#i could end up being wrong but for now if you love kooky zany concepts this ones a good pick to keep in your mind

[being-of-rain]

Some random thoughts from my Classic Who watch, now showing: season 12.

I watched all of season 12 in around the space of a day, it’s an action-packed little arc that I could rocket through. Unlike the other stories in the series, I’ve had the DVD of Robot for a long time so I’ve watched it many times. As a result, I’m not sure I have a lot to say about it. It’s a good introduction to the zaniness and watchability of Tom Baker’s Doctor, as well as some great plot for Sarah. It’s interesting that Sarah really doesn’t react much to the Doctor’s change- she looks lost when a bit of post-regeneration kookiness makes him almost leave the planet without her, but after that she settles into him quickly. His new body and personality is never even mentioned the rest of the season, I think. On one hand it makes me wonder if Sarah was prepped for the change in the 3 weeks before the regeneration scene, maybe by conversations with the Brigadier, Benton, and even K’Anpo right after she seems him change. On the other hand, her rolling with the bizarre sci-fi punches is very in-character for her. Apart from that, uhhhh. The titular robot was very sympathetic, poor dude.

Was I spending all of the first scene of The Ark in Space thinking about that tumblr post about Harry starting the Last Great Time War? Maybe 😂 He was just trying to open the door! Harry’s a great source of comedy throughout the season. Not enough that it feels grating or unrealistic, he’s just a well-meaning (if old-fashioned) fancy guy who can be a bit of a buffoon. Your classic himbo, if you will. The Wirrn are delightfully creepy and disgusting critters, as is their metamorphosis cycle. Everyone cites bubblewrap as an example of unconvincing Classic Who monster, but you can find a lot less scary Classic Who monsters than the bubblewrap in this one honestly. The humanity’s ark aspect is also pretty cool (the Doctor’s speech about humanity, iconic), but what’s a lot less cool is the hardcore elitism and eugenics that the leaders start spouting as soon as they wake up. Kind of feels like they took a cool concept and showed us the worst possible future with it. I wonder, was it reacting to Invasion of the Dinosaurs and asking ‘what if this actually happened?’ In any case, can’t say I felt particularly bad for Noah when he got bugged.

Again, not much to say about The Sontaran Experiment. I’m glad they didn’t see a reason to make it more than 2 parts. Sarah and Harry being their usual playful selves is sweet. Sarah exclaiming “Linx!” when she sees Styre is a nice callback. I wouldn’t know that Tom Baker was wearing a neck brace if I wasn’t a Dr Who nerd, they did a good job of hiding that. Hey, isn’t a metal beam that gets heavier the weapon the Sontarans use in a single combat duel in Heroes of Sontar? That’s a good callback too. Oh, and it’s good to see that the folks on Nerva Beacon were wrong when they thought that only their chosen few had survived Earth’s roasting. It’s kind of pleasingly ironic that because of the Wirrn, they actually ended up being out-of-date with the rest of humanity, who have now surpassed them by some ten thousand years.

Genesis of the Daleks! Somehow, this famous story is the only one of this season that I hadn’t already watched before this watchthrough. Hot take, but it was pretty good! It worked well as a prequel to The Daleks. And it’s a good example of Dr Who doing dark and gritty well (though it isn’t my favourite example of that. Big Finish got particularly good at it. Should I watch I, Davros, Genesis, and the original Daleks as a trilogy sometime?) And with all the grittiness and politics, I think they definitely earnt all of the hammy deaths they get nearer the end, especially Nyder and Davros (that scream! I love it.) They really did the Kaleds justice with this. The oppressive atmosphere is tangible. You really root for the Kaleds rebelling against Davros, and even though the Doctor is trying to change time, there’s still a sense of doomed tragedy hanging over them. Nyder’s a piece of work. The way he easily worms his way into Gharman’s trust when the audience knows he’d never break from his twisted loyalty to Davros is mesmerising. As for Davros himself, I like how he starts off uncharacteristically quiet. It’s only as his plans grow closer to completion and he’s challenged by the Doctor that he starts ranting and raving and revealing that he’s as unhinged as Doctor Who fans know him to be. The Doctor’s emotions can be pretty striking as well. I knew about his moral breakdown during the “Do I have the right?” scene (in the end he decides he does, by the way), but I didn’t know about his desperation when he’s trying to stop the Thals launching a rocket that he thinks is going to kill his companions, and his depression when the launch succeeds, that was some gripping scenes. Oh, but for all the praise we can level at the story, it does also have one of the worst-realised monsters in the show: the clams in the tunnels under the mountains. The scene where everyone is screaming while trying to avoid them is hilarious because they just... don’t move. At all. The crew couldn’t have like pulled on them a bit with a string or something? Oh well. I guess it’s a light comic break from the great drama around it.

Revenge of the Cybermen is. Something. It wasn’t quite as boring as I remembered it being for some reason, but it isn’t exactly good. Firstly, in retrospect it’s wild how Classic Who uses the Cybermen sometimes. These days, basically every Cyberman story focuses on a few main things that make them interesting; they want to ‘save’ humanity by making sure they survive at all costs, they convert people, and they remove emotions. In Classic Who they often ignore all of these things and use them only as alien empire-builders who are generic villains and, in the case of Revenge, camp. Honestly, the scariest bit of this story was the very start when the Tardis team go from having some light-hearted fun teasing Harry, to walking into a corridor with a frankly obscene amount of dead bodies in it. Wait! I just remembered, I was wrong, the scariest bit of this story was the scenario where you think you’re alone in your room but actually Tom Baker is under your bed. Horrific. Secondly, wow does this story have some weird and bad politics. The human villain being the one to argue that people should be isolating to avoid spreading a deadly plague and the other characters telling him they have to instead get back to work has aged hilariously badly in 2022, but I get that (unless I misunderstood the situation) the crew are effectively sacrificing themselves to warn ships about the unmapped planetoid, like a lighthouse. What I don’t get is that the crew have apparently been told they’re being abandoned by their bosses with no help, and their job is basically doomed to fail. They admit themselves that they’d need to operate for years to get the planetoid properly mapped, and they’ll mostly likely die in a week or so if they keep exposing themselves to the plague. So are they just all content to die for no reason because Earth Centre told them to?? Meanwhile with the Vogan subplot, the villainous Vogan is the one who wants to... fight the Cybermen and stop hiding on their planet? I can’t think of any other Doctor Who story where insisting your species stays strictly isolated and xenophobic out of fear is painted as the right decision. And if either of these situations are supposed to be a moral dilemma or morally grey, they still don’t work because they’re stupid situations! Honestly, between the isolationist and xenophobic part and the ‘ignore the plague and work yourself to death’ part, I’m surprised the British Government wasn’t constantly airing this story the last several years as propaganda. Anyway, now that I’ve finished being scathing, anything else? I sometimes make notes for these reviews, and weirdly I made more notes for Revenge of the Cybermen than any of the other stories this season. -There was some funny comedy moments, like the Doctor thanking Sarah then glaring at Harry for doing the same thing jsldkjhfkjs. And Harry fixating on the gold on Voga and then stressing that he wasn’t going to steal any a little too much. -So many Classic Who stories just have no decorum whatsoever with their villain reveal. I know last post I made fun of revealing the Daleks for the cliffhanger when their name is in the titles, but I’ll take that over how boring it is when the Cybermen are dropped into a conversation in this story. -All the talk of Jupiter made me want to reread the novel Fear Itself. Now there’s some good Dr Who.

#my thoughts #doctor who #four #sarah #harry #brig #sontarans #daleks #cybermen