In June, the
BBC are releasing the first Bluray season box set for classic Doctor
Who. They're starting with Season Twelve, Tom Baker's first season,
and I can't fault them. It might not be his best season (fan
consensus would peg that a year further on) but it does have a lot of
big monster stories including Genesis of the Daleks,
a big UNIT romp as the opener and the era-defining Ark In
Space all wrapped up in an
ongoing narrative that actually moves from one story to another
pretty smoothly.
Good
choice... but... you know what other seasons might make good box
sets? (Hint hint...)
#5: Season
Twenty-Five (Sylvester McCoy Year 2)
I'm sure the
consensus pick for McCoy would be Season Twenty-Six which has all the
real “Dark Doctor” stuff but, for me, the Twenty-Five is the
better season. You have a super strong opener in Remembrance of
the Daleks which is always seems
to be the story fans pick as the archetypal McCoy story. The
Greatest Show In The Galaxy and
The Happiness Patrol
are both brilliantly odd stories that show how good the McCoy era
could be outside the world of old monsters and continuity and I
really feel that's something that should be showcased more for the
Seventh Doctor era.
Okay,
Silver Nemesis is weak
as a story and one of the low points of the era but each of McCoy
seasons has a dud and Silver Nemesis,
in my humble, is still better than Battlefield,
the dud of the supposedly stronger Season Twenty-Six.
#4: Season
Twenty (Peter Davison Year 2)
I have to
admit an odd thing: I adore Peter Davison as the Doctor but I genuinely have trouble recommending individual stories to people
wanting to try him out. Okay, Caves of Androzani
is fantastic but it gives off a very off-putting vibe when the best
story for a character you can recommend is the one where he dies.
Also,
Twenty isn't even my favourite season of Davison's. I genuinely think
Nineteen is better even if the final story is a fluffy bit of nothing
that squandered what little drama could have been wrung from Adric's
death. Twenty, however, has a lot to recommend it from the season
showcase point of view, especially if you include The Five
Doctors at the end (which you
should). Mawdryn Undead
and Enlightenment are
very strong stories even if the middle part of the trilogy doesn't
work in any fashion. Arc of Infinity
is a flash Gallifrey story that at least sets up a few things about
The Five Doctors even
if, again, a lot about it doesn't quite work. Snakedance
is, of course, amazing and I have a personal soft spot for The
King's Demons which at least has
some great costumes and some gloriously bizarre line readings from
Mark Strickson.
In
short: lots of monsters, lots of at least recognisable continuity for
the modern series fan and no less than two stories of glorious
scenery chewing from Anthony Ainley.
#3: Season
Two (William Hartnell Year 2)
Its long.
The sixties seasons were long and at thirty-nine episodes this
actually weighs in as one of the shortest plus only two of them are
actually missing which makes it the most complete season of the black
and white years. That is actually part of the appeal in picking this
one: only two episodes to do reconstruction on and you can get away
with just doing them as a slide show or even just using the William
Russell in-character narration from the VHS release since no one is
really going to mine if you just... skip doing full reconstructions
on the story with blackface in it.
Aside from
the practical aspects there is the sheer breadth of stories in this
season: there are two very different Daleks stories; a story about
the TARDIS crew being shrunk that uses all this fantastic Victorian
stage craft to achieve its effects; some straight science fiction
stories in The Rescue and The
Space Museum; two fantastic pure
historical adventure serial-style romps in The Romans
and The Crusade; the
first pseudo-historical The Time Meddler
featuring Peter Butterworth as the Meddling Monk, a character William
Hartnell has the time of his life bouncing off; and the ultimate
Marmite story in all of Doctor Who, The Web Planet,
which I adore and is worth watching just for how strange everything
is.
#2: Season
Fourteen (Tom Baker Year 3)
The height
of the show's imperial phase after which it was struck low by Mary
Whitehouse but a really strong season regardless. You've got two of
the best companions the series ever had appearing in this season: Lis
Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith and Louise Jameson as Leela, both putting
in some of the best performances of their tenures. You've got some of
the real writing highlights of the series, too, with The Masque of
Mandragora, The Deadly
Assassin and The
Robots of Death. Actually,
Robots is something of
a go to for me when people ask me for a classic serial to try out the
old stuff. Its an Agatha Christie/Isaac Asimov mystery mash-up with
the most gorgeous (and, as the producer had just been fired) budget
destroying set and costume design in the classic series.
Okay,
The Hand of Fear is
weak and The Talons of Weng-Chiang...
ugh. Even now I want to give it a pass on the strength of Jago and
Litefoot alone but damn
is that a racist story and the box set will probably need one of
those “it was the times” labels they put on Tintin books now
(which is a good thing, by the way, I am not complaining).
#1: Season
Ten (Jon Pertwee Year 4)
Plain and
simple bias: I think this is the best season of classic Doctor Who as
a season. It starts off with The Three Doctors
which is this fantastic birthday party of a story. It establishes a
lot of Gallifrey lore, of course, and has the UNIT crew on hand as
well as the two previous Doctors so there's a large ensemble cast of
fun characters going up against a threat from the dawn of Time Lord
civilisation. After that there's Carnival of Monsters,
another perennial favourite recommendation of mine, which is a rather
low key story but with such an interesting format and central concept
along with some interesting design work on the alien parts of the
story. It also has alien carnival folk Vorg and Shirna, one of the
all-time best Robert Holmes lovable rogue double acts (and so
married).
That's
followed by the twelve episode Dalek epic Frontier in
Space/Planet of the Daleks which
has a somewhat odd but probably smart format. Frontier
is this politically-charged conspiracy thriller featuring the Master
in all his urbane glory whilst Planet
is this very traditional Flash Gordon-style adventure serial by the
Daleks' original creator Terry Nation. In honesty, in many ways
Planet is a remake of
the original Dalek series from 1963 but its an entertaining remake
for all that.
Then,
finally, there's The Green Death
which has some horribly mangled politics (if we're being generous)
but its the last hurrah of the main UNIT-era cast; Pertwee gets some
of his best comedy moments in this story; and the maggots are one of
the iconic visuals of the entire series.
So
that's my list and, as to the already announced Season Twelve box
set, I look forward to finally seeing what the giant clam looks like
in HD.
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