Days Like Crazy Paving - A Doctor Who Fan Blog

24: Enlightenment I'll have the choice, not the diamond! Enlightenment is a bewildering and beautiful story, the first to be written and directed by women: Barbara Clegg writing what was, criminally, her only Doctor Who story, and directed by Fiona Cumming, who was responsible for Snakedance earlier in the season. And like that story, it's well directed; not action packed, but thoughtful and original.  It was unlike any other Doctor Who story I'd seen. Coming after Terminus and it's depressing storyline of ill people being exploited by an unscrupulous company, this was compelling stuff. Initially a historical story, we're introduced to the crew, who were a bit untrustworthy, a bit creepy, especially Mr Mariner, who seemed to have a thing for Tegan. The memorable cliffhanger to part one is exceptionally clever as is the idea of a race of immortals who have races in space to relieve the boredom of their immortality.  Keith Barron playing Striker is exceptionally good....

25: Revelation of the Daleks Good secretaries are hard to find!  Revelation of the Daleks is a story I've come to enjoy far more as an adult than I did as a child. It's grim and cruel, like most of Eric Saward's stories. As I said back when I wrote about The Caves of Androzani, I'd said that Saward used that as a template for the next season, forgetting that Doctor Who should be fun as well as a bit scary and action-packed. Vengeance on Varos is often proclaimed as the classic of the season, but I find it far too cruel and humourless.  This is cruel but also funny, definitely Saward's funniest script. It's more of a Davros story than a Dalek story and it's Terry Molloy's finest hour. He's allowed to take it down a notch after the ranting in Resurrection of the Daleks and he's sinister, like a spider in a web, but also has a lot of humourous dialogue which Molloy delivers with relish.  It's also set in a funeral home, and as someone who used t...

26: The Sea Devils Don't imprison Master criminals on an island near a naval base...  A lot of these choices, particularly the classic series ones are based on nostalgia, reminding me of where I was or who I was with when I saw this episodes. The story was one from the 1992 repeat season and had been chosen to represent Jon Pertwee, which is unusual as it didn't feature UNIT. But this was a few months before technology gave us the recolurised versions of all those Pertwee classics such as Terror of the Autons agd the Daemons, that would have only existed in black and white. Still, at least they didn't chose the Time Monster...  The Doctor and Jo are off to visit the Master, who we last saw being driven away after finally being captured by UNIT at the end of the Daemons. Well, you would have had you watched this on original transmission. But Doctor Who is a curious beast. It's the only tv show that's been released in a random order commercially, whether on VHS, DVD o...

 27: The Leisure Hive I know so little about Tachyonics Although Destiny of the Daleks was my first full story, it was watching this season opener that my odyssey into fandom began. And what a beauty! The Horns of Nimon ended season seventeen prematurely and it felt like ages before I could sit down on to watch the new series of Doctor Who. And what I surprise I got!  Gone was the sinister music and the time tunnel with that scary picture of Tom Baker looming towards us. Now there were stars, the music was different, it sounded so modern (for 1980!) and so cool! The interminable tracking shot across the beach passed me by, I was more upset by K9 going into the sea and blowing up! The Leisure Hive itself is a visual feast (although I suspect some of the walls are garage doors but let's not dwell on that!) And the Argolin are a cool race, in more ways than one. They look stylish and almost glide around with little emotion. Adrienne Corri was the first example of John Nathan Turn...

 28: The Pilot Never underestimate a girl who serves chips! Haitus - one of those words that Doctor Who fandom is obsessed with. It means a brief pause, but we all know that brief pause meant eighteen months of no Doctor Who. Fans groaned a collective groan when it was announced there would not be a full series in 2016, and only a Christmas special. But in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't that bad and personally I was hoping the break might do the show some good. Because frankly, I was going off Doctor Who! It wasn't fun anymore , it wasn't engaging me much. Series 9 felt like the contractual obligation series. Coming a year after series 8 which had seen highs (mummy!) and lows (trees and don't cremate me!) it felt rushed and with one promotion saying "same old, same old..." I was not impressed. But I want this to be a positive blog, so let's move on to series 10.  When it was announced we'd have a new companion in Bill, played by the wonderful Pe...

29: The Curse of Fenric Don't ignore signs warning about dangerous undercurrents It's a popular opinion that Season 26, despite being the last of the classic series, is one of the best. Strongest of the season is probably the Curse of Fenric (other views may vary!) and it's the sort of Doctor Who that fans lap up. It's serious, it's scary, it has vampires and has lots of soldiers with guns. It has a seriously impressive guest cast. It harks back to the golden ages of Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker so it keeps the fans happy. I was 16 when it aired and this was what I wanted Doctor Who to be like. (no Kandyman, thank you very much!)  And yet, outwardly it might but dig deeper and there's something fresh and new. Andrew Cartmel was a script editor wanting to stretch the series and move into different directions. The serial deals with the themes of war, faith and sexuality in way the series had always shied away from. The Maidens Point reference, when Phyllis says ...

 30: The Stolen Earth / Journey's End  You are not Alone (especially with a webcam!) The first new series two parter to hit the list and we're at the halfway point. This is was the biggest Doctor Who adventure to that point. Journey's End was the first (but not the last!) episode to be THE number one TV show of the week.  The series has been exceptionally popular since its return, consistently rating in the top 20 shows of the week, sometimes even in the top 10. Fans are frequently worried about viewing figures, as if high ratings are a guarantee of success and quality. But if that's true, Inferno would be the worst Pertwee adventure while part four of Underworld is the pinnacle of Season 15!  Like football fans worrying about stats of their teams, Who fans are constantly worrying that if the viewing figures show any sign of dipping, it's the "end" just as it was in 1989! But here's a stat for all you naysayers and worriers.  In 1989, Doctor Who reache...

 31: The Horns of Nimon How many Nimons make three?  After my last entry, it's typical; you wait ages for a story with the two Doctors and then two come along at once!  I make no apologies for including this in my list of 60 favourite stories, even when there are others some people would consider far more worthy, that I've not included. For some fans, this is regarded as the nadir of Doctor Who. Nadir is one of those pretentious words that only Doctor Who fans use (see also Cringe-inducing, Quibble, Elfin and Jabolite) I was one told by an older fan he pitied me because I preferred this to a certain Pertwee story. Well he's entitled to his own opinion but he's not entitled to tell me mine.  I adore the Horns of Nimon, and not ironically either. I don't snigger at the cheap sets, rather I admire the intelligence that came up with the idea of a maze that changes it's corridors. I don't point and laugh at the Nimon Costumes, I remember the Nimon costume that to...

32: The Two Doctors I don't know much about art but I know what I like! I'm going to be thoroughly contrary with this one. Anyone who read my entry on the Caves of Androzani may be thinking I'm a bit hypercritical of putting this on my list after saying Caves' success led to Eric Saward crafting a more violent style for Season 22. Yes. The Two Doctors is quite violent, gruesomely so in some bits but it is also a lot more fun than, say Vengeance on Varos which has a cruel streak I'm not too fond of. Tonally the Two Doctors is all over the shop. Violent and very funny, sometimes in quick succession. But Robert Holmes delighted in that. I don't think it's any more violent than Caves or Talons, it's just not as well directed. But it's fun and was the story from Season 22 I videoed. I was only allowed to tape one story and I choose this one because it was there episodes not two and I loved the second Doctor!  Also, we have two Doctors, both of whom are a ...

 33: The Green Death If its green and slimy, for goodness sake don't touch it! The one with the maggots! This is quintessential classic Who and it's really difficult to think of something new to say about it. I was too young to see it on first broadcast being only a couple of months old, my first encounter was with the Target version written by Mslcolm Hulke. It was the first novelisation I'd got , we were on holiday in Lincoln, I remember and it was the reprint version. The cover was weirdly eye-catching but not particularly exciting or evocative of Doctor Who as the show it was. The back cover spoke about UNIT and someone called Jo Grant and at the time Dr Who was the man with the scarf and curls. The illustrations inside showed a man with white curly hair and no scarf. There was someone called the BOSS and the first chapter was called Wealth in our time. It was probably a bit too much for me at the age of seven, but the pictures kept me amused and it was the start of a c...

34: Partners In Crime Cynicism doesn't make you thin I have a confession to make. I had intended another story (a two-parter from the modern series) to be in this place. But then I remembered this season opener from series four. Russell T Davies always made the premier episodes fun and exciting. Of his four season openers, this is undoubtedly the best although all four of them are great fun and I enjoy them all. But this seems to have an extra specialness to it.  Many fans were surprised, unconvinced or even aghast at the announcement of Catherine Tate returning as Donna Noble, to be the regular companion after her one-off appearance in the Runaway Bride. I've grown rather fond of that episode but this one reintroduces Donna as a more considerate, less self-centred person.  One aspect of Donna's return which did appeal to some fans word was that the romantic aspect of the Doctor / companion which had been part of the series since its return would be dropped in favour of a m...

 35: The Enemy of the World  Don't judge a six-parter on just one episode!  One of my old college lecturers has the idea of something called Keyhole theology, which basically means we cannot see the whole picture of the world as God sees it. We cannot know everything that God has planned. What’s this got to do with the Enemy of the World I hear you cry?  Well, for years we could only see episode three of Enemy of the World, the others didn’t exist. Not the best episode of the six, I’ll grant you but entertaining enough. But it doesn’t give us the whole picture. Imagine only being able to see the smile on the Mona Lisa but nothing else?  It lacks the action of episode one, or the development of character in episode two, or the intrigue of episode four. Watching episode three in isolation, we’re presented with these characters we don’t know, the Doctor’s hardly in it and when he is, he doesn’t do much apart from hide under a seat in Bill Kerr’s caravan, then picks...

 36: Logopolis Always make sure you prepare for the end! The next story on my list is another serial from the Five Faces of Doctor Who (included in that season purely on the chance it featured the fifth Doctor, albeit at the end!) There's a sense of occasion to Logopolis, although it starts innocuously enough, in present day Earth, a rarity at that time. A policeman is pulled into a police box standing in a lay-by while a certain someone chuckles sinisterly as he disappears  We cut to the Doctor and Adric talking about mathematics, in the TARDIS and the Doctor planning to do some architectural restructuring of his ship. I don't subscribe to the theory that TARDIS scenes are dull and also quite like the relationship between the fourth Doctor and Adric, so these scenes are a lot of fun. Matthew Waterhouse comes in for a lot of stick, unfairly I think, although I do agree he seems a better fit with Tom Baker than Peter Davison's Doctor. There's a teacher/student sense to t...

 37: Carnival of Monsters Appearances can be very deceiving This was the first Pertwee story I saw, thanks to the legendary Five Faces of Doctor Who season in late 1981. The repeat run was the brainchild of John Nathan Turner, who thought that after seven years of Tom Baker, it would be a good idea to remind (or inform!) viewers that there had been three other Doctors before the one who's just hung up his scarf. I have fond memories of those repeats, especially this one.  But it's not just nostalgia. This is a cleverly constructed adventure. Appearances are deceptive and this adventure is like an onion, peeling off layers one at a time. It's what later would become known as an oddball story, and quite distinctive after three years of UNIT stories. The events on Inter Minor mixed with the TARDIS landing on a boat in 1926, how do they tie tie together? And what is a plesiosaur doing in the middle of the Indian Ocean? (Apart from the breast stroke...)  The cliffhanger to Epi...

 38: Snakedance Stay away from snakes...  I've never liked snakes, which is a great disappointment to my eldest son who is fascinated by them and wants one as a pet! You might be wondering why I've included a story that sets off my ophidiophobia. Well both Snakedance and Kinda are two of the finest Fifth Doctor stories you'll find. I like Peter Davison's Doctor, and these two stories show him at his best. And as a child, I found them quite scary but not for the reason you might imagine.  I also found Tegan slightly annoying when I was younger, at least in her first few stories. Always whining and complaining about not getting to Heathrow. It's only from Black Orchid onwards, Tegan seems to start enjoying herself and becomes a team player. Of course there is Kinda. Tegan doesn't exactly enjoy her time living la Deva Loka (sorry!) becoming possessed by the Mara. Her nightmarish time in the dark leads to her being taken over but she then passes on the possession t...

 39: Blink  Don't Blink... Blink is brilliant. A clever subversion of the series format, a Doctor lite episode that introduces one of the modern series most popular villains, the Weeping Angels.  Although they are a great creation they've also felt like a case of diminishing returns. They're never better here (or Village of the Angels!)  So if Blink is so brilliant, why is it conspicuously lower than many others would rate it. (ie not at the top!) OK this might be petty, but my reason is it introduced something that is a pet peeve of mine. Those four words that set my teeth in edge...  Yes, it's "Wibbly Wobbly timey wimey!"  I can't stand it and as much as I admire Steven Moffat as a writer, it's the worst thing he's ever done for the show (even worse than commissioning In the Forest of the Night!) Unfortunately it caught on like the plague and everyone was saying it. It was the Doctor Who equivalent of "whassup!" So, in the words of Davi...

 40: Planet of the Daleks Courage isn't just a matter of not being frightened Funny how the last story to be shown on BBC1 before the TV Movie was this one, as a treat for the 30th anniversary. It was my introduction to the story, being the generation of fans who saw the Pertwee era completely out of sequence. My initial impression was I slightly disappointed, but that might be down to the fact it had rumoured The Seeds of Doom would be repeated.  But it made sense to repeat this: the Daleks versus Jon Pertwee, who in the eyes of the public was the current Doctor thanks to the Paradise of Death on Radio 5 and had had two other stories repeated over the last two years (The Sea Devils and the Daemons, and I'd gone off Pertwee's Doctor after seeing his character being a complete arse in the latter!)  I'm also the generation that had read from older fans that the Pertwee Dalek stories weren't brilliant, Planet, in particular, was a rehash of past Dalek stories and plot ...