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

Well, that was a nice little break we took to analyse the Master's character arcs in New Who.  Now, let's get back to Season Reviews. On to Fourteen!

THE GOLDEN AGE....: OR IS IT?! 

We're nearing the end of Hinchcliffe/Holmes era of Doctor Who. Considered by many to be one of the best periods of the programme. Fans love to go on about the rich atmosphere that so many of the stories have. Or the great chemistry of Tom Baker and Liz Sladen. Or the magnificent Hammer Horror vibe that permeated through so much of it. Or so many other qualities that were prominent during this time. 

As I pointed out in my last entry, I'm not as passionate about this section of the show as most fans are. By no means do I think it's terrible, but I do think it's over-rated. There are parts of it that do shine quite beautifully. But there are some substantial problems, too. I do find, for instance, that the writing in 70s Who is exceptionally lazy, in places. Season Thirteen shows that off quite clearly. A few of the stories really didn't have enough plot for the episodes they were allotted and relied heavily on some pretty blatant filler. I know they're adored greatly by the fans but I just find them to be too heavily-riddled with captures-and-escapes and other cheap time-killing techniques to truly merit the reputations they have. It's for reasons like this that I consider several of these stories to be what I like to call "Fake Classics". I just don't find them to be as great as people say they are. 

So the Big Question of this Review will be: What about this Season, Rob? Do I hold to the same opinions I had for Season Thirteen? Or does Fourteen manage to achieve the Glory that so many fans go on about when discussing this period? 

Let's break things down a bit, first. This way, when I reach my conclusion, you'll see where I came from. 

A GENERAL OVERVIEW:

Before diving into a review of the actual content, let's take a look at some of the things that happened over the span of the entire season: 

The Fourth Doctor's Portrayal

I do think Tom Baker puts in one of his best performances during this season. His balance  between comedy and drama is pitch perfect. He seems to always make the right choice in any given situation. The Fourth Doctor, at this point, almost seems to hover between being in a grim mood or acting ironically jovial. Baker now seems to always know which personality to wear for the context he's in . 

His Doctor during this period is very sardonic When his comedy relies more on sarcastic comments than just straight buffoonery, I do think the character works better. He comes across as quite witty, now. And I rather prefer him that way. 

I do feel as though it took Tom nearly two years to get a proper handle on the character. Up until Season Fourteen, the performance did often feel all over the place (less and less as his second season progresses). This is no reflection on Tom's ability as an actor. This can be a very difficult role to take on. Particularly since all three of his predecessors left a very strong impression on the viewers. He had to find his own distinct interpretation and that can take quite some time. But he has, very definitely, settled into the role. And he is absolutely splendid to watch in this season. 

Goodbye Liz. Hello Louise. 

Time for another super-controversial opinion. So, brace yourselves:    

I like Leela  better than Sarah Jane Smith. 

Liz Sladen was a brilliant actress. She did as much with the character as was humanly possible. But the truth of the matter is: Sarah Jane Smith was frequently poorly-written. They had her speaking up for feminism but then still often reduced her to a mere a damsel-in-distress that couldn't do much without a man to save her. Some writers treated her better than others. But, overall, the Female Companion had not moved on much from how she had been used throughout the 60s. She was still just there to scream at the monsters and get into a bit of trouble. 

Sarah Jane's departure was still very moving. She did put in a lot of time so it was bound to be a touching farewell. But it is sooo good when Leela comes along. Finally we had a female companion who can definitely take care of herself. Who, in some cases, might even be a bit more effective than the Doctor. The Doctor, after all, preferred to be a pacifist. Whereas, if someone got in Leela's way, she could get through them quite quickly with her knife, crossbow or Janis Thorn! 

In general, Leela was just a lot more fun. The writers did a much better job with her. Not just in the way she could handle all the action in the story. But they also remembered that she was looking at the Universe through the eyes of a primitive. Because of this, she was frequently given some very colorful and even poetic dialogue. 

All in all, I became much happier with the Fourth Doctor after Sarah Jane Smith left. The quality of the female companions improves dramatically once the plucky journalist was gone. To me, Leela is that first step in that more positive direction. 

Sorry Sarah Jane fans. But I'll take Leela over her any day of the week!   

Tom Was Actually Right

It's right around this time that Tom Baker starts to "push back" against the production team for the first time. He's three seasons in and is starting to feel confidant in the role. So I can see why he might do it. 

As Liz Sladen gets written out of the series, Tom brings up the point that he might not actually need a new companion. That the Doctor could just travel alone for a bit. Production thinks the idea is outlandish. The Doctor needs someone to explain things to. In so doing, of course, he is also explaining to the audience what's going on in the story. Tom, absurdist that he is, starts having fun with the idea. He suggests a compromise. Put a cabbage on his shoulder and he will turn to it regularly and tell it what's happening. 

Production doesn't go with the suggestion but they do end up giving Tom one adventure without a companion. That story turns out to be The Deadly Assassin. And, sure enough, Tom is excellent in it. The need for exposition gets accomplished through conversations with supporting characters rather than companions. And it works just as well. 

This is the first time in the history of the show that the Doctor is without a companion for the entire tale. The deviation from the usual formula is actually successful. In fact, they could have, easily, allowed Tom quite a bit of time by himself and I think the format would have worked. 

He didn't need the cabbage, though! 

STORY-BY-STORY 

Once more, I will go through the season story-by-story and offer a review of each tale. Just to be different, though, I won't do it in transmission order. Instead, I will tackle things by category. 

The True Classics: 

Always try to start on a positive note, I say. So let's look at the stories that truly make Season Fourteen a beautiful thing: 

The Deadly Assassin is an adventure that is very near and dear to me. As some of you may know, I like to do an End of Year Countdown as we move into December. The very first year that I was doing this blog, I listed my Top Ten Doctor Who stories. Deadly Assassin came in at Number One (https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2016/01/book-of-lists-top-ten-who-stories-1.html). Which I think surprised people. Most were probably expecting the usual Genesis of the Daleks or Caves of Androzani. But I like Assassin far more than either of these tales. 

The story, of course, is a crucial milestone for the show. It's our first "proper" look at the Doctor's home planet. Never before has an entire story been spent on Gallifrey. This, alone, makes the whole thing quite exciting. That opening scrawl with Tom Baker's voiceover narration immediately ropes me in! 

But, as I say in the actual BOOK OF LISTS Review, there has to be more to the plot than just being important to canon. And this is where I feel Assassin really succeeds. It truly is one of Robert Holmes' best scripts. The allusions to The Manchurian Candidate are fun (it got me to seek out the actual film just so I could compare the two!). On top of that, however, the whole thing is really tightly-written  It merits an almost immediate re-watch. When you know that Goth is the true villain, it's great to see just how treacherous of a bastard he is by enjoying it a second time round. There's all sorts of moves that he makes when we don't know he's the Master's ally that help to maneuver the Doctor into the place they need him to be. That same kind of fun occurs on the re-watch when viewing all the bits involving the Master before it's revealed that he's the sinister figure we've been seeing lurking in the shadows. Now that we know it's him, his various scenes before the revelation feel all-the-more sinister. We especially love it when he watches his rival flee back to his TARDIS and proclaims: "Predictable as ever, Doctor!" Such a great moment! 

Deadly Assassin does an excellent job of proving just how versatile of a show Doctor Who is. It really can go in so many unique directions and still prove quite fascinating. In this instance, we get a political thriller. And it's as compelling as any of the more "traditional" Doctor Who adventures. In fact, I'd say it works better than a lot of of other Who Tales out there. It becomes even more special because it is so different from what the programme usually offers. It really is a magnificent treat! 

Part Three does tend to polarise fandom. Some see it as just a giant screeching halt in the narrative. Others view it for what it really is: a gorgeous nightmare fair (oops! Did I just claim that my point of view is the right one?!). I do get it, though. If you don't like Part Three then, clearly, Deadly Assassin won't be your favorite story. Hard to love an adventure like this if you dislike an entire episode of it! 

But for those of you who are like me and love the whole thing, why are you putting stuff like Genesis of the Daleks or Caves of Androzani at the top of your list?! This story totally kicks their asses!   Although, I will admit: Power of the Doctor just might be my new Number One. 

I'm currently thinking it over... 

The other True Classic in this season also made it into my Top Ten (https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2015/12/book-of-lists-top-ten-who-stories-5.html). I actually like Robots of Death for much the same reason that I like Deadly Assassin. As a murder mystery, it requires some very tight plotting. All the movements and motives of the various characters that are suspects needed to be worked out well in advance so that we get a satisfying conclusion where the true culprit is revealed and everyone is surprised. But, if you were watching carefully, the villain was showing their hand the whole time. You were just looking the wrong way (usually by some careful misdirection the writer created). 

This means, of course, that Robots merits some re-watching, too. It's great to see Taren Capel in action now that we know who he is. The exploits of Pool and D-84 are also interesting to observe as they try stealthily to move against him without the rest of the crew even knowing they are under investigation. 

Of course, the greatest twist of the story is that we are aware the whole time who the murderers actually are. We watch several of the killings happen right in front of us. So we know the robots are responsible for all the deaths. The Doctor figures this all out almost immediately and the tension in the story depends more on him being able to get other people to believe him. Only as we approach the later episodes do we realise this is still a "whodunnit" (pun completely intended). Which, again, makes for a masterfully-crafted plot. I'm pretty sure I used this analogy in my Top Ten Review, too - but I'll say it again, here: You can bounce quarters off the writing of this story. It's that tight. 

Robots of Death also features an impressive backdrop. And I don't just mean the crazy art-deco sets and costumes. But the actual world-building is done magnificently, too. We understand so much of the civilisation these characters come from by the time we reach the end of Part Four. But it's done with great amounts of verisimilitude. Barely a  note of forced exposition gets shoe-horned in. Everything feels quite natural. Yet another similarity it shares with Deadly Assassin. Just like Time Lord Society, the civilisation on this unnamed planet is presented excellently. 

And then, of course, there's the dialogue. Like Assassin, Robots is ridiculously quotable. Oddly enough, the robots tend to get all the best lines. Particularly D-84. Which leads us, of course, to everyone's favorite little scene. Say it with me kids:    

"I heard a cry!" 

"That was me."

"I heard a cry!" 

"That was me."

"I heard a cry!"

"That was me!" 

We love it every time....

Mid-Rangers 

From the Classics we move to the fairly passable. I wouldn't call these two stories terrible. But I don't, necessarily, have nothing but praise for them, either. They're decent middle-ground tales. 

Our season opener definitely falls into this category. Which is actually a bit surprising. Masque of Mandragora has all the makings of one of those horribly forgetful mediocre stories that I described in my last review when discussing Planet of Evil. It's intensely odd how a story's direction can be so visually-impressive but also seem so flat at the same time. Mandragora manages to achieve this effect in the same way that Evil did. Some parts of it look really great. A lot of the location footage is particularly gorgeous. But, somehow, we just don't feel all that engaged with what we're seeing.  

It also doesn't help that Mandragora is very blatant filler. Nothing of any major significance happens in it. A lot of the rest of the season has some big stuff going on. Sarah Jane's going to leave in the next story. In the story after that, the Doctor returns to his homeword. And still, in the story after, Leela will get introduced. Those are some pretty exciting developments. But Masque is just a simple little four-parter that needs to get the season started. It almost feels like it's been neglected because everyone is far more interested in what's to come after it. 

Mandragora, however, scores a lot of points by having a very clever central premise. Sentient energy is not a villain we've really seen on the show. Nor does it pop up much in other forms of science fiction. It's a very interesting concept that cleverly subverts the traditional Doctor Who storyline just enough to make us feel like we're getting something different. In most Who Tales, the Doctor runs into a megalomaniac who's up to no good and takes measures to defeat him. The Helix Energy, of course, does still have a very megalomiacal plan. But, because he's not flesh and blood, how he's defeated is handled very differently. In fact, I quite like the scene where the Doctor is taunting Mandragora into draining itself away. I might even say it's one of my favorite moments in the whole season. Four sounds so badass as he proclaims: "Come on Hieronymous. You can do better!" Baker makes his Doctor seem like a real tough guy during that sequence. It's a fun nuance to the character.

It's quite nice that there is also a secondary villain who is much more of a traditional Who baddie. Frederico has all kinds of tyranical  aspirations throughout the story (it's also quite fun to watch him be so cruel to his poor servants all the time!). But he's suddenly revealed as being painfully insignificant to the real menace of the story as Part Three comes to an end. With still an entire episode remaining, he gets killed off and the plot shifts its attention to its true conflict. It's a very unique way to structure things. This lifts the story above mediocrity just enough that it becomes legitimately notable. Unlike most stories of this period that are blatant filler. 

Our other Mid-Ranger is Face of Evil. Another story that sets out to do something very unique. This is one of the things we can really appreciate about Season Fourteen. Much of its content tries to be very different from the usual sort of plotlines that we get get from Doctor Who. A very commendable effort from the writers that contributed in that particular year. 

Face of Evil is particularly impressive in the way it challenges the usual formula because it doesn't really have an antagonist in it. There's no traditional mustache-twirling villain that's up to something terrible. Some characters certainly seem less likeable than others. But, ultimately, everyone is just the victim of a really bad mistake the Doctor made in his past. It's a great new way to tell a story that we haven't really seen before (The Ark is, perhaps, vaguely similar - but not much!). This all leads to a great little cliffhanger at the end of Part One. 

Parts Two and Three, however, leave a lot to be desired. Particularly with the way certain elements of the plot are suddenly not making a lot of sense. The Doctor explains that an impenetrable barrier has been created between the Tesh and the Sevateem because of a displacement in time. But then, in the very next scene, the Sevateem seem to get harmed by these weird beams of light that come out from said barrier. Not sure exactly why that happens. The temporal shift has a defense system, after all?! A clear explanation is never given. Also, Xoanan decides to let his invisible monsters into the area where the tribe lives. The Doctor claims he's created a defense against them. But then the monsters still attack without any hindrance. And then, worst of all, we get to see what the invisible creatures look like when Tomas shoots one with an energy weapon. It's a giant floating Tom Baker Head. But, if that's how they appear, then how was one leaving footprints back in Episode One?!   

The other big problem that develops during these middle episodes is the fact that I find myself feeling no real emotional connection to anyone populating the story. Well, okay, I can't entirely say that. Leela is completely likeable right from her first moment onscreen. Tomas is not bad either. But I don't really enjoy anyone else from the Sevateem or the Tesh. It's difficult to be rooting for the Doctor to fix things when I'm not really fond of anyone that his actions will save. 

The plot during these two parts also tends to just, sort of, wander aimlessly most of the time. Like it's not sure where it's meant to go. Which gives us some fairly odd cliffhangers. Tomas firing wildly at the end of Two seems largely inconsequential. And the ending of Part Three is, in some ways, full of deep symbolism as the Doctor seems crushed by the weight of his mistakes. In other ways, though, it just kinda looks a bit silly and doesn't make a lot of sense. 

Part Four does feel like it gets things back on course. Neeva's journey through the story comes to a very interesting fruition. The actor playing him does a great job. But then, he was totally awesome in The War Games too. 

Things do end nicely for Face of Evil. But that doesn't erase the fact that  half the story is a bit of a mess. The season had the potential to get two Classics from Chris Boucher's pen. But that only would have happened if this script had gotten a bit better of a polish during the editing stage. I think, particularly, of those sequences I described earlier that seem largely illogical. Just a few lines of dialogue would have easily fixed most of those problems. Holmes, himself, might have been too busy writing his own stories when, maybe, he should have been concentrating more on his job as a script editor.

Still, overall, I won't complain too hard about either of these stories. Yes, they have some problems. But, in the greater scheme of things, the Good outweighs the Bad. 

The Truly Bad

Like Season Thirteen, we've got another nasty stinker, here. I am always mystified by many of the seasons that fans consider to be so amazing when they have a story like this in them. I'm not sure how we're supposed to ignore a whole series of really bad episodes and swear wholeheartedly that this is one of the best years of Doctor Who. I can't truly call a season "great" if it it's got this sort of issue. "Nearly great", maybe. But that's the best I can give it.

Thus far in these reviews, this has been happening a lot in the show. Quite often there seems to be one adventure that mars the beauty of that particular collection of tales. Even the legendary Season Five has Enemy of the World sitting in the middle of it like a giant turd! 

In Season Fourteen, it's The Hand of Fear that drags everything down. By no means as horrible as The Android Invasion from last year. But still pretty awful. 

I'll start by saying that the final few minutes of this story are quite beautiful. There's a great little sequence written by Tom and Liz that takes us through a fun range of emotions as Sarah Jane decides, once and for all, that she's leaving the TARDIS.. Only to be told she has to go anyway because the Doctor received the Call to Gallifrey. It's all very touching and will probably always be one of the best farewell scenes any companion will ever get. 

This is the only thing in Hand of Fear that is all that good. 

For some odd reason, I like to pick on the Star Wars movie Rogue One when I write in here. Not sure why I feel the need to make comparisons between the two franchises like this but I'm going to do it again. 

As anyone will say: first impressions are important. Start things off on the wrong foot and the damage control from the negative initial experience can be insurmountable. Rogue One does this by having an imperial shuttle land on a planet a brilliant technical engineer lives on. Their intent is to, basically, abduct the tech guy and force him to get the Death Star to work properly. There's this big dramatic sequence where the tech guy sees the shuttle land and has all the time in the world to get his family to flee their home. The whole thing feels really drawn out. Like it ought to have taken seconds instead of minutes. The shuttle should have just landed, pretty much, on top of the guy's home, scooped them all up and then flown back off into space. But, instead, they land several miles away from the home and take an endless amount of time traipsing over hill and dale to apprehend him. In the end, it's a completely silly-looking opening scene. If you're trying to catch someone, why are you making your arrival obvious from a great distance away so that he has an eternity to pack up his family and screw off before you can get there? This leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth about Rogue One before they even flash the titles . I might have even been able to forgive some other mistakes it makes later on more easily if it hadn't been off to such a bad start. 

Hand of Fear doubles that impact by making its first two scenes quite crappy 

The very opening line sits badly. We see a ship in space and hear King Rokon speaking in voice-over. We're not sure if this is a message being sent to the vessel or some kind of opening narration that's similar to what we will get in Deadly Assassin. Either way, it's poorly done. If it's a radio transmission, there's some really unnatural expository dialogue in it. But if it's meant to just be voice-over narration, it doesn't explain things well enough! 

A lot of the rest of the stupidity of the opening moments on Kastria doesn't really start to become clear until later in the story. But, essentially, if the entire civilisation is falling to pieces, why are they wasting so much time and resources on executing Eldrad? It seems there are plenty of ways to kill him right on the planet. If nothing else, they could just drop him down the abyss he will eventually fall into in Part Four. Why throw him on a spaceship and blow him up when your whole society is crumbling around you? Especially since this seems to be the only ship they have. Wouldn't it have been smarter to throw those Race Banks onto the rocket and gone off to find a new world to colonise? Instead, everyone dies on Kastria while Eldrad gets shuttled off. Not a lot of logic going on, here. Makes about as much sense as letting someone you're coming to capture see you park your big old spacecraft eight miles away from his house! 

But if only the stupidity ended there. 

The next sequence is equally dumb. The Doctor and Sarah wandering through a quarry while sirens blare and a man waves at them frantically to get out but still don't realize immediately that they're in terrible danger was one of the most ludicrous things I've ever seen on the show. Apparently, Crayford not looking under his eyepatch for three years wasn't silly enough.We need to go for something even more ridiculous. 

It doesn't help that the avalanche caused by the blast looks gigantic but seems negligible. The Doctor, somehow, manages to stay on top of all the rubble as it came sliding down on him. And Sarah is caught in some kind of special gap underneath the rock so that no actual harm comes to her beyond passing out from shock cause she grabs a hand and thinks it's the Doctor's. 

This just might be the worst first impression a Doctor Who story has ever made on me! 

From this point, onward, it's just an endless pursuit to pad the episodes out. This is a four-parter but there's hardly enough plot to fill up even two So the story just drags and drags and drags... 

The plot is so threadbare: Eldrad can re-constitute himself with radiation. Sarah takes what's left of him to a nuclear plant.  Once regenerated, the Doctor takes him to Kastria but it's all been destroyed. They trip him with a scarf and save the world in so doing. End of story. There's so little there and this becomes obvious quite quickly. 

The first real sign of blatant padding hits us at the end of Part One. I still remember the first time I watched it. In order to fill up the time still remaining in the episode, we get an endless series of shots of Sarah Jane walking through various sections of a power plant. I thought to myself during my initial viewing: "This is it, isn't it? The rest of this episode is just going to be an extensive tour of a nuclear reactor." Sure enough, it was. 

t gets even worse as the Doctor and Professor Carter start pursuing her. We have to watch them go through the same arrangement of boring shots. I swear the last four minutes of Part One is just people walking around a power plant! I was quite happy once I actually got the story on VHS (and, subsequently, DVD). so I could just skip to Part Two. There's no need to watch a whole lot of nothing going on for the better part of five minutes!

This whole problem persists through the other three episodes. Because of this, scenes that are meant to be character moments are ruined. The plant manager calling his wife or Sarah and the Doctor saying they care about each other lose a lot of their effectiveness cause they feel more like just an attempt to fill up some minutes. 

And we can't forget the trick that gets used in Part Four to mark time. Once more, the Doctor has to deal with traps. They, pretty much, just re-create what we got a few seasons ago in Death to the Daleks (once more, someone who has been long-dead is meant to be observing them). It's almost like they're trying to make it as clear as possible that they know they're abusing a worn-out device! 

I've already unpacked quite a bit, here. My problems with Hand of Fear, however, are far from over.  I'll try to restrain myself and only tackle a few more major points. 

The airstrike in Part Three has multiple levels of stupidity to it. I find it hard to believe that a physicist qualified enough to hold a senior position at a power plant would think it a good idea to drop nuclear bombs on top of a nuclear reactor. Hell, even someone learning physics at a high school level would be against it! It's even more ridiculous that the military actually approves the request and jetfighters arrive faster than it would have taken to deliver a pizza to the place!       

Everyone jumping in a jeep and driving out a quarter-mile from where the bombs are going to drop becomes even dumber. Sarah and the gang can hide behind the vehicle and plug their noses all they want, they are going to get vaporised. It's like the writers are depending on the fact that people don't actually know how a nuclear explosion works. The whole thing is just painful to watch. 

My other really big objection is how loosely-defined Eldrad's powers actually seem to be. Basically, she can do whatever the story requires of her. The ring, for instance, seems to only possess you if you come in contact with it. Until the writers needed a bit of filler. Then, suddenly, if you received a stun blast from it in an earlier episode, it can also take you over. Which leads us, of course, to an "exciting" battle on a set of stairs where Professor Carter swings a styrofoam wrench at the Doctor, trips over his own feet and plunges to his death. Who cares that there's not a lot of internal logic going on, here?! We filled a few minutes!

Eldrad, herself, acquires the ability to take what would have been a huge nuclear explosion and convert it into the raw power she needs to complete her regeneration (not sure how taking a dip in the core of a reactor wasn't enough!). It seems a pretty damned big leap that an alien can just, naturally, do that. Maybe if she had some advanced technology of some sort on her to assist in the process - it could be a bit more believable. But, nope, you can just launch missiles at her and she swallows them up and uses them to feel better. All because, like the rest of the episodes, Part Three was also running short on time. So setting up the whole airstrike scenario filled the necessary gap. 

I could go on. But I think I've made my point. Hand of Fear was, pretty much, a waste of time. A preposterous tale whose only redeeming quality is that it gives a beloved companion a fond farewell. Otherwise, I find the whole thing quite unbearable. 

The Fake Classic 

"Fake Classic" is a term I've come up with all on my own. It refers to the idea that there are certain stories that are, more-or-less, universally accepted by fans as being one of the absolute best adventures the show has ever featured. When I watch these tales, however, I don't feel the same. They might even be really good - but I wouldn't say they were Doctor Who at its best. 

In my Review of Season Thirteen, I pointed out three different stories that I feel fall under this heading. Two of them were still quite strong, They just weren't Classics. There were enough problems with them that I just couldn't quite give them the label that most of fandom assigns to them. But I still liked them a lot. 

And then, there was Seeds of Doom. I really didn't have a lot of nice things to say about this particular yarn. I actually find it to be a fairly poor story. So I'm not sure why it's held in such high regard. It's a poorly-structured monstrosity that might have worked as just a simple two-parter. But, instead, the same plot just gets re-hashed so that we get six episodes. In my opinion, this is just a really bad story. How anyone considers it a Classic is beyond me. 

Talons of Weng Chiang ventures into a similar territory. I don't dislike it quite as much as I do Seeds of Doom. But I can't say I like it all that much more. It doesn't just have a few issues that prevent it from being considered a Classic, it's got a tonne! Just not as many as the six-parter that finished out Season Thirteen. 

So let's get the biggest disaster out of the way: Talons of Weng Chiang is offensive. The first time I ever saw it, I was about Twelve. Not an age where we are, generally, all that racially-sensitive. This would have also been way back in the early 80s. A far less enlightened time than today. On top of that, I grew up in a rural area where, even to this day, the people that live there are not all that much concerned with political correctness. Even with all these conditions in place, the moment I saw the first shot of a white actor with a prosthetic piece around his eyes to make him look Chinese, I thought to myself: "I'm not even Asian and this is offending me horribly!" 

There were a few times in the 60s where Doctor Who got racially-offensive. Some of the white actors in The Crusades throw on some tan-in-a-bottle to look more Arabic. If you're listening carefully in The Celestial Toymaker, you can actually hear a character using "an unpleasant N-word". Both of these instances do cross a fairly serious line, but I don't think the stories quite merit being "cancelled" in some way. If a day comes, however, where Talons of Weng Chiang gets stricken from canon because of its racism, I would really have no problem with that. Even if I found everything else in this story to be excellent (which, you will soon see, I don't!),  I could still never show these episodes to an Asian friend and not bow my head in shame for being a Doctor Who fan. It's a serious embarrassment. 

With that out of the way, let's move on to some other problems: 

The first two parts move at a snail's pace. This becomes especially poignant when we get a chase scene near the end of Episode Two that gives off a very similar vibe to a sequence we saw during another six-parter at the end of a season. Like the whole car/hovercraft/mini-copter chase that we got in Planet of Spiders, the Doctor's pursuit of the phantom through the rafters of the Palace feels more like protracted filler than anything all that exciting. Just like in Spiders, everything comes to a crashing halt as we just watch a long sequence play out. Admittedly, the chase scene does have some spectacle to it (just like the one in Spiders did)..But, for the most part, it falls a bit flat. Just by the way the whole thing's arranged, the tension of the pursuit dies out fairly quickly. And we are left, instead, with something that drags on more than it ought to. 

Before getting too harsh, I will say there's still some charm to these first two parts. All the actors recognize they're in a period piece and make their characters as colorful as possible to help create the mood of the time. Even a smaller role like the officer working the front desk at the station when the Doctor and Leela are called in for questioning is great fun to watch. But, in the end, interesting characters can only divert us from lack of plot for so long. During its first two parts, Talons is feeling pretty insubstantial. 

Parts Three and Four, on the other hand, are quite enjoyable. Three is especially good for Leela. How glorious it was to see a female companion who could really take care of herself in a perilous situation. She nearly manages to solve the main conflict of the story all on her own. I really enjoyed watching her in action during this episode.

Allowing a good chunk of Part Four to just be us watching Chang's magic show was also surprisingly engaging. It could have, easily, come across as more stalling for time.But, because there are still some interesting subplots weaving through the whole execution of the stage production, it's really quite effective. 

This middle section almost gets me hoping that this is just a six-parter that started out rough but got better. Sadly, however, all that changes in Episodes Five and Six. 

Greel forgetting the key to the Time Cabinet is another one of those utterly silly pieces of writing that we see so often in 70s Who. Another one of those "maybe they won't think about it too hard" moments. If I have finally found a contraption that I definitely need to get into soon or I'm going to die, I don't put a bumbling acolyte with an opium problem in charge of carrying the key to it. I keep it on my person at all times. Which is really what should have happened, here. Greel should have just taken the key out of his pocket at the beginning of Part Five, opened the Time Cabinet and climbed inside. Talons of Weng Chiang should have ended right there. 

But, of course, there's still two episodes left. So we needed a totally unbelievable plot complication to extend things. This string of circumstances does cause Jago and Litefoot to, at last, unite. Which is rather entertaining. For many fans, it's utterly delightful. And I won't argue with that too much. I will agree that the two of them are a fun Holmesian Double Act -  but I will also say they are not my favorite.

Even with Greel's silly mistake, we still don't have enough to fill the last two episodes. So they do things like trying to get Jago and Litefoot to "sell" the whole business with the dumb waiter as being anything more than one of the most obvious capture-and-escape time-fillers in the whole history of the show. The actors almost manage to pull it off, too. They nearly conceal the shoddy writing with their charm. They are both, without a doubt, ridiculously talented. But no one is good enough to cover up just how poor of a piece of padding that moment was! 

The crux of Part Six reminds me a lot of that bit in Time Warrior that I complain about. Where the Doctor is being fired upon for a considerable amount of time  by Irongron's men with muskets at point blank range and still no one hits him. This time, we hear an endless series of laser blasts going off from a statue that's only a few feet away from characters we don't want to see get killed. They, somehow, do a bunch of ducking and covering for the better part of an episode and get through the predicament relatively unscathed. It all becomes a bit too hard to swallow. Apparently, a Homunculus has as good an aim as a stormtrooper! 

There's also some pretty poor plot logic going on. One of the biggest being how the Homunculus just shoots down a bunch of Greel's Asian servants as they charge into the room. I get it, he's getting pretty crazy with blood lust. But surely even he can see that the servants will solve a major problem for him if he lets them live. It's also quite silly how he's not been able to hit the broad side of barn up until they enter. Then, suddenly, he can take all the servants down in seconds. Because, of course, none of them are characters that we don't want to see get killed. This is the magical plot armor that protects you during the extended shoot-out that bogs down most of Episode Six. 

Ultimately, everything just sort of fizzles out into a fairly big mess. The climax of the adventure is, basically, Tom Baker wrestling with an over-sized doll that he's holding over his head then tossing to the floor. Even the perfect timing of the muffin man shouting somewhere offscreen feels just a tad too coincidental. 

It all ends quite poorly and the whole season concludes on another sour note. For me, at least. I know most of fandom feels differently!.

Again, the desire to make things feel more epic at the end of the year by finishing off with a six-parter fails quite badly. Seeds of Doom failed worse. But Talons of Weng Chiang was only marginally better. 

ULTIMATE CONCLUSION (I GOT TIRED OF SAYING "FINAL VERDICT" ALL THE TIME AND WENT FOR A CHEAP SYNONYM!) 

And so, we return to the Great Question: Does Season Fourteen exemplify that "Golden Age of Doctor Who" that so many go on about when discussing this era? 

I think my breakdown makes it pretty obvious: There are definitely some high points to this season - but it also hits some pretty nasty lows. It's still not terrible, of course. But I don't see it as being much more glorious than any other average season of the show. 

I do love a lot of what Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes do with Doctor Who when they're at the helm. But there were some serious missteps, too. Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks did breed a certain level of laziness into the authors that contributed regularly during their period that Hinchcliffe and Holmes continued to support. I would have been more impressed with them if they had put their foot down and said something to the nature of: "Look, you can't just submit something like this to us. It's too light on plot and relies too heavily on padding. Give us a story that properly fills out its episodes." Had they done something like that, I might actually consider it the Golden Age of Doctor Who that so many claim it be.

Having said that, I also won't deny that there are eight incredible episodes in this season. Two stories that rank in my Top Ten. That counts for something, right? Even if Hand of Fear sucked and Talons of Weng Chiang is a Fake Classic. 

And that is a valid point. So I will say that Season Fourteen comes closer to exemplifying a Golden Age of Doctor Who than any other season Hinchcliffe and Holmes put together. So I will give it a bit more respect for that. 

I will also say that Fourteen feels a lot more cohesive than Thirteen. There's a much better through-plot going on in the season. We get some stories about having to leave Sarah Jane Smith behind and going to Gallifrey. And then we have a few more adventures that involve meeting and getting to know Leela. This gives us a very nice flow for the better part of the year. Bookending the season with pseudo-historicals was also a nice effect. Things do feel "tidier" here than they did previously. 

Still, I'm sure some of you will be upset with me for what I have said about this period. Hinchcliffe and Holmes were, to me, mere mortals who were capable of making mistakes. Just like any other producer and script editor. And I get why that may bother you. By stating such an opinion, I have offended the gods! 

Personally, though, I find trying to make a white guy look and act Chinese far more offensive! 

Well, that wraps things up for the Hinchliffe/Holmes era. Let's see how I feel about the second producer that has to contend with Tom Baker!   

INTERESTING ROB TYMEC TRIVIA FACT: Season Fourteen features my all-time fave TARDIS Console Room (thus far).