The fifth Doctor's era
(1981-1984)
Peter Davison
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The fifth Doctor's era(1981-1984) |
Peter Davison |
Looking forward by looking back by Michael Hickerson 25/6/98
It was a warm summer afternoon in June and I'd seen every Star Trek episode more times than I cared to recall. Bored, I flipped through stations, hoping to find something worth watching, when my father suggested giving a show known as Doctor Who a try. After complaining it was a mult-part show and I usually tuned in right at the middle of part five or six, my father turned the station anyway and I sat back, skeptical.
Minutes later, as the starfield swirling up for the first time and I saw two words that would change my life forever... "Part One." OK, sure it was TimeFlight, but five minutes in, I was hooked for life.
My father has regretted that night ever since, I think.
It's because of this that I have a special place in my heart for the Davison years.
Davison faced the unenviable task of taking over the role of the Doctor from Tom Baker, arguably the most popular Doctor of all time. But somehow, even when the scripts weren't so good and effects were even worse, Davison managed to rise above the material he was given to create one of the more interesting, unique, engaging, and memorable Doctors.
Part of the magic of this era was the new found emphasis on the TARDIS crew actually being a crew rather than just a bunch of people who were only in the script to go, "What it is it Doctor?". The era took real steps forward in an attempt to redefine the role of the companion, at times successfully (Tegan) and at times not so successfully (Adric). Instead of the feeling that this was The Brady Bunch travelling around, where everyone got along and no one ever argued, the TARDIS crew suddenly found that while they were friends, they didn't always agree. It added some new layers to the series and gave the scripts some added zing with the plots failed to live up to their fullest potential. Even a rather pedestrian outing as Four to Doomsday is livened up considerably by the TARDIS crew's interaction.
The Davison years also began the trend of re-examing the shows history. One has only to look at the list of characters that are re-examined to see this -- Omega, the Black Guardian, the Time Lords, Daleks, Cybermen, the Brigadier. Each of them are brought back with varying degrees of success. For the first time, Doctor Who demanded that you have a good, working knowledge of what had come before in order to understand what was going on now. Sometimes it worked...at other times it didn't.
But, as with every era, the Davison years are definied the fifth Doctor himself. The most quintissentially British of all the Doctors (his cricket outfit being just a part of his Britishness), the fifth Doctor was everything Tom Baker's wasn't. Gone was the inflated ego, gone was the glaring with, gone was the air of superiority. In it's place was a wisdom and confidence that rang true, a sense of childlike wonder, and an ego that was able to be bruised easily. This Doctor grew considerably as the stories progressed, becoming more confident as time went by. He stood for morality and argued that violence wasn't always the answer. He was idealistic and charming. In short, he was the best of his predecssors, plus his own special magic added in.
And while Davison asserts that he suffered a bit from "Tom Baker backlash," in looking back, it's a good thing. Because the difference in styles, wit, and characters leave a mark on the viewers. The Davison years are unique and interesting in their own right, for the most part, hitting the right chords at the right time.
A successful era for the show... and a proud one.
A Young Upwardly Mobile Professional Time Lord by Matthew Harris 13/5/02
That's it. I've had it. What's with all the bitterness being flung at the Davison era? There's enough bile being hurled at the early 80s on this site to fill the stomachs of four large cows. And I can't for the life of me work out why.
So many accusations have been flung at the period. Stupidity is a good one. This one comes only from the really unimaginative sections of Doctor Who, and is mainly used as weapons against Eric Saward and (the late and lamented) JNT.
All right, so Eric was particularly proficient at brainless, throwaway science fiction. But what is wrong with that? Do we all need to tax our minds every second? Of course not. We all need brain candy every now and then. Okay, so there were some bad serials (even I, who decided to keep Warriors Of The Deep, cannot justify Arc Of Infinity). But then there were some bad serials for every Doctor. Pertwee had his Time Monsters, Baker (T) had his Horns Of Nimon, Baker (C) had a large chunk of his output, McCoy had his Time And The Ranis. For every Arc, the Davison era had a Kinda. For every Warriors Of The Deep (according to popular opinion) he had a Caves Of Androzani. For every Time-Flight a Frontios. And so on. And I genuinely can't think of any other bad ones.
Davison himself has also had some harsh words said about him. But if nothing else, he's my favourite Doctor. He's likeable, he's borderline tragic, and he's able to resist the temptation to say "I told you so" when something goes wrong as a result of someone failing to listen to him. He also spends a lot of his time haunted by the death of Adric. He blames himself, he blames fate, he blames the Cyberpersons, he blames the first time law, then he blames himself again. So he carries a certain amount of emotional baggage through the two and a bit more years before he became Colin Baker (and another point against stupidity). Davison is also excellent at corridor acting, which is something you need to become the Doctor.
So, put simply, the Davison era, near as I can work out, was no better or worse than, say, the Baker (T) era. Just different. Cheer up. Be like the Murphy's. Watch Kinda, or Snakedance, or Frontios, or Planet Of Fire, or even Earthshock. And don't be quite so harsh. The 1980s really were a good period. And it's not often you hear someone say that.
Like A Summer Cloud by A.D. Morrison 11/9/06
My first ever memories of Doctor Who were some fairly unremarkable TARDIS scenes towards the end of The Armageddon Factor (1978, when I was about four years old) involving the Doctor warning Princess Astra not to touch the Key to Time pieces as they were hot. Retrospectively inconsequential though they were, those brief scenes served enough to intrigue me nonetheless. The only two stories I remembered from the time of the generally uneven and shoddy Season 17 were Destiny of the Daleks and City of Death. The rest was a blur (would it have remained that way in light of the atrocities of the other stories). I suppose I watched fairly regularly during Season 18 as I recalled vividly sections of Full Circle, State of Decay, Warriors' Gate and Logopolis (though strangely not Keeper of Traken). Then the Five Faces season bridged the gap between seasons 18 and 19 at which point I caught up memorably with the previous incarnations of the Doctor up to and including the stunningly timeless Genesis of the Daleks.
But for some reason, perhaps because a new, fresher face offered the chance to witness the complete adventures of a Doctor from beginning to end, I became a regular viewer with Peter Davison. Having grown into Who towards the end of the most iconic Doctor's era, possibly I had been spared, just, that inevitable and partly justified bias inherited by older viewers that Tom Baker was the Doctor, and thus ever would remain, in spite of further incarnations assuming his mantle like perceived charlatans in his shadow. So then, maybe I watched more open-mindedly from the outset of the next, all too brief, era than my seniors.
And I'm glad I did, because the era which gradually emerged over the following three years was - and still is - to my mind perhaps the most innovative of all. It was an era which, in spite of various faults - not least, debatably, in the very casting of the new central actor himself - was to subtly revolutionise the very conceptual fabric of the show itself, transforming it, on many levels, into a more mature, character-driven programme. This era did indeed, like its central - though frequently de-centralised - character, "come and go like a summer cloud". But what a cloud.
Critics will level at this era and this Doctor the accusation of "blandness"; whilst objectively I can certainly empathise with such a view, I do not agree with it, and would replace that adjective with "subtlety".
One area in which the Davison era stands out as unique in the series' canon is in its ongoing narrative structure, threaded through a succession of unusually well-developed and dramatically significant companions, the bravest creation of which was Vislor Turlough (more on him later). Even bolder than the initial casting quirk of the very young and rather uncharismatic Peter Davison as a completely contrasting successor to the supremely charismatic, gravitas-oozing Tom Baker, was the simultaneous move towards a more companion-heavy format which often pushed the Doctor himself to the (seeming) sidelines, in a manner not seen since the early days of the original series starring William Hartnell. This era returned to the halcyon days of Doctor Who with an equal focus on the companions as on the Doctor himself, sometimes even shifting this focus more in the companions' directions - a far cry from the pivotal figure of the Fourth Doctor.
This also leant this era a very unique "soap opera" aspect (meant in the very best sense of the term) in that each story tended to bleed into the next with a thread of companion-focused narrative in which the TARDIS scenes at the beginning and ends of each story played a crucial part. At the beginning of The Visitation, Adric is still defending his actions in the previous story Kinda; the Doctor, in same story, is attempting to arrive in 1982 Earth as Tegan expresses a wish to return home after her ordeal in Kinda; Adric's death in Earthshock is brooded on significantly at the beginning of Time-Flight; Tegan, having been left behind at Heathrow in said story, promptly returns - via a rather implausibly coincidental plot thread involving her cousin - in the following season opener, Arc of Infinity; she asks for the Doctor's reassurance after Snakedance's ordeal in the following story, Mawdryn Undead; Turlough is distrusted in Terminus, only to defend himself in the following story, Enlightenment: "I explained what happened on Terminus"; and so on. This method enabled the viewers to engage more with the companions, to feel more involved with them as ongoing developing characters, rather than simply ciphers to a pivotal Doctor.
Admittedly, it was only really with Tegan and Turlough that this character focus and development actually worked (only to peter out sadly in Turlough's case by the end of his debut Guardian arc): Adric, though richly scripted much of the time, fell short of his full potential due to Matthew Waterhouse's limitations as an actor, and Nyssa basically got the short straw most of the time in terms of development, remaining ironically - given this era's unusual focus on companions - one of the most uninteresting companions of all time.
For me, the Davison era is as much about Tegan and Turlough as it is Davison's Doctor. This was largely due, as stated, to the seminal approach of script editors Christopher Bidmead and Anthony Read, rather than due to the frequently vague and passive portrayal of Peter Davison in the title role; although some of it is also down to said actor, who arguably didn't always milk his moments in the limelight to their full potential. In Tegan and Turlough, we had the blueprints for the later three-dimensional companions of Ace and, more recently, Rose, interrupted up regressively by the appalling vicissitudes of Peri and Mel.
This companion-centricity of approach to the series, between 1981-3 (abruptly ending in 1984's more traditionally scripted season) in turn meant that, for the first time in the series' history since 1963-4, here were two seasons in which the individual adventures also had to be considered as a whole continuing narrative and not only as self-contained stories. The exceptions to this rule, due to the sheer power of incidental characters and concepts, were Four To Doomsday, Kinda, Snakedance, Enlightenment and The Caves of Androzani. Significantly, the latter four are, arguably - and in my own opinion -, the four best Davison stories. Though Kinda, Snakedance and Enlightenment each involve companions pivotally - Tegan in the Mara saga, and Turlough's existential crisis in the conclusion to the Guardian trilogy -, they are such beautifully crafted stories that they can also stand alone, despite all three being narratively linked to other stories. This is a tribute to the writers and directors of these serials: the consummately gifted Christopher Bailey, Barbara Clegg, Peter Grimwade and Fiona Cumming.
Caves, of course, stands on its own, not only within this era, but in the entire history of the series, as arguably the most dramatic story ever made (more on which later). Near contenders of the stand-alone award from this era are also the consummate Black Orchid and Season 21's very Season-20-esque, The Awakening. Again though, these two stories feature companions heavily as integral to the plots: Nyssa's double in Black Orchid and Tegan's grandfather in The Awakening.
Earthshock, in its sheer epic scale and tense direction comes a close sixth - joint, to my mind, with Black Orchid - in my list of the most successful Davison stories. There is no doubting that Earthshock's unexpectedly tragic climax not only re-introduced the reality of companion mortality into the series again (for the first time since The Dalek Master Plan (1965) saw the deaths of two companions, Sara Kingdom and Katrina), but also came very close to justifying the cloying presence of Adric for the last one and a half seasons with possibly the most dramatic exit ever conceived for any companion.
And in this classic final sequence, as the doomed Alzarian looks witlessly at the fast-approaching Earth, philosophically muttering "Well, now I'll never know if I was right", is, in my view, very well acted by Waterhouse and almost makes one contemplate reconsidering his character. Waterhouse had reasonable scripts throughout, and pivotal or near-pivotal involvement in many of his stories (Full Circle, State of Decay, Castrovalva, Four To Doomsday, Kinda and Earthshock), but one cannot help feeling that the actor who played his older brother in his debut story would have proven a far more engaging Adric than Waterhouse managed. Nevertheless, the boy does go out in style. A close second to his performance in Earthshock is, ironically, his very peripheral but naturalistic involvement in Black Orchid, when he's chided by Nyssa for stuffing his face at the country ball. Here Adric, perhaps for the only time, resembled more the stoical boy than the mop-headed hermaphrodite of the majority of his tenure.
For me though, and in spite of what was at the time of viewing an excruciatingly slow-moving first two episodes, Bidmead's Castrovalva is my choice for fifth best Davison story. Davison's debut is a significantly ponderous and rather ineffectual one, but is perfectly in keeping, in the best of senses, with his eventual portrayal. His scatty, bemused, alternately irascible and childlike initial performance distils in inevitable post-regeneration exaggeration, all the traits which would ultimately come to describe him perfectly as "an old man in a young man's body"; emphasized here even more so by his apparent incapacity, flitting about in a wheelchair. His unravelling of Baker's scarf is an inspired symbolism of his unravelling of the last iconic seven years for something new to emerge; which it does, eventually, from the cocoon of the Zero Cabinet.
The cricket costume was a refreshing change on the dark tones of Baker's iconic apparel, though sadly it did signal the first of the JN-T uniformed Doctors: the worst move ever made for the show, replete with the highly misguided question-mark collars. But the rot was a long way from setting in as this was the dawning of a very interesting new era. Davison's impersonations of Pertwee and Troughton - holding invisible braces as he struts along - are dextrously done, and appropriately subtle (only matched by Colin Baker's later lapse into Pertwee's inimitable lisp in Mark of the Rani), and served as a much-needed reminder that there had been other Doctors before the Great Tom. It is also highly appropriate that Davison should impersonate Troughton here, as throughout his era he frequently resembled him to a sometimes uncanny degree: his proverbial panicky, huffing-and-puffing portrayal in such stories as Earthshock (cue rant at Cyber Leader), Snakedance (cue hyperventilating petition to Lon re the insidious menace posed by the Great Crystal), Enlightenment (his rant at Striker), The Awakening (frequent outbursts), and so on, is strongly reminiscent of Troughton's flaps, his pouting cheeks mid-panic or outrage, foot-stamping and sense of not-being-in-control; all these traits were frequently displayed by Davison's Doctor (debatable whether this was conscious on Davison's part).
Both the Second and Fifth Doctors often seemed reactive rather than proactive, which added to the drama and suspense of their stories. Davison was also, coincidentally, the first straight-haired incarnation since Troughton. By casting a younger, more athletic Doctor (cue the cricket scenes in Four To Doomsday and Black Orchid, and the action-facets in Earthshock, Warriors of the Deep and Resurrection), no doubt it was planned to re-introduce a more physically dynamic Doctor of the Pertwee ilk; however, fortunately this didn't really ever reach full fruition, partly because his second season - due to budgetary restraints - restricted the scope for such antics, and Davison evolved into more of a Troughton than a Pertwee.
But to Castrovalva briefly. I recall as a child watching it and feeling very disorientated and disturbed by the claustrophobia of the recursive occlusion of Castrovalva - a scenario which still holds magic and menace for me on viewing it today. The meditative nature of this story and its array of deluded, cod-Shakesperean characters, lifts it from the conventional frame of Who into something quite unique. The scene in which the Doctor elicits the startlingly nonsensical nature of this mathematical Camelot is inspired; sheer genius. A revelatory conclusion then crashes in via M.C. Escher imagery.
Four To Doomsday is a real oddity, being the first story Davison acted in (cue his much shorter haircut than in Castrovalva), and so we have what is almost a second debut story for the Fifth Doctor, in which he is visibly trying to find his feet. But he doesn't do too badly, and unlike previous incarnations, he has two very turbulent companions to contend with which somewhat forces him to find his feet pretty quickly. And Davison is always at his best when blithely second-guessing double-crossing companions such as Adric (and later, his more palatable successor, Turlough). Doomsday boasts some superb philosophical concepts, stunning set-pieces of Ancient Greeks battling on a space ship (bearing a passing - though infinitely more glossy - resemblance to some of The Tomorrow People stories), and engaging incidental characters.
Stratford Johns' Monarch aside, Paul Shelley puts in a tantalising performance as the suave Persuasion and, replete with faintly Pertwee-esque green felt jacket, looks and acts more the Doctor-type than the Doctor himself. Shelley is the first of two incidental manifestations which significantly challenged Davison's suitability for the traditionally enigmatic and eccentric character of the Doctor (the other being David Collings in Mawdryn Undead). My first choice for the Doctor would have always been Geoffrey (Crow Man in Worzel Gummidge) Bayldon, David Collings or David Warner. Ironically, it would be a different incidental actor in Davison's era that would catch the producer's eye, Colin Baker. Though not an altogether inappropriate choice: he had the curls and the surname.
But then without such a blanched portrayal as Davison gave in the part, the constantly dissected characters of Tegan and Turlough wouldn't have been possible, nor would some of the most powerful incidental characters in the series' history; the most notable of whom was Simon Rouse's Hindle in Kinda (other contenders being Richard Mace in The Visitation, Lon in Snakedance, the Brigadier and Mawdryn in Mawdryn Undead, Marriner and Striker in Enlightenment, Plantagenet in Frontios, Stein in Resurrection and Sharaz Jek and Trau Morgus in Caves).
I'll not go into Kinda at this point; suffice to say it's my favourite story of all time and I can't imagine such an analytical, emotional story being possible in any other era (but for an in-depth analysis please see my full review on this site). The same goes for the beautiful Enlightenment, a story with which I can still find little fault over twenty years later - along with Kinda and Caves, the third jewel in the era's crown (see my in-depth review on this site).
For me the Davison era was a natural progression from the newly added maturity and drama of the Bidmead-driven Season 18; saviour of the series after the frequent absurdities of the Graham Williams era (bar the classics Horror of Fang Rock, Image of the Fendahl, Ribos Operation, Stones of Blood and City of Death of course), particularly the shambolic Season 17 (forerunner of the later equally slapstick 24). The aim was clearly to bring in a new ongoing dramatic dialogue between the companions, creating more of a TARDIS crew than just a set of one-dimensional Doctor-sidekicks (as previously touched on in length).
But another more mature, adult thread to the Davison era was the new trend in three-dimensional incidental character studies and grey-tinged anti-heroes, as opposed to the abstractedly evil villains of most previous eras. This was also somewhat of a throwback to the peerless Hinchcliffe era and its vast array of twisted idealists (Davros, Mehendri Solon, Harrison Chase, Taran Capel, Li H'sen Chang et al), tormented anti-heroes (Sorenson, Scarman, Goth, Xoanon, Magnus Greel et al), and irrational victims (Noah, Salamar, Pool et al). The Davison era brought us comparable contenders in Hindle, George Cranleigh, Walters, Hedin, Lon, Mawdryn, Turlough, Olvir, Valgard, Striker, Marriner, Kamelion, Borusa, George Hutchinson, Plantagenet, Stein, Salateen, Morgus and Sharaz Jek. And what a list.
And arguably in no other era so far would a traditional Who character returning, such as the Brigadier, be given such a troubled reinterpretation in the form of an amnesiac recovering from a nervous breakdown. Although this was only touched on very subtly in Mawdryn Undead, it was, along with the introduction of the charismatic Turlough, the highlight of this otherwise rather dull and ponderous story. The scenes in which the Doctor jogs the Brigadier's repressed memory as a means to rejuvenation of his faculties is a classic moment in the series' canon - almost, one might say, when the series, allowing reality's intrusion into the makeup of a classic character, suddenly came of age. An inspired move on behalf of the production team, but most notably, on Peter Grimwade's (who excelled at emotional/psychological plots; cue his superb direction of Kinda).
There's no denying that out of the three seasons, Season 19 stood out as the one possessing the best balance between characterisations, concepts and action. Season 20 was pretty much only the first two; while Season 21, bar Awakening and Caves of Androzani, was pretty much only the latter. This made the Davison era very uneven, which explains why fan opinion is often very divided on it overall. Few deny the momentum of stories like Earthshock and Caves of Androzani (who could deny the latter?), nor the sublime innovation of gems like Kinda and Enlightenment.
But regarding many of the other stories, opinions fall into conflict. Stories which seem slightly lacklustre either in direction or pace, such as Four to Doomsday and Terminus, are, I think, unfairly slated, when in other respects they both sport some superbly realised aspects, not least scenarios. Yes, Terminus is very bleak and rather plodding in places, but for me it is still a pretty strong story, a true sci-fi outing, with a really eerie opening episode and some excellent Geiger-inspired designs. Relative to other eras, it falls far short of a clanger. The same - for me - goes for the commonly dismissed King's Demons, which I've always had much affection for myself. Yes, it is very flawed in plot, doesn't make much sense, and has a weak second episode, but it is still an authentically realised period piece with some classy location shots and a superbly realised revelation in the tragically underused Kamelion. I like it. The fact that this often cited as one of the worst Davisons just goes to show how strong the era was.
I do concede that Planet of Fire is a little dull in places, but again, its strong points are still very strong: chiefly, in this case, the location, though it coincides too blatantly between Mediteranean Earth and Sarn. This story is in many ways a return to the relentless re-matches between the Doctor and the Master in the Pertwee era, and in some scenes, particularly the two TARDISes, has much in common with The Time Monster (another under-rated story in my opinion). Not bad overall, though not especially engaging.
Frontios too, though somewhat superior in script, is also a little dull in a way, despite fairly engaging characters and a very clever plot (and Turlough's last significant performance). The Visitation is again an authentic period piece, but with only one engaging character in the hilariously scripted Richard Mace this story doesn't quite live up to one's memory of it at the time. It's just too conventional. But again, it is still a good, traditional story. Black Orchid and The Awakening are both near-classic respites in their respective seasons, a little too short to live up to their full potentials, but beautifully executed and consummate productions; I'm particularly fond of the latter, probably because of its English Civil War aspects, a favourite period of mine (see my in-depth review on Outpost Gallifrey).
The Five Doctors has never been a favourite of mine generally; it stands out as a slightly flat, though very entertaining, traditional slice of Who placed incongruously in a very untraditional era of the show, but has some memorable moments, particularly in Philip Latham's superb performance as Borusa, and his inspired fate. His hankering after immortality is chilling in its cold sanity: "It's true, immortality", brilliantly delivered by Latham.
For me the only really dodgy Davison stories are Time-Flight, which has to be the worst of the entire era in its sheer cliched shoddiness; Arc of Infinity, which, in spite of a memorable final episode, is timelessly dull and uninspired; and Warriors of the Deep, which is almost self-consciously one-dimensional and amateur, despite its supremely glossy sets.
The prize for the two stories of ambivalence for me go to the occasionally brilliant but generally stolid Mawdryn Undead, and the frequently exciting, though morally bankrupt, Resurrection of the Daleks. The former is almost impossibly meditative in places, even for this particularly meditative era; while the latter, despite having some classic scenes such as the Doctor's confrontation with Davros and Stein's dramatic suicide ("Hello boys - just in time for the fun"), has a rather muddled narrative, flat characters and is just too continuity-laden to really inspire.
Many argue that Davison only really found his Doctor in his final story, and I agree with this. The Caves of Androzani is of course a faultless masterpiece - and I mean faultless. I honestly cannot find any fault with it still. And watching it recently after the recent season of new Who, I felt exhilarated at the brilliance attainable in the classic series which the present one still falls far, far short of. In Caves all the potentialities of the previous Davison stories come together in one breathtaking climax, culminating in the greatest regeneration scene of all time, when the Doctor actually seems to be dying. "Is this death?" mutters Davison before morphing into the initially compelling Sixth incarnation. Brilliant stuff. And what a Greek Tragedy to go out on, with surely the best climax ever to a story, with Sharaz Jek's strangulation of Morgus, then to be shot by the imminently maimed Stotz, and fall into the arms of one of his androids, flames licking all around. Stunning.
Caves has it all: superbly crafted characters (Jek, Morgus, Salateen, The Doctor), gripping action (the gunrunners' pursuit of the Doctor over blasted dunes), and the final tragedy of two near-martyrdoms in Jek and the Doctor himself. Unsurpassable stuff (though Graeme Harper would get near to equalling it, though not quite, in his closer to the following season, Revelation of the Daleks).
So finally to the Fifth Doctor himself. Well, I'm still not sure of my opinion, to this day. I think in hindsight there certainly needed to be a fresh new version of the Doctor after the iconic Tom Baker, but whether an actor such as Peter Davison was the right move, I'm not entirely sure. A younger actor was a good move, but Davison, for me, had not demonstrated prior to being in the series that he was an obvious choice to fill this. Zeitgeist obviously had much to do with this at the time, JN-T choosing a popular face of the moment in the same way that RTD chose a similarly popular face in David Tennant. It's all subjective of course, but I feel both Davison and Tennant were not the obvious choices to make at the respective times: after Tom Baker, I would have gone for either David Collings or David Warner (admittedly neither being younger than Baker) and after Eccleston (an odd choice in himself), I would have gone for either Rhys Ifans or (the much-mooted Bill Nighy would, on hindsight, have been a more suitable choice too).
But it's become almost as much of a tradition in Who as regeneration itself for producers to always miss the obvious and go for the unobvious. Brilliant though Hartnell was, and of course the original, my instinct would have been for someone like Geoffrey Bayldon. Troughton, Pertwee and Baker, fine; those were inspired choices. But for the Fifth Doctor I would have gone for Collings or Paul Shelley; for the Sixth, certainly Collings or Warner; and for the Seventh, ambitious though it sounds, Robert Stephens or Jeremy Brett. Any of those for the JN-T Doctors. But instead we got a strange bag: Davison, Baker and McCoy. I think McCoy became a memorable incarnation by Season 26, though always hampered by a speech impediment and a clownish face. Colin Baker was the wasted incarnation: potentially excellent, but only very rarely so.
But Davison? It's hard to judge him. He was and still remains the most unusual, against-type choice for the part in the series' history. His youth, amiable manner, and tendency to even sideline himself on screen, together with a fairly plain and un-engaging physiognomy (conventionally attractive but not handsome), marked him from the outset as a very curious choice indeed for such a traditionally offbeat, eccentric and alien character. But considering the odds, not least that of following on from the most popular Time Lord of all, Davison didn't do badly at all. And by Caves, he had definitely grown into the role and could have been even greater had he stayed on a further season.
But as it stands, we have only those three years to go on. I would still rank him as superior to the Sixth, Ninth and Tenth incarnations, which isn't bad going at all for an actor least suited to the part. What Davison did bring to the role which was refreshing at the time and lastingly unique, was humanity (though tinged more notably with alienness than the two RTD Doctors), selflessness and an insatiable curiosity almost exceeding that of any other incarnation. These were significant feats. But I do remember watching him as Campion afterwards, and wondering why on Earth he hadn't invested the Doctor with the same charisma and eccentricity that he did that detective. But then maybe if he had, he would just been yet another actor trying to mimic the classic Doctorial traits of his predecessors.
Instead, Davison gave a more naturalistic portrayal in the role, which at least sets him apart from the other incarnations. He was nice, basically, as Davison often is in other roles. He a versatile actor - one only needs to compare his character in A Very Peculiar Practice, shot shortly after his time as the Doctor, to see that - and put in a classic, purely expressive (non-verbal) performance as Omega in Arc of Infinity. Indeed, one might suggest that his not being typecast subsequently was down to this versatility. But I suppose ultimately, some brilliant moments in the part aside, Davison was always more the Vet than the General Practitioner of Time.
His era, however, and partly due to his underplayed participation in it, remains one of my favourites in the canon (second only to the Hinchcliffe era, and joint with the Troughton). But it was for me the most maturely scripted of all the eras; the most imaginative; and the most unconventional. And those are pretty big accolades. Davison, inevitably, played a big part in that.
Doctor Ewwwwwwww!!! by Billy Barron 25/12/06
If you are a fan of Davison's or his era, I'd suggest you go run for the hills now, because there is little good coming in this review. It is by far and away the era of Doctor Who I like the least. However, I admit I'd watch it over the first three years mainly because the pacing in those early stories bore me to tears.
I watched the Davison stories originally 20 years ago. My recollection consists of: stupid recursion story; wow, Adric and Tegan stink; YEAH!!! Adric's dead, YEAH!!!; Tegan is left behind; OH NO!!! Tegan is back; Turlough is almost as annoying as Adric; Nyssa lost her dress; possibly the worst sci-fi episode I've ever seen (The King's Demons); The Five Doctors was pretty awesome, please no more Master; Tegan is gone - hope it is for good this time; amazing - two good stories in a row (Planet of Fire and The Caves of Androzani); the best moment in Doctor Who history for me - "Change my dear. And, it seems, not a moment too soon". No joke!
Anyway, I gave it another shot, start to finish, recently. Unfortunately, it just confirmed what I originally thought.
Let's start with the main man. I believe the character was doomed from the original concept to be bland and boring. The writers didn't do their job in helping because, depending on the episode, I often felt that I was watching the Tegan show (Kinda, Snakedance) or the Master show (every episode he was in). I think the intent was that the Doctor and Tegan really didn't get along, but it appeared that the writers were so inconsistent it was useless. Also, most people rate The Caves of Androzani as this era's best episode. It was good but the Doctor had almost nothing to do with the real plot.
However, Davison contributed to the blandless. I've read so many reviews mentioning Davison's great acting skills on this site. I absolutely don't see it. Many he can act outside of Doctor Who (being American I haven't seen his other work), but as the Doctor he failed. Davison was incapable of showing any emotion. I never felt he cared about anyone, ever got mad, or anything else. Also, he was terrible at adding gravity to any situation.
Additionally, he was stuck with Adric, Tegan, Turlough, and Kamelion. The only other companion in Doctor Who history that comes even close to this bad is Dodo.
Adric was a jerk that I wanted to beat up all the time. No fun to watch. I think his problem was partly the character and partly Matthew Waterhouse's limited acting skills.
Tegan was just whine, whine, whine, whine, whine. On the other hand, I think Janet Fielding is a fine actress and did exactly what JNT was looking for. Her problem was pure character design.
I didn't like the Turlough character at the beginning because he was so slimy. Then, after Enlightenment, he seemed to drift (or be locked up in a jail cell more often) with no purpose until Planet of Fire when he turned into a real character finally. Too bad that didn't happen back in The King's Demons.
Kamelion barely had any screen time and it was too much. Peri, I like, but I'm going to talk about her in my eventual Sixth Doctor Era review so I'll skip her for now.
That leaves us with Nyssa, the only character I really liked during this era. She had an interesting, vastly underused backstory. Sarah Sutton was a fine actress. Too bad the TARDIS was too crowded and she ended up on the backburner all too often.
Speaking of which, now that I've seen the First Doctor stories, it is very clear to me that JNT was making an effort to make the show more like that timeframe. He went the crowded-TARDIS route.
It worked better the first time because there was better chemistry between the actors/characters. However, even then, someone would get the short stick - usually Susan or Vicki - in every story. This time, outside of the Doctor and Nyssa, we had a group of people who had zero chemistry and little reason to be together. Still, this could have been used as a strength, but JNT and the writers didn't use it as such.
As far as the stories go, Season Nineteen in my book is arguably the worst season in the history of Doctor Who. The less said the better. Season Twenty was only marginally better. This is only because Nicolas Courtney did an insanely great job of acting in Mawdryn Undead and then The Five Doctors was saved by the Doctors Two and Three. Season Twenty-One got off to a horrible start, but the run from Frontios through The Caves of Androzani was at least enjoyable.
I still hate The King's Demons. The only possible thing they could have done to make it worse would have been to bring back Adric. On a more positive note, I am no longer sure it is the worst sci-fi episode ever. The Web Planet, The Gunslingers and The Ultimate Foe all have to be on the same list. Any of the Babylon 5 interrogation episodes were equally bad. For that matter, Spock's Brain is horrid in its own right.
On a closing note, I'll watch The Five Doctors and then Frontios through The Caves of Androzani, but I'm not giving the rest of the era another shot. It's kinda sad that this was sandwiched right in the middle of two of my favorite periods of the show.
The voodoo-doll Doctor by Thomas Cookson 14/11/10
After the departure of the show's superstar, Tom Baker, Doctor Who became fixated with statement and redefinition. Whilst Season 18 had been a transitionary season to see out the Fourth Doctor's era, Season 19 is where JNT establishes his mark. Inexperienced, in the deep end and with no real understanding of workable scripts, but fandom nonetheless praising his every move, the show's past writers now all replaced with 'yes'-men (and an equally useless 'no'-man in Eric Saward), and Barry Letts no longer there to (diplomatically) curb his worst excesses, it was the beginning of the end.
Maybe the show should have ended on Logopolis, given Tom Baker's departure amidst dismal ratings. If the show ended on Logopolis then Castrovalva's novelisation would still exist to wrap up Logopolis' loose ends. In fact, the Davison era would work far better as a novel range. With high-concept storylines, but not the budget to support them, with three cipher companions begging for a novel range to flesh them out as fully fledged characters, such a Famous-Five-style companion dynamic could work potentially well in the novels. We'd get characters with decent motivations, meticulously written, coherent narratives, with genuine craft. The Master's comeuppance in Castrovalva probably wouldn't be undone, as he wouldn't be forced into stories where he didn't belong. In fact, the novel range would be free of JNT's creative interference, shopping lists or his ban on past Who writers.
Instead, JNT set unworkable elements in stone by his unswayable dictation, and blacklisted any past talents with a better idea of Doctor Who that might undermine his authority. Sadly, this had a detrimental effect on the Fifth Doctor's character. Only a control freak like JNT could reduce the free-spirited, strong-willed Doctor into a complete puppet; indeed, the Fifth Doctor became a reflection of the producer himself, taking on an unmanageable amount of elements, trying to appease his difficult companions (like JNT trying to appease the fans) and seemingly addicted to self-inflicted crisis-management. I think when fans see an authentic, fully fledged character in the Fifth Doctor, they're just seeing echoes of the producer himself, turning the Doctor himself into an unstable, obtusely negligent, self-defeating control freak, and likewise producing stories that echoed JNT at his worst: equally volatile and fragile at once.
Fans assert that Davison's portrayal brought a very human fallibility to the Doctor, ignoring the fact that even Tom Baker was fallible in Genesis of the Daleks and Horror of Fang Rock. But nothing was 'human' about Davison's fallibility, it was an artificial and contrived fallibility where he often had to deliberately go out of his way to fail.
If Earthshock had been a one-off, then I'd buy the Fifth Doctor's fallibility, giving the show a real dramatic edge again. Earthshock captured Eric Saward's approach at its most fresh, dynamic and spontaneous, as opposed to Season 21's tired, leering mindless sadism. It also showed humanity banding together against the Cyberman threat, harking back to the show's utilitarian ethos and honing Season 19's recurring theme in Castrovalva and Kinda of how "we're all in the same tribe".
Unfortunately Earthshock set such a trend that it quickly became apparent that the Fifth Doctor was incapable of learning from his mistakes, and instead seemed determined to repeat them, just so he could act all remorseful about it afterwards. Not by human error, but by reducing the Doctor's character to a puppet and forcing whatever false motives and actions onto him were needed to ensure the story ended on a self-serving downbeat note. At this point, there's no drama and no conflict because the Doctor has already surrendered to adversity, simply because the story needs him to.
Davison's era was a depressingly soulless one. Stories like Time-Flight even resembled soulless workplace-orientation videos; the scene where the Doctor and companions are grieving Adric hysterically for a minute, before acting bored and completely changing the subject is one of the most crassly insincere moments in Doctor Who. The other most insincere moment of course being at the end of Warriors of the Deep, where Doctor makes some hypocritical moralising speech to pretend the story's pointlessly contrived massacre is somehow meaningful, as if the story is feigning false remorse about the way it deliberately contrived itself to turn out, in a self-serving, calculated set-piece ending that fandom was somehow conned into seeing as an 'iconic' moment despite it being completely devoid of any meaning or point.
That's the only reason I can think why Warriors of the Deep has so many apologists trying to deflect the problem onto the story's production faults, and it's insulting crap. As if fans like me are too shallow or stupid to be able to see past the story's superficial faults to see it's real faults. As if we should somehow be 'forgiving' of a story which is itself unforgiving, hateful and mean-spirited, with nothing to say but a twisted scorn on humanity for not subscribing to the most suicidal pacifism, or even for having a survival instinct.
It's the implication that any prior producers would have let this story be commissioned, let alone screened that offends me most. A story that flies in the face of everything the show meant. An anti-story with no point or purpose, no identifiable goal beyond self-destruction and no hero, where the Doctor doesn't react to events at all, and sides with the genocidal murderers for no reason other than the story says so, thus completely disintegrating the hero, the show's moral purpose, the very aspects that made the show ever work at all. Hell, if Empire Strikes Back or Aliens had depicted their heroes as neurotic appeasers who hand victory to the bad guys and let everyone die, then, million dollar budget or no, any cinema audiences would have come away feeling like the butt of some sick joke.
Doctor Who was always about televised theatre, well crafted, where brevity is the soul of wit and every scene has a purpose. Inspiring viewers with life lessons without wasting precious hours of their life. In Davison's era, Enlightenment was as life-affirming as it got, and even that wasn't as life-changing as Evil of the Daleks, Inferno, Genesis of the Daleks, The Deadly Assassin or City of Death. Stories about history, politics, deciphering truths, the spirit of freedom, moments of decision and mortality. Surely the message of those stories is that moments are precious and life is too short to waste on watching hollow, pointless, obfuscationally pretentious, nihilistic trash like Warriors of the Deep. And JNT apologists may desperately claim that Season 21's violence is no more offensive than the Hinchcliffe era, but the Hinchcliffe era was all about well-crafted survival horror, whereas Season 21 was antithetically about mindless self-destruction.
JNT was very skilled at propaganda, and keeping the show talked about and in the papers. Perhaps without him the show would have been ignored and forgotten after Tom Baker left. But I'd say Warriors of the Deep is where this propagandist direction got sinister. JNT could tap into fandom's more detrimentally cultish thinking (hence the many vehement JNT defenders and apologists). Taking the Doctor's alleged 'pacifism' to a completely absolutist degree, against all cognitive reasoning. It was the most offensive rewriting of Doctor Who history ever, in which the Silurians were always wronged innocents, the Doctor never made his choice to be on mankind's side in the end of The Sea Devils to save the greater number, and in fact he might as well never have left Gallifrey. It's a complete character assassination of the Doctor, that fandom was fooled into seeing as somehow definitive. Suddenly, this JNT redefinition of the show felt honestly Orwellian. This new version is the past, and always has been. Yet if the Doctor was ever this much of a turncoat appeaser and this devoid of any heroic or pragmatic instincts at all, then not a single Doctor Who story could ever have worked. The Doctor would feel pity for Sutekh and let him go free to destroy Earth. In fact, the Doctor would have willingly betrayed future information about Dalek defeats to Davros, and left the tape, so those poor doomed Daleks of the future would have a chance at surviving.
It's also Orwellian in its disturbing use of double-think. JNT was a master of double-think and newspeak. He'd brag that he'd doubled the ratings one year, despite having halved the ratings last year in the first place. In Warriors of the Deep, the Doctor tells us that the humans are pathetic savages, despite one human woman taking a bullet to protect him, and we're meant to believe two contradictory things about the Doctor's nature: that he has no compassion for the dying humans because 'he's an alien', but he's desperate to save the Silurians out of his deep sanctity of life. The only reason for the Doctor's twisted selective compassion in not lifting a finger to save the humans is that he doesn't care about the humans because they're not real people, but he cares about the Silurians for the simple reason that he's a puppet under the dictates of the writer, so none of this is real.
So I've recently decided that Doctor Who should have ended at The Five Doctors. A perfect celebration and encapsulation of the show's 20 year history, ending on the line "Why not, after all that's how it all started". It'd be a more upbeat ending than Logopolis and, with Davison's Doctor, the show would be seen to have a future without Tom Baker after all. The Five Doctors is more climactic than most Davison stories, it conveys a sense of direction in a way no other Davison story does, and it brings the spiritualist delvings of Castrovalva, Kinda and Enlightnenment to conclusion. You could still have Fifth Doctor and Nyssa audios, alongside a novel range making interesting use of Turlough and Kamelion, and following up Rassilon's prophecy of the Master meeting his final comeuppance.
By ending it there, the elements that make up Doctor Who are still respected and preserved, through careful craft and restraint. The Master is at his most deadly since Logopolis, a single Dalek cameo preserves the Daleks as a nebulous, relentless mighty imperial evil, before the cheapening excesses of Resurrection of the Daleks saw the Daleks abused through overuse, devastated, demystified and diminished in a pointless orgy of destruction. We also see a microcosm of the savage Whoniverse, with the Doctor as its wisened zen master.
Next season, the Doctor would be completely destroyed as a hero. Having the Daleks, like the Silurians, destroyed by a convenient gas lying at the Doctor's feet just diminishes their threat through creative laziness and makes everything too easy for the Doctor, whilst requiring him to be completely incompetent until the runtime and body count reaches its end. Here, JNT seems to succumb to a self-destructive streak, producing enough bad work to form a corrosive critical mass that even retroactively disgraced the show's past, and its central hero.
The strangest thing about the incompetent, pacifist Fifth Doctor is how out of place he is. His era was the first to not be self-sustained and his character made little sense outside the context of his contrast to Tom's Doctor. In fact, skipping from the Fourth Doctor to Sixth Doctor would make more sense given the Fourth Doctor's ruthless streak in Brain of Morbius and State of Decay. But then the Seventh Doctor wouldn't seem so radical after all.
JNT worked like a juggernaut, fiercely maintaining his authority and refusing to acknowledge his mistakes or failures, and using sensationalism and fannish excesses to sell the show. He shouldn't have been in charge, but if he was unsuited and unqualified for the job but was given it anyway by the BBC, unsupervised, then maybe in a way it wasn't really his fault. But unfortunately, an era based on misjudgements, pretension, excesses and self-delusions of greatness just doesn't stand the test of time.
Fascination for the fifth Doctor by Nathan Mullins 13/8/11
Firstly, I'd like to say that I have always found Peter Davison's Doctor to have such charm, and a sense of enthusiasm and wit, but never had many episodes of his to watch back and really take the time to decipher his Doctors persona. But, for a while now, I have been secretly taking an interest in collecting the old videos, DVDS, books and annuals. So now I have gathered an opinion on his many stories and found a way in which to give my opinion.
The 5th Doctor comes across as slightly weak, unlike his predecessor whose persona was very bouncy and off the wall. Also, I feel his companions helped to shape him. Adric the most: at times able to identify with the Doctor and at others their arguing reminds me of the first Doctor's constant bickering with Ian and Barbara. Tegan likewise had the unlikeable factor, often annoying the Doctor, for such silly reasons. However, I love the character of Tegan. I think she's a real delight and I have only just recognised that. Nyssa was a trusting companion, who served the Doctor well throughout the end of his fourth life and assisted the Doctor through his fifth. These three companions who I have mentioned are the companions I have grown rather fond of in recent weeks and my respect for the actors who have been able to play off their companions traits are astounding. I applaud them.
Companions who later joined the 5th Doctor do not have such a crazy effect on me, unlike the others. Turlough and Peri, both very different characters, with a lot of personality, often did little for the Doctor and his own personality. Peri could be a handful and Turlough was always up to something sneaky. No one knew whether they could trust him.
Peter Davison's era continued the tradition of Tom Baker's final season, where he continued to wear the question marks/ John Nathan Turner thought the Doctor should have, being Doctor... Who?... Perhaps a silly feature, not worth bringing up, but I think it's fair to say every actor, from Tom Baker, hated the question marks!
But now to conclude why I felt compelled to write this review. Most 5th Doctor stories are calm, taking things slow and are a real delight to watch. Tom Baker's era had a lot of action and adventure, while Peter Davison's era had a lot of stories that simply were not all about fire, guns ablaze, etc, but about telling a good tale, whether or not it was set on another planet. Some of his stories aren't that good, but, like every Doctor, there are some adventures that capture the heart, and some that do not. But most episodes of the fifth Doctor's era are pretty good. Castrovalva, Earthshock, The Five Doctors, Time-Flight and The Caves of Androzani all rank as some of the very best of Davison's era, in my opinion. Though I do have to confess that I really am beginning to take an interest in the life and times of the fifth Doctor.