticised Season Twelve quite heavily, in places. I don't think Genesis of the Daleks is as great as everyone says. I'm not that fond of Revenge of the Cybermen. I called Robot downright awful. You'd almost think I don't enjoy this season at all. 

If I'm being honest, though: I still quite like Twelve. I'd almost say it's the equivalent of a Season Seven for Tom Baker. Pertwee's first year was still waaaayyy better, of course - but this one stands out quite nicely, too. Even if there are a few nasty stumbles, I enjoy this season more than quite a few of the others Baker will star in (which should brace you a bit for some future reviews of periods of the show that I know some of you will have strong feelings about!).  

Much of the success of the season, I feel, is owed to its three leads. This really was a good TARDIS team that, oftentimes, doesn't get the credit it deserves. When the content wasn't quite up to standard, the performances of Baker, Sladen and Marter could really help to lift things. Had the show continued with all three of them, the next few seasons of Who would have probably been the genuine Golden Age that fans claim it to be. As it stands, it is still quite good with just Four and Sarah. But I think a third member of the crew would have boosted things tremendously. 

In general, I don't like it when it's just two people in the TARDIS. Sadly, that's all we're getting for quite some time, now (even when K9 does come along - I don't really consider him a companion so much as just a prop!). 

But I will, at least, have happy memories of Baker's first season. Where a bohemian, a cantankerous journalist and an imbecile had some great adventures together....