#i have watched the myrka now i can watch any classic who

[doccywhoramblings]

Bizarre watching order part two: Classic Who Boogaloo.

WELCOME TO PART TWO OF THE RAMBLE:

It actually took me ages to get to classic who...

I decided November 2023 would be the time because it now did not require any purchase of blue-rays (in the UK. sorry rest of the world)

So my idiot self decided 'i Know i Will Start With the First Episode' and was hit with CLASSIC WHO PACING BLACK AND WHITE THE SETS ARE WOBBLING and could not get into it.

But then..... but then.....

I had a good idea :)

I watched season 7 WITH COLOUR:

It's six months later, I am now watching series 21 and Pertwee has become one of my favourite doctors.

I will go back to watch seasons 1-6 after I have finished season 26 and hopefully I will enjoy them now I have got used to Classic who pacing and the delightful special effects.

[circular-time]

Twin Dilemma re-watch: "Yuck”

I could only stomach part one.

I haven’t gone back and rewatched Six’s episodes, because I had such a hard time with them when they first aired. I was... 13, I think. 

I do so love Colin now, thanks to his excellence in Big Finish and his all-around decency as a human being and a proponent of Doctor Who. (I love his article on behalf of Whittaker in the Guardian.)  So I thought I should rewatch his stories as an adult.

I know there will be good things in future serials, but after watching Part One of Twin Dilemma again, I am struck by how much it seems like a NEVER DO THIS list of the worst possible ways to introduce a new Doctor...

It followed directly after Caves of Androzani. So instead of the usual practice of introducing a new Doctor after a summer of antici----pation, he barged in while most fans were still in the initial NOOOOOOOO!!! phase of the Five Stages of Grief/Loss for his predecessor.

Androzani ended with an emotional exit for the Fifth Doctor, sacrificing himself for a companion (whom we barely knew, and I confess I resented her, too, because of that). Then, Six sits up and sneers at Peri, the person Five just died for, throwing a bucket of cold water over a raw, touching moment. Subverting sentimental moments with cyncism can work, but it relies on mood whiplash for the viewer, so it must be done with care. 

Twin Dilemma starts not in the TARDIS but instead in a crappy set with wooden actors. Suspense is fine, but the contrast with Androzani is painful.

Back in the TARDIS, the new Doctor pats himself on the back to tell us how handsome, intelligent and thoroughout wonderful he is. I remember wanting to shove a pie in his smarmy face. It should be funny, but again, in context of Androzani, it’s childish and irritating.

The worst possible way to establish a new Doctor is to spit on the grave of the last Doctor while fans are mourning him. Which is exactly what Six does, mocking Five for being “sweet” and “feckless” and claiming that wasn’t his true self. He sneers at Peri for being attached to him— and so, indirectly, he sneers at Five’s fans.

Every Peri & Doctor scene is intercut with the uninspire’d B-plot’s more wooden acting, crappy sets and cheap-looking costumes, and a Who monster design nearly as clunky as the Myrka. End-of-season leftover budgets don’t serve a new Doctor well.

The Doctor dons his new costume, the much-derided technicolor nightmare coat, after  sneering at another predecessor (Two) in passing. Peri expresses what most viewers must be thinking: “Yuck.”

At least the wardrobe scene shows that some of Six’s behavior is due to regeneration sickness. Unfortunately, by depicting regeneration’s after-effects as acute, violent fits of madness interrupting his train of thought, it implies that his sneering, arrogant, narcissistic personality is his “real” one.

And of course, if we weren’t already rattled as much as Peri, there’s the infamous strangling scene. This was still a show targeted at children as much as adults. That scene seriously, SERIOUSLY terrified me, far more than anything else in classic Who history. Consider: a trusted adult, authority figure, parental figure, or best friend— the Doctor is all these things to his young audience— suddenly starts verbally abusing Peri, gaslighting her, ignoring her, and acting erratically. Then he violently assaults her, winding up straddling her in a posture disturbingly reminiscent of sexual assault. Even for children and teens who haven’t suffered abuse in real life, that sequence was traumatizing. But for young people who have been emotionally and/or physically abused, for whom Doctor Who is escapism? Devastating. We could no longer project RL fears onto fictional monsters and enjoy the fantasy of a trusted authority figure/best friend/protector. Suddenly, he was the monster. 

After the Doctor snaps out of it, his non-apology consists of dragging Peri off to “suffer” with him on a barren asteroid. Another nightmare of children: adults take you somewhere against your will, and you’re afraid and powerless, and you’re afraid they’ll hurt you.

Peri spends the whole episode whining, whimpering and bickering with him. Which isn’t any fun either. 

The first episode ends with the Doctor viciously guilt tripping Peri for wrongly assuming there’s no survivors of a nearby crash: “you would’ve left your own kind to die.” The wording reinforces the gulf between him and us.

In response, Peri finally snaps and tells him off for being cruel and self-centered.

In short, the Doctor has been transformed from a compassionate Dad or big brother figure into an untrustworthy monster who neglects and abuses his companions. At age 13, I understood that message all too well; I mentally switched him to the “dangerous adult, cannot trust” category. 

I don’t blame Colin for this fiasco. He performed the script he was given to the best of his ability. It’s largely due to his skilled voicework and physical improv that Six’s intro is so memorable and terrifying. 

I know that the showrunners were trying to do something new, different, and edgy. But. “Let’s make the Doctor as jarring and unlikeable as possible” is a dangerous way to break the mold. They needed to provide some reason to keep watching.

After Twin Dilemma, viewers had to wait over a year to see the next story, a very long time to stew over what we’d just seen. Bad first impressions had time to set like concrete.

To make matters worse, this was about the time VCRs became common in households, so many fans could rewatch Androzani and Twin Dilemma to contrast/compare.

All of which leads back to my contention that Twin Dilemma was dreadfully unfair to Colin Baker: giving him a piss-poor intro, then expecting him in the following season to win back the fans the script had driven off. It wasn’t very fair to Nicola, either. 

I’m pissed at Michael Grade & company for throwing so many barriers in Colin’s way, above and beyond the usual headwind of fans clinging to the old Doctor and being wary of the new. And I’m pissed at my younger self for letting Twin Dilemma rattle me so thoroughly that I barely noticed when the true Six, the heart of gold under that pompous facade, started to shine through in later stories.