Shocked

Another You Are Not Alone from DWM circa 2009 courtesy of my ever-bashful colleague Neil Harris. Warning: if you are an actor who has played the part of 'the Doctor' please stop reading now!

Docwatching

I’ve seen Colin Baker naked.  That’s my entry into the ‘most arresting opening line for a DWM article of all time’ competition. It was about twenty years ago, in a touring production of Frankie & Johnny, with Colin in the role of Johnny. I don’t remember a great deal about the pay, but two things have stuck with me; Colin’s extremely impressive New York accent, and the sight, as he whipped off his dressing gown to get into bed, of the Doctor’s equally impressive bottom.

I’m not really one to judge these things but it was certainly a derriere worthy of a Time Lord of the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. But it also goes to show that occasionally, just occasionally, it’s not always the best idea to book front-row seats. Or to go to the theatre with your mum.

Going to the theatre to see the stars of Doctor Who was a regular occurrence for me during the '80s and '90s. Goodness knows how many Alan Ayckbourne plays I must have attended. I must’ve seen Noises Off at least half a dozen times. I even saw Paul Darrow in Dennis Spooner’s A Sting In The Tale; he gave a very thorough performance - no piece of scenery was left unscathed. And I saw Deborah Watling in a Wonder Woman costume in Ray Cooney’s Wife Begins At 40 – she was even more jiggly than Colin Baker.

Why did I do this? Partly to see my heroes in the flesh – quite literally in Colin Baker’s case - and partly out of admiration, to see my favourite actors doing something other than trying to run very quickly down very short corridors. I know some fans would go to the stage door after the show, to actually meet their heroes and solicit autographs. But I could never do that. I know that in presence of a star of Doctor Who I would be reduced to a quivering jelly.

I don’t think I’m alone in following the careers of the Doctors and companions on stage and screen. I want to support them in their future endeavours. I don’t want to feel that doing Doctor Who was a career move...Of Death, I want to feel they went on to bigger and brighter things. Sometimes they might even play a part like the Doctor – which is a bit like getting an extra little bit of Doctor Who. I’m thinking of Patrick Troughton in A Hitch In Time and The Box Of Delights, Paul McGann in Sea Of Souls, or even Sylvester McCoy’s turn as The Amazing Lollipop Man in Doctors. And let me tell you – Colin Baker was also, in his own way, an amazing lollipop man.

But for Doctor-ish cameos, you can’t really beat Tom Baker. Shortly after he left Doctor Who I remember seeing a feature on the local news about a play that Tom was appearing in – and I didn’t want to see him, because he’d cut off his curls and didn’t look like the Doctor any more. After that he suffered about a decade of being criminally under-used, his only major role being in The Life & Loves Of She-Devil*, where he also got his bottom out (it wasn’t a patch on Colin’s). But now he’s enjoyed a renaissance because the fans who adored him are now in a position to reward him, in Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), Strange, Monarch Of The Glen and Little Britain, playing either the Doctor or an exaggerated version of himself – as if there’s any discernible difference.

It’s interesting to trace the careers of each of the Doctors, both before and after Doctor Who. Before Doctor Who William Hartnell was one of the most accomplished film actors of his time; after Doctor Who he did a panto, an episode of Z-Cars and died**. Patrick Troughton went from prestigious costume dramas to Doctor Who and back again – and he also did The Omen (unlike Sylvester McCoy, who did the O-men before he was in Doctor Who). Jon Pertwee returned to his comedy roots with Worzel Gummidge. Peter Davison has enjoyed pretty much constant employment and acclaim, in both sitcoms and comedy-drama, from A Very Peculiar Practice to At Home With The Braithwaites – apart from a brief period in the mid-'90s where he couldn’t get arrested, not even for Ain’t Misbehavin'.

Sadly, we haven’t seen enough of Colin Baker (unless you also went to see Frankie & Johnny) and Sylvester McCoy; it seems, unfairly, they might be associated in some people’s minds with Doctor Who losing its way (which it didn’t). Though Sylvester has recently played the Fool to Ian McKellan’s King Lear, which will hopefully shut up those smarmy pundits who have used his name as a cheap punchline. Maybe more ex-Doctors should do Shakespeare? We’ve seen Sylvester give us his Fool, we’ve seen David Tennant give us his Hamlet – is it too late for Colin Baker to show us his Bottom?

But what does the future hold in store for David Tennant? Will he follow his predecessor to the states to appear in sci-fi-and-fantasy shows and movies (plus a Doctor-ish cameo in The Sarah Silverman Programme)? Or will he remain the UK? I daresay ITV are offering him the lead in various angst-ridden detective dramas at this very moment – he might even finally get that part in Taggart he’s always wanted. I daresay BBC One are offering him the lead in numerous aspirational comedy-dramas about thirtysomething couples who are having terrible trouble finding a decent babysitter. And I daresay BBC Four are offering him a whole list of famous dead authors, scientists and comedians for them to do docu-dramas about.

Or will he return to the stage? I hope so. Because we’ll all be there, sitting in the front row. Waiting for the bit where he takes the dressing gown off.

* This is not remotely true, he was in loads of things, Jonny 2015.

 ** This is also incorrect. He did a Softly Softly, a No Hiding Place and a weird Cliff Richard religious programme.

I Know Him So Well

Another You Are Not Alone from the mists of time...

THE PIP TORRENS FACTOR

Christmas, as we all know, is a time traditionally spent at home, sitting on a sofa, eating chocolate liqueurs, drinking brandy, breaking wind and watching television. But while you’re curled up in front of a Harry Potter movie, or a prestigious BBC costume drama, or a box-set of sitcom, why not pass the time by also playing The Great Doctor Who Cast-Spotting Game?

The rules are simple. Whenever you’re watching a British film, drama series, sitcom - or even when you’re going out to see a play – and you recognise an actor because they’ve been in Doctor Who, you must immediately shout out the name of the Doctor Who story they were in. This scores you five points.

You can then score an additional five points if you can name the character the actor played and another five points if you can name the actor. And finally ten points are awarded if you can accurately quote a line of their dialogue (and not just a “yes”, “no”, “help” or “aaargh!” – it must be a line unique to that story).

Say, for instance, you’re watching On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and you spot the guy out of The Deadly Assassin. Name the story, that’s five points. Say Chancellor Goth, that’s another five. Identify him as Bernard Horsfall, that’s another five. And quote the line, “He is abusing a legal technicality” and that’s another ten.

(Plus you can score bonus points by remembering the same actor’s appearances in The Mind Robber, The War Games and Planet of the Daleks, playing Gulliver, First Time Lord and Taron respectively. If you can recollect any of his dialogue from these stories, you’re a better fan than me. And while you’re watching On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, don’t forget there are points to be gained from spotting George Baker – Login, Full Circle – and Catherine Schell – the Countess, City of Death, “It’s a very rare and precious Chinese puzzle box, you won’t be able to open it” – ten points.)

Additional rules. Clearly it is not entering into the spirit of the game to check the Radio Times for the cast-list beforehand or to look up information on the internet while the programme is being broadcast. If you are familiar with the Big Finish adventures, you can include them – that way, you can score points with Matt Lucas, David Walliams, Tony Blackburn, Leslie Philips and all three Goodies. Similarly, I would say that The Sarah-Jane Adventures, Torchwood, The Scream of the Shalka and Death Comes to Time all count (if only for the sheer pleasure of counting Alan Dale and Stephen Fry amongst Doctor Who luminaries). Whether you include Dimensions in Time or The Curse of Fatal Death is a matter for you and your conscience.

And if you like – because this game is supposed to be fun – any actors who have played Doctors or companions score ten points (though you’re not allowed bonus points for listing all the stories they appeared in or for quoting any dialogue, as that would throw out the whole scoring system).

So there you have it. The Great Doctor Who Cast-Spotting Game. It works better if you’re playing it with a like-minded friend with a similar level of Doctor Who nerd-how, but to be honest, don’t we all play a variation of the game when we’re watching television alone anyway?

I’m not talking about deliberately seeking out shows because they feature Doctors and companions. I do that as well, of course, but that’s another article for another YANA. No, it’s about the surprise, the thrill, of seeing an actor you only really know from one or two Doctor Who stories appearing in something else. It’s like bumping into an old friend – spotting Drax in Midsomer Murders, spotting Li H’Sen Chang in Rome, spotting Fabian from The Twin Dilemma in Kingdom (and “May my bones rot for obeying it” – ten points). Plus there’s the comfort of knowing that the actors are still alive and well and that appearing in Doctor Who didn’t bring about a premature end to their acting career.

Similarly, at the theatre, there’s something spine-tingling about seeing an actor from Doctor Who in the flesh. Someone you’ve only ever seen in two-dimensions standing in a futuristic space corridor is now in front of you, on stage, in three-dimensional real life. The temptation is always to shout out a line from their Doctor Who story, to see if they recognise it – but I strongly recommend you don’t. Though I do remember once seeing ‘alternative comedian’ Lee Cornes doing a stand-up routine about how crap Doctor Who was, and heckling him by pointing out he’d played the Trickster in Kinda.

It’s the reason why I buy theatre programmes, just to look through the actors’ biographies to see if they were in Doctor Who. It’s one of those shows that every actor has to have appeared in, along with Doctors and The Bill. Though there was a period during the eighties when Doctor Who got accidentally misplaced from many an acting CV – and even now it’s interesting when an actor neglects to mention their appearance in the show, as though it’s still something to be ashamed of. Though to be fair, if I’d once played a Swampie in The Power Of Kroll I’d probably want to keep quiet about it too, Philip Bird*.

I check out most productions at the Globe in London - Henry Gordon Jago made a terrific Falstaff, the Steward from Platform One was a marvellous Timon and the rebel Areta from Vengeance of Varos excelled as Tamora in Titus Andronicus. Which is the other delight of seeing actors from Doctor Who – you discover that they’re much, much better than you ever gave them credit for, that you’d misjudged their abilities based upon a performance from twenty years ago (“...or something truly loathsome such as you!” – ten points). Though I also watch a lot of archive telly, which has led me to discover that the guy who is not totally great as Commander Millington in The Curse of Fenric was equally devoid of expression in an old Jack Rosenthal play (“The ancient enemies shall seek each other out and all shall die!” – ten points).

In a way, The Great Doctor Who Cast-Spotting Game is a celebration of, for want of a less trite term, the BBC drama repertory company. Those under-appreciated professionals who would do a Doctor Who, then a Softly Softly, then maybe a Play For Today or a prestigious BBC costume drama before returning to do another Doctor Who. The great unsung heroes of television – the Bernard Archards, the Bernard Holleys, the Bernard Kays. The Prentis Hancocks and the Eileen Ways. The Milton Johns. And the greatest of them all – the Ronald Leigh-Hunt. Nobody could end a scene with a proclamation of impending doom like the Ronald Leigh-Hunt.

To be serious for one moment, the sad fact is that the increasing prevalence of ‘star casting’ means there isn’t really a place for these sort of anonymous character actors any more. It’s understandable, in these days of diminishing viewing figures, why casting directors want to get as many big names in a show as possible. The problem is, you end up with travesties like ITV’s Marple, where the quest for famous faces has taken priority over whether actors are suitable for – or are even capable of playing – their parts.

The Great Doctor Who Cast-Spotting Game also throws up fascinating facts. For instance, John Hurt is the only Emperor from I Claudius not to have been in Doctor Who**. If you count The Infinite Quest – as surely you must - then the only regular from Linda Green not to have done a Doctor Who is Dave Hill (it can only be a matter of time). By my calculation, there have only been about a dozen or so episodes of EastEnders not to feature someone from Doctor Who – after all, Dot Cotton, Den Watts and Peggy Mitchell all count. Five Blue Peter presenters have been in Doctor Who***. During the eighties, nearly every member of the cast of The Pallisers turned up in Doctor Who (including three in Black Orchid alone). Each of the actors to play the Doctor has appeared in at least one sitcom, of some sort. And so on, and so on... this is the sort of thing that keeps me awake at night.

And on that note, I have a challenge for you. After you’ve finishing boggling at the merciless impossibility of the Watcher’s Christmas Quiz, why not try The Great Doctor Who Cast-Spotting Game Challenge. It comes in two parts.

Part one is to find a TV series – a British TV show, drama or comedy – from the last fifty years not to feature any actors from Doctor Who. It must, however, be a TV series – not a one-off play or a single episode. And obviously this doesn’t include shows based around monologues – that’s cheating – or youth-oriented/children’s shows with a cast of TV newcomers.

It’s virtually impossible, I promise you. In the highly unlikely event that a show doesn’t feature Mark Benton in its cast, it will almost certainly include the actor Pip Torrens. He’s been in simply everything – hence ‘The Pip Torrens Factor’. He was Rocastle in Human Nature – (“I hope, Latimer, that one day you may have a just and proper war in which to prove yourself” – ten points). So if you can find a TV show which he hasn’t appeared in, that would be a good start.****

Part two is to find a TV series – again, a British TV show, drama or comedy – from the last fifty years where every actor has appeared in Doctor Who at some point. I’m not including extras – just speaking, credited cast members – and again you can’t have one-off plays, single episodes or monologues. And of course you can’t have Doctor Who as your answer, that would be cheating.

I don’t know what the answers are, by the way – or even if there are any, there might not be. But it’ll be fun trying to find out - I suspect Primeval might be a possible candidate for part one...*****

Footnotes from Jonny 2015:

* Actually he is quite proud of his Doctor Who appearance but doesn't count it because he was an extra.

** Well that dates this article, doesn’t it!

*** Actually I think it’s seven.
**** I once met Pip Torrens in real life, on the train near Honor Oak Park.

***** No, Jonny, the guy playing football in the opening scenes of Fear Her was a regular in Primeval.

Good Doctor

Back in 2009/2010 I wrote a regular column for Doctor Who Magazine, called You Are Not Alone. I wrote it under a pseudonym for two reasons; firstly, because the column would occasionally include hilariously shameful confessions so I wanted to be able to deflect some of that embarrassment, and secondly because I was writing comic strips and other articles for the magazine at the time and I get sick of seeing my name over and over again. Anyway, here’s one of the better ones.

Have you ever found yourself watching a film or a TV show, other than Doctor Who... and suddenly the Doctor turns up?

I don’t mean one of the actors to have played the Doctor, or actors who would be good choices to play the Doctor. I mean actors who are already playing an incredibly Doctor Who-ish character... but not in Doctor Who.

It’s tricky to define what makes a character Doctor Who-ish, but he or she should be intelligent, funny, obsessive. He or she should disrespect authority and flout convention. There should be something compellingly odd about them, something mercurial and enigmatic. A sense that, beneath the surface, darkness lies.

I’m not talking either about characters who may allegedly have been inspired by the Doctor, such as Marcie from Dark Season, Ken Campbell’s Erasmus Microman, Dr John Cornelius from Virtual Murder,  Dr John Strange from Strange (what is it about Doctors and being called John?) or even Dr John Chessington, the dotty inventor with Jon Pertwee’s bouffant and Peter Davison’s jumper who appeared in adverts for Chessington World Of Adventures.

There is something quintessentially British about the Doctor’s character and what really brings that home is seeing American attempts to do the same sort of thing. It’s as if they’re attempting to do ‘eccentric’ - but only within rigidly-defined parameters of eccentricity, due to a fear that audiences might not warm to a character they don’t entirely understand. The best of the bunch is Dr Emmet Brown from the Back To The Future movies, a US attempt at the Doctor, but without the danger or mystery. Doctor Who without the Who, basically. The same goes for Professor Arturo from Sliders; a fine character and a fine performance, but in comparison to the Doctor, decaffeinated.

The difference is that the Doctor is drawn from a tradition of dark and amoral figures from British children’s literature; think of the Professor from The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe or Cole Hawlings from The Box Of Delights (later played on television by Patrick Troughton). Most pertinently, there’s Professor Wedgwood from the Target Luna series and the various Quatermassi, all direct antecedents of the Doctor.

Anyway, here’s a top ten of the most Doctor Who-ish performances outside of Doctor Who.  Unfortunately, because David Tennant was later cast as the Doctor, I couldn’t include his incredibly Doctor Who-ish turn as Dr John Casanova in Casanova...

  
10 Alan Davies as Jonathan Creek.

Okay, so he’s a bit nasal, mumbly and lackadaisical, but on the other hand, he’s got perfect Doctor Who hair.

9 David Dixon as Ford Prefect in The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

David was cast partly because of his unusually pale blue eyes; he looks alien. And with his breathlessly fretful delivery, he’s playing Peter Davison’s Doctor before Peter Davison did. And of the two, his costume is clearly the more Doctor Who-ish.

8 David Collings as Silver in Sapphire & Steel

Following his twinkly and charismatic cameo in this early ‘80s ITV show, David Collings was on every fan’s wish-list to play the Doctor; eventually he played the part in one of Big Finish’s Unbound stories. But, ironically, he was more like the Doctor in Sapphire & Steel than in Doctor Who.

7 Richard O’Brien as Richard O’Brien in The Crystal Maze

Another one for the wish-lists, Richard O’Brien comes across as one of those people who spends most of their lives acting as though they’ve recently been beamed down to Earth. If anyone could pull off a suit covered in question marks, it’s him.

6 Jeff Goldblum as Dr Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park

Or the scientist he played in Independence Day, they’re both the same. Jeff’s quirky, train-of-thought delivery and ability to make technobabble sound sexy means that if anyone should’ve been the Doctor in a ‘90s Hollywood movie, it should’ve been him. Strikes me as being, potentially, a very Matt Smith-ish Doctor.

5 Ian Richardson as The Magician in The Magician’s House

In House Of Cards and Murder Rooms Ian demonstrated he could be both charming and terrifying at once. That’s what you want from a Doctor. And in The Magician’s House, he played a Hartnell-esque Doctor possibly even better than Hartnell did.

4 David Bowie as Nikola Tesla in The Prestige

We all know David Bowie is, in fact, an alien who fell to Earth during the ‘70s in order to make the homo superior children boogie. But never mind that, what matters is that in this role he’s mesmerising as a 19th-century scientist with a sinister secret and an even more sinister moustache. He could well have been the Doctor all along.

3 Donald Sutherland as Merrick Jamison-Smyth in Buffy The Vampire Slayer

No, not Anthony Stewart Head as Giles - Donald Sutherland’s watcher is the one to watch. He even has a floppy Doctor Who hat! Hypnotic, world-weary, inscrutable and absolutely a Time Lord. And that’s just in the video for Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting.

2 Johnny Depp as Ichabod Crane in Sleepy Hollow

Sleepy Hollow has to be, without doubt, the greatest Doctor Who story ever told that isn’t actually a Doctor Who story. Depp is every inch the Doctor – an unconventional 18th century detective, passionate, magnetic and with a love for outlandish gadgets.

1 Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory

And at number one, it’s Gene Wilder giving one of  the most Doctor Who-ish performances ever given (and that includes Doctor Who). He has it all; the costume, the hair, the eyes. The hat. The eccentricity, the easy charm, the unpredictability and the darkness. The understated black humour. If anyone shows how the Doctor should be played, it’s Gene in this film. He’s simultaneously adorable and terrifying. In particular, check out the scene where they’re on the boat ride and he starts reciting a rhyme about how ‘there’s no earthly way of knowing which direction we are going’...

All that’s missing is a cliffhanger sting.

I Love Them All

Way back in 2009 I wrote a regular column for Doctor Who Magazine. After they had published a poll of every Doctor Who story ever made, I followed it up with an article pointing out what was great - what was genuinely fantastic - about the stories that had the misfortune of finishing bottom (without exception because of shortcomings of the budget, not a lack of effort of those involved).

SMALL BEAUTIFUL EVENTS...

Last month, DWM published the results of its poll to find the fans’ favourite stories of all time. But just as there have to be winners, there also have to be losers. The turkeys. The clunkers. The Bandrils.

Except they’re not that bad. Although many of them are insanely off-beam, they’re also the most idiosyncratically Doctor Who-ish stories of them all. Whilst some of the best stories needn’t be Doctor Who at all – they could be movies in their own right – none of these stories could have been part of any other show. And, just as a pop star’s experimental b-sides are often their most interesting songs, these stories all show Doctor Who at its most ambitious and daring. None of these stories could be accused of ‘playing it safe’.

There’s something fascinating about these ‘losers’; they all had the potential to be great but took a wrong turning or fell victim to a lack of time and money. They not only make you appreciate the ‘better’ stories all the more, and make you realise how difficult it was to get any sort of Doctor Who made, good or bad... but sometimes little moments of marvellousness slip through.

They are the stories that only the fans could love. That’s what love is all about – whether it be love for a football team, a television show or a human being – it’s about loving something on the bad days as much as the good and about finding things to celebrate in the failures as well as the successes.

And that’s what this article is here to do; to celebrate the stories that got away. The stories which are as much a part of Doctor Who as The Empty Child or The Talons Of Weng-Chiang. The stories we all secretly adore.

200 - THE TWIN DILEMMA

Back when The Twin Dilemma was broadcast there was no such thing as a bad Doctor Who story. So long as it had the music and the words ‘Doctor’ and ‘Who’ at the beginning, I loved it. Only later, when I grew into an oh-so-cynical teenager, did I begin to divide the stories into classics and cringeworthies.

Which, with The Twin Dilemma, is a shame, because there’s so much to love about it. The BBC Micro graphics of the equations game. The glowing overlay when Mestor communes with Azmael. And Helen Blatch as Fabian is an ever-quotable joy; I’m convinced this story started life as a script for Juliet Bravo.

But at the heart of it is Colin Baker’s extraordinarily compelling performance. There’s the bombast – think of that triumphant moment where he’s climbing a mountaintop on Titan Three quoting Excelsior - but there’s also the beautifully-played scene with the dying Azmael. And the Doctor’s attempt to strangle Peri is as audacious as anything any other era of the show has to offer; remember his animal howl of pain as he’s confronted with his own reflection in the mirror.

So what’s great about The Twin Dilemma? Two words; Colin Baker.

199 - TIMELASH

It’s probably some kind of indictment of where Doctor Who was in the mid-1980’s that even when a story was totally original they had to pretend it was a sequel to a previous Doctor Who adventure. But that’s what fascinates me about Timelash; the little hints we get of what happened in the earlier Pertwee story where he encountered Megelen and negotiated a grain treaty between Karfel and the Bandrils. Such is the attention to detail that even the sets and costumes look like reconstructions of 1970’s originals.

Timelash also gives us one of the finest iterations of the Doctor Who staple of rebels-in-corridors. How can anyone be a Doctor Who fan and not love rebels-in-corridors? It’s part of a great tradition of rebels-in-corridors stretching back to The Space Museum. It’s part of the show’s DNA.

The other thing I love about it – besides Robert Ashby’s Borad, an excellent performance and make-up job – is the character of Herbert. I know it was only included as ‘padding’, but my favourite scene is the one where he confesses to the Doctor that he’s not terribly brave. If any scene gets to the heart of what Doctor Who is about, it’s this one.

198 - UNDERWORLD

It feels unfair to condemn Doctor Who stories for turning out badly because of behind-the-scenes problems, whether those problems are strikes, inflation or Margaret Thatcher. You can criticise a script for being so over-ambitious that it could never have been achieved on the Doctor Who budget - hello, Battlefield – but that’s not a charge you could level at Underworld. It was doing everything right up until the point where the Production Manager said, ‘What? I thought you said we were only doing five stories this year? Oh shiiit.’

So instead of lots of exciting action sequences in real-life caves, there’s lot of tedious inaction sequences against blue-screened photographs. What should have been a sci-fi Jason And The Argonauts ended up looking like an episode of Knightmare. Where K-9 has gained the ability to turn transparent at will.

But skip the middle two episodes and you’ve got a story rich with fascinating Time Lord myth-building, imagination, humour and drama. It might not have the makings of a classic, but it doesn’t have the makings of a disaster either.

And, let’s face it, there’s something rather hypocritical about Doctor Who fans criticising a story for looking cheap and having poor special effects. 

197 - TIME AND THE RANI

I don’t remember disliking Time And The Rani when it was first broadcast. I remember being intrigued by Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor – for all the bumbling,  hat-doffing and proverb-mangling, he’s utterly likeable from his first scene; this is a Doctor with a naughty wink and a cheeky grin. Who then goes on to play the spoons on Kate O’Mara’s breasts.

I also remember being rather gobsmacked by the plot – it might not make a great deal of sense, but when a story begins with someone dressing up to impersonate Bonnie Langford you can’t really accuse it of being predictable.

Time And The Rani also has some of the most preposterous dialogue of any Doctor Who story and yet what is great about it is that the supporting cast take it deadly seriously. In a way, it’s the closest Doctor Who has ever got to Shakespeare, in that the actor’s job is to try to get across an emotional reality when the lines they are given are impenetrably magniloquent. I’m thinking in particular of the scene where Beyus and Faroon learn of the death of their daughter Sarn. Donald Pickering and Wanda Ventham are the unsung heroes of Time And The Rani.

196 - TIME-FLIGHT

I suppose what Time-Flight illustrates, above anything, is that it’s important for a script to be achievable on a Doctor Who budget. So many of this story’s potentially spectacular set-pieces are sold short; not least the crash-landing of Concorde in a prehistoric wasteland which turns out to be a medium-sized shrubbery in the corner of BBC Studio 8. Similarly you have the fascinating dual nature of the Xeraphin, which was probably a very interesting Proper Science Fiction Concept before the costume designer saw how much money was left.

On the other hand, it has a great opening episode; there’s something thrilling about seeing the Doctor on contemporary Earth in recognisable surroundings. And there’s a marvellous moment where the crew emerge from Concorde into a CSO version of Heathrow which turns out to be a deliberately poor special effect because they have emerged into an illusion.

But best of all, there’s the scene with Adric, including solely so that Matthew Waterhouse would have a Radio Times credit to avoid giving away the ending of Earthshock. The poor kid’s just been killed off, he’s had his leaving party... and then they bring him back the next week to kill him off again!

195 - THE SPACE PIRATES

Okay, so The Space Pirates has a few problems. The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe are sidelined, spending the entire story trapped in a space beacon, a pit, and an office. There’s only enough plot for four episodes, meaning that for the first half, it’s like watching Doctor Who played out in slow motion. Most of it is missing, which means its major selling point – lots of model spaceships – becomes a major flaw as the story grinds to a halt every few minutes for some moody space-wailing. Oh, and Donald Gee is attempting an American accent.

But what’s great about it is that, pretty much uniquely, it’s Doctor Who doing ‘hard’ science fiction, where space is big and space travel is slow. There’s an unusually large amount ‘world-building’ going on – Robert Holmes has clearly thought this universe out in detail – and, with Milo Clancey and his dilapidated spaceship LIZ 79 (which would have looked old-fashioned even in 1969), he’s inventing the genre of steampunk ten years early. And, as the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe attempt to escape from the beacon, the pit and the office, there’s all sorts of fun to be had with magnets, candles, drawing pins and tuning forks.

194 - THE UNDERWATER MENACE

It’s been observed that stories containing the word ‘Time’ in their titles tend to turn out badly; the same seems to hold true for stories with the word ‘Under’. Heaven help us if they ever decide to do a story called ‘The Under Of Time’.

The Underwater Menace has a peculiar it’s-Doctor-Who¬-but-not-as-we-know-it quality. It’s like a live action comic strip, full of wacky but ultimately pointless set-pieces; it’s not so much that it has a plot with some holes in it, it’s that it has a great big gaping hole with a tiny piece of plot in it. The Fish-People and Professor Zaroff are the stuff of panels in TV Comic; the end of episode three sees Joseph Hurst trying to generate a speech bubble through the power of eyebrow movement alone.

And yet this is what is so adorable about it. It’s innocent, ludicrous and larger than life, but you also have Patrick Troughton dragged up as a fortune teller (complete with sunglasses) and Anneke Wills in a dress made of seashells.  And, for the lefties in the audience, there’s a heart-warming moment where the much put-upon Fish People decide to form a trade union and go on strike.

193 - PARADISE TOWERS

It pained me to see my beloved Paradise Towers in the bottom ten, it really did. On my poll form, I gave it ‘10’. I can only conclude that you’re all bonkers.

I know, I know, some of the performances are a little... ripe. I have no problem with Richard Brier’s Chief Caretaker, but even I wish that the Kangs were a bit more rough and urban and not quite so mannered and well-spoken. And I can see why the bit where Mel decides to go for a swim feels like a broadcast from the planet of stupid.

But I just think there’s something to be cherished about the fact that what was undoubtedly the darkest, blackest and most horrific Doctor Who story in terms of content was performed in a style somewhere between Samuel Beckett and Rentaghost. It’s daring, intelligent, and the only occasion where the character of Mel makes any kind of contextual sense. The scenes with Tabby and Tilda are quite deliciously witty and the Doctor is threatened with a 327 Appendix 3 Subsection 9 Death.

There’s never been nothing like it since... at least, not until Gridlock came along and gave us Paradise Towers Part Two.

192 - FEAR HER

Given the amount of time and resources available to modern Doctor Who, it’s quite an achievement for Fear Her to have scraped into the bottom ten. It’s an odd story; it has that not-quite-right-ness you get in 1970’s annuals; Doctor Who as imagined by somebody who hasn’t quite ‘got’ what Doctor Who is.

For all its faults – the most irritating being the fact that the money intended for a CGI cupboard monster went to The Satan Pit – the idea behind Fear Her is sound; Doctor Who on a domestic scale, taking place all in one house, about a mother and child; like one of those Japanese films with dead girls crawling out of TV sets. It’s that nagging sense of ‘if only’ which is the frustration with Fear Her; if only it had had a little more money, if only it had been directed in the style of Blink, if only they hadn’t included the Olympics sub-plot. Because it should all have been as good as the bit with the scribble monster, or the TARDIS landing gag, or the scene where the Doctor vanishes off-screen. It’s a pity they no longer do novelisations, because Fear Her deserves a second chance.

191 - THE DOMINATORS

Surprising to see this story so low in the poll. Okay, so it’s famous for being the Doctor Who where the production team got so bored of making it that they decided to finish a week early and start doing The Mind Robber instead. And it’s reactionary anti-pacifist message is unappealing, at odds with the rest of the series and in particular with the era in which it was made. And someone should have noticed that the character of Cully was supposed to be a reckless teenager, not a chubby, balding fifty-year-old bank manager in a toga.

But I think, when the DVD comes out, everyone will be kicking themselves for scoring this story so low. It’s so gorgeously Flash Gordon. The villains have catchphrases! And the Quarks are both ludicrous and unnerving; their child-like voices and delight in destruction are not so different from the Toclafane. Plus there’s the fact that any kids watching at home would be able to knock up their own, equally-convincing Quark using half a dozen egg-boxes.

Plus, in her first full story as a Doctor Who assistant, Wendy Padbury flashes her knickers in every single scene. Watch the DVD if you don’t believe me.