Inferno – 32 / 18
Spearhead from Space – 36 / 28
Doctor Who and the Silurians – 42 / 50
The Ambassadors of Death – 90 / 96
My Rating
Inferno
Spearhead from Space
Doctor Who and the Silurians
The Ambassadors of Death
Well, for once it seems that general fandom has it right – or I do –
or both of us, since this is the first season where I agree entirely with
either the Mighty 200 or the 2014 polls. I think it’s the first season when
every story makes it into the top 100 on both polls too.
In no particular order, here are some things I have noticed about
the 7th season: -
* Liz Shaw simply does not
conform to the blueprint of companions/assistants used in series 1 – 6.
In the first 6 seasons it has been true of all the companions that
they are either –
a) On board the TARDIS through circumstances beyond their own
control, and reliant upon the Doctor to eventually get them home
– or –
b) have suffered emotionally/psychologically traumatic events and
are therefore damaged goods.
Not sure about that? See for yourself.
Susan – Her parents aren’t mentioned, and may be dead. We don’t know the
circumstances of how she came to accompany her grandfather, the Doctor. She has
only just found a place to start putting down roots at Coal Hill, and the
Doctor whisks her away for good. Damaged goods.
Ian and Barbara – Never gave their consent to the first trip with the Doctor, and
only manage to return home using the Dalek timeship
Vicky – Orphaned when the colony ship carrying her and her parents
crashed on Dido. The only other human being to survive is a criminal who
dresses up in a monster suit to maintain power over her. Barbara guns down her
pet in front of her. Damaged goods.
Steven – Marooned on Mechanus when his spaceship crash landed. Held by
Mechanoids for a long time, with no companion other than a stuffed toy panda.
Damaged goods.
Dodo – Orphaned and living with an Aunt who doesn’t care for her very
much. And thick. Damaged goods.
Ben and Polly – arrive aboard the TARDIS by accident, and leave at the first
opportunity.
Jamie – has seen the Jacobites crushed on Culloden. His friend Alexander
is killed. His clan chief is wounded, and leaves for France, along with all of
his friends. His prospects are becoming an outlaw, and either being executed
for treason, or fleeing to France and never seeing Scotland again. Damaged
goods.
Victoria – Kidnapped by Daleks, taken to Skaro, rescued by the Doctor where
she is orphaned when her father sacrifices himself to save the Doctor. Damaged
goods. Stuck with the Doctor until she can find the gumption to leave.
Zoe – Turned into a human supercomputer by the educational methods used
in the Academy where she was brought up, and thus the victim of anti nerd
bullying on the wheel in space, and unable to seemingly form normal
relationships. Damaged goods.
You maybe now see where I’m coming from with this. Now you should
ask yourself how did Liz join the TARDIS crew? Answer – she didn’t! She never
once stepped inside it on camera. The most traumatic thing she encounters prior
to meeting the Doctor the first time is the Brigadier’s moustache. Although extremely
well played by Caroline John, a fine actress, Liz Shaw is a problematical
character. She is a scientist, and therefore a far from ideal recipient of the
kind of info-dumping exposition that a more typical companion would be on the
receiving end of. So although she is well played, sympathetic and interesting,
she was a problem, and it’s not surprising that incoming producer Barry Letts
wanted to take a different direction with Jo Grant. What is a little more
surprising is that she has no leaving scene at all. I can’t make up my mind
whether this was a conscious decision – soppy leaving scenes being a part of
old, black and white Who – or that they just couldn’t be bothered. Although
thinking about it they did have to edit out quite a bit of “Inferno” to make
the running time, so maybe there just wasn’t time. Whatever.
* It’s the Pertwee Era,
Jim, but not as we know it –
Watching season 7 was a bit of a disconcerting experience, because
it just wasn’t how I remembered it. My memories of the Pertwee era, with the
exception of “Spearhead from Space” focused almost exclusively on the Barry
Letts era. And this season was not the show I’m sure that it’s about to become.
What made it disconcerting is that certain pieces of the jigsaw are already
there – peripherals like Bessie, some of the UNIT family, most notably Benton
and the Brigadier, and the Doctor himself, who actually is pretty much the
Third Doctor I remember, although he hasn’t done so much of the physical stuff
yet, which is probably all to the good. I’ve already discussed Liz Shaw as an
assistant, so we’ll just say that the switch from Liz to Jo Grant will have
major implications. So few stories with
so many episodes as well isn’t just quite a difference from what I remember of
the era, it’s also totally different from what we’ve had before. It was the
shortest series to date, with only 4 stories sharing 25 episodes. I mean, if we
use the 6th season as a comparison, there we had a 10 parter and an
8 parter, but we also had a 4 parter, two 5 parters and two 6 parters – a total
of 44 episodes.
* Wot, no monsters?
No, of course there were monsters. Only. . . well, they weren’t like
monsters we had seen before, that’s all. Let’s take the first, the Autons. The
Autons weren’t the typical monster in that they looked like every day objects –
plastic shop dummies. Which actually is very neat. If you can take everyday
objects and make them menacing then you’re probably onto something. The
Silurians? Well, they certainly looked monstrous, and with the power to kill
using that weird third eye thing they could act like it too. When you get right
down to it though, we saw they were individuals, and that there was a ‘good’
Silurian as well as a ‘bad’ one. The bad one wasn’t monstrous because he was a
Silurian, he was monstrous because he was bad. As for the Ambassadors in the
third story, well, possessed of monstrous powers, and killers, but unwittingly
so, clearly. Finally the Primords. The story as such isn’t really about the
Primords at all – they’re just a bit of window dressing, and could be chucked
out of the story relatively easily if it was a 5 or 6 parter. And . . . they’re
us. In that sense, they are essentially tragic rather than horrific – in fact I
became quite upset when parallel Benton became one.
Now compare all this to the previous two seasons. Cybermen? Evil.
Ice Warriors? Evil. Yeti? Robots controlled by Great Intelligence. He/She/ It’s
Evil. Seaweed/foam life form? Evil. Dominators? Evil – look, do you need me to
go on? What is interesting, then is that we seem to have a new paradigm here
(sorry, but the words new paradigm applied to Doctor Who monsters has just
brought me out in a cold sweat) of more three dimensional monsters, and it will
be interesting to see what happens with this in season 8.
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