Your Bottom of the Barrel Doctor Who TV Stories

[Andrew Curnow]

Firstly, the plot. Surely the origins of the universe had already been sorted out in Castrovalva?!...and the Black Guardian is useless! Why can't he be seen to destroy the Doctor? He was all up for it in 'The Armageddon Factor'.

I'm no great fan of Terminus m'self, Pip, but some of what you say doesn't seem to make much sense to me. Castrovalva was about the TARDIS heading for the start of the universe, it didn't mention what caused it - if Terminus conflicts with anything it's Slipback, but that came later.

As for the Black Guardian, he does say in Mawdryn that "I cannot be seen to act in this" which is why he needs Turlough in the first place - and is presumably why he can't/doesn't destroy the Doctor in Armageddon Factor, and for that matter is probably why the White Guardian needs the Doctor in the first place!

I don't think I can really agree with your criticism of Davison's performance either, nor of Pertwee's in The Mutants. Do either of them really give bad performances in these stories - I don't remember ever seeing that.

IMHO natch!

[Pip Madeley]

Well in Castrovalva it was the in-rush of hydrogen which caused the big bang, whilst in Terminus it was an explosion from the fuel of one of Terminus' engines.

As for the Black Guardian, he was all up for destroying the Doctor at the end of 'The Armageddon Factor' - it was only the TARDIS' defence mechanism that stopped him. In any case, I don't understand how Turlough is carrying on as his servant in this story when at the end of 'Mawdryn' the crystal thingy was cracked...

And I'm going to be unpopular here, but I thought Davison was pants during season twenty. And according to what I've read online, he agrees.

[Wayne]

Well i'm happy to defend 'Terminus'. It's not perfect, but it's actually one of my favourite Davisons.
It very mysterious & atmospheric from the outset, & soon gives rise to a dark storyline of terminal disease, & corporate conrol. Great stuff!
The cast are largely good, & i particularly like Andrew Burt as poor Valgard, who was overpowered every time he tried to be a captor. Tegan & Turlough are kept out of the way for a fair bit of the story as well, which can't be a bad thing.
Ok, there were a couple of things to turn a blind eye to, plotwise. I thought the explaination about the engines explosion causing the big bang, was a poor idea. Then a 2nd explosion would destroy the known universe. I found the whole idea very implausible.
Another gripe is Roger Limb's intrusive & irritating incidental music. His excessive use of that one particular synthesizer sound, really gets on my nerves at times. The atmosphere of this story required a far more subtle soundtrack IMO.
But despite these gripes, i really rather enjoy this intiguing & superbly atmospheric story. Castrovalva is streets ahead of this one on the 'boring' stakes.

[Ralph]

Hmmm...

Doctor Who and the Silurians - this one goes on for far too long, and really doesn't have the story to back it up.

The Mutants - another overlong story which has some interesting ideas, but sends me to sleep in the process.

Planet of the Daleks - zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Planet of Evil - Looks nice, but the story completely fails to hold my interest.

The Masque of Mandragora - Very uninteresting.

Underworld - Starts off well, but falls apart very quickly.

The Leisure Hive - Visually stunning, shame the story is a load of guff.

Four to Doomsday - Quite dull, with a embarassingly pitiful performance from Adric.

Revelation of the Daleks - I still fail to see how this tosh can be seen as a classic!

Ghost Light - Like a lot of stories on this list, a wonderful set, let down by a bad story.

And while there are a lot of obvious stories missing from this list, I've always found the bad but watchable stories better than the dull ones

Well it's horses for courses but "bottom of the barrell!" which this is supposed to be... are we watching the same programme?

[Logo Polish]

To be fair, the Black Guardian using Turlough as an agent isn't much different to his using the Shadow as another one, or indeed the White Guardian using the Doctor as one, in searching for the Key.

I always assumed "hydrogen inrush" was meant to be the Big Bang, as witnessed backwards, because of the travelling back in time through it. At the very least, I think it's a description rather than a cause.

[Ralph]

I'm still working on my final list of the dullest of the dull Who stories - I'm looking to find the 10 most guaranteed to put you into a deep coma

[Zbigniev Hamson]

I always assumed "hydrogen inrush" was meant to be the Big Bang, as witnessed backwards, because of the travelling back in time through it. At the very least, I think it's a description rather than a cause.

I thought that too. But then if you listen to the dialogue they actually talk about the formation of "the galaxy" out of a huge inrush of hydrogen, not the universe anyway.

Anyway, even if they were talking about the formation of the Universe, and even if the hydrogen inrush was something that came before (even though that makes no sense), rather than the explosion seen in reverse, it still doesn't explain where that comes from. Maybe Terminus uses high pressure hydrogen injection engines

[Jason Thompson]

In the order in which I can think of bad things to say about them:

Timelash

Utter tripe. Only has enough plot for half its length; has dull sets; a lethal weapon made of polystyrene and tinsel; terrible performances (yes, Mr Darrow, we are looking at you); turns a very clever legendary author into an annoying little oik, which is especially insulting in a story that borrows elements from his books; resolves the plot with a handy mcguffin extracted from the tinsel-tunnel; has a hugely padded TARDIS scene that builds up the Doctor stopping the Bandril missile by unexplained means to the point where it appears certainly suicidal, which elevates it beyond a simple convenient plot device of 'oh he's done something clever with the TARDIS' to the very worst example of cop-out 'I'll explain later' plotting in the show's entire run; and then realises that even with that it has ten more minutes to fill so brings in another Borad to replace the one dispatched ten minutes previously.

Top marks for the Borad makeup, but that's about the only good thing in it.

The Space Pirates

Some nice model work, but by the end of part 2 the Doctor and company are still stuck in a featureless room not doing anything important to the plot; Milo Clancey is an absurd anachronism of a character without even a pretense of making him fit into the futuristic setting; General Hermack is a complete idiot (a bunch of pirates using state of the art Beta Darts and he thinks they’re led by a man in an obsolete crate? A mined out planet suddenly productive again in the very element the pirates have been taking, and using new state of the art Beta Darts, and he doesn’t smell a rat? It doesn’t even occur to him that Newton’s laws offered him a chance to project the possible course of the now un-propelled beacon segments until just after the bad guys have conveniently re-routed them!); Zoe calculates the course of the segments despite not having half the information she actually needs to do it; two cliffhanger cop-outs in as many episodes (they fall off a ledge and scream for several seconds, but then turn out to have dropped about five feet, and the Doctor will definitely be burned to a crisp by the rocket exhaust… oh no, it’s OK, he’s just got a sore throat); Jamie is bloody annoying, refusing to accept the Doctor’s assurance that there must be a door in their cell despite his patient explanation and generally not giving any indication whatsoever that he’s learned anything from the previous years of travelling with him; and it ends on a stupid joke.

The Android Invasion

Teribble plotting (why do they need to escape the radiation on Oseidon when they can build habitats that are shielded from it anyway?); absurd examples of ‘I’m not going to kill you right now despite the gun I’m holding because this death would be much more poetic’; a virus that will destroy all humanity, but actually just kills one person when it is accidentally released; and an idiot who’s never noticed that actually he still has one of his eyes.

Underworld

Oh dear oh dear. The CSO isn’t too bad (mostly), but the plot is dire; the performances are sub-par; some idiot decided to put major speaking characters in cloth hats that mask their faces, but sadly their delivery does not overcome this at all; there seems no good reason for the two characters with dustbins for heads; and it’s just highly forgettable.

Four To Doomsday

So bad I can’t really recall anything about it. Not one I’ve felt the need to watch more than twice: once when I first got it on video when it was released, and once as part of my ‘whole series in order’ marathon.

The Creature From The Pit

OK, the creature is awful, but that goes without saying; the dialogue is terrible; the scavengers are the worst acted bunch of morons in the whole of Who; the plot runs out five minutes into part 4 and is replaced by a load of crap about neutron stars and weaving aluminium to reduce gravity. Rubbish.

The Monster Of Peladon

Curse of Peladon with two extra episodes and without a interesting ‘monsters as good guys’ twist; a load of women’s lib bluntly shoehorned in; Sarah believing the Doctor is dead twice; the Ice Warriors look like they’ve been kitted out from a cheap costume hire shop; and such awful direction that a close-up of Terry Walsh as Jon Pertwee got in not only once but again in the reprise the following episode!

Daleks In Manhattan/Evolution Of The Daleks

Not only is the science that Helen Raynor tries to cram in utter rubbish (come on, a solar flare strike at [i[midnight?![/i]), but the Daleks are once more reduced to the caricatures that spend ages shouting about doing stuff but not actually doing much; the Doctor stands unarmed in front of the Daleks about four times, twice practically daring them to shoot him, and they don’t! He deduces the presence of Daleks by finding a pointless jellyfish thing and building a DNA analyser out of theatre supplies rather than actually seeing them, apparently just to bulk out the runtime. Just a very poor effort. The only episode since Rose where I’ve left the room partway through and not cared about what I missed.

Silver Nemesis

It’s only 3 episodes long, and there are sorceresses, Nazis and Cybermen after the Nemesis statue, but still each episode has pointless padding scenes (the stuff at Buckingham Palace, the Skinheads and Dolores Grey); the Cybermen have become so allergic to gold that even coins fired from a catapult cause them to explode; and the script even has a line pointing out how similar the plot is to the previous-but-one story (OK, it must have been a coincidence, but the end result just looks like a lack of originality).

The Twin Dilemma

A lesson in how not to introduce a new Doctor, how not to follow a brilliant swansong, how not to end a season, how not to cast the titular characters, how not to dress your cast, how not to make your monster look threatening, and how not to make a decent TV show full stop. Colin Baker is trying but comes across as too theatrical. Nicola Bryant looks bored. No-one else except Maurice Denham is even trying. He’s the best thing in it, but what a waste of a great actor.

Others have not made the list despite me not liking them very much. The Highlanders is dull and forgettable, as is The Smugglers, but they’re OK. I can’t find anything to actively dislike about them. Other stories that have been called dull and long-winded I have appreciated in a whole new way (or a whole old way) by watching them an episode at a time, and some of them are a lot less tedious when you stop between episodes, as was always the intent.

[Antony Cox]

I'm still working on my final list of the dullest of the dull Who stories - I'm looking to find the 10 most guaranteed to put you into a deep coma

Ooh - looking forward to all the Pertwee ones!

[Wayne]

The Seeds of Doom
Why? Because the Doctor is such an annoying, patronising, idiotic, unfeeling, violent git. That's it in a nutshell, plus a bit of nonsense plotting, the ghastly Amelia... No disputing that it's well made and well played, but it's just not a Doctor Who story.

It's not any of those things IMO, least of all idiotic! That's the last thing it is.

but it's just not a Doctor Who story.

We all have our tastes, but to say it's not Dr Who is just utter bollocks!

[Andrew Curnow]

Bit of a delayed reaction there, Wayne, that was ages ago!! Although, I would just say that I said the Doctor was "annoying, patronising, idiotic, unfeeling, violent" rather than the story.

Anyway, you should just be pleased that only one Pertwee made the list...
(Only joking!)

[Wayne]

Sorry Andrew, i was pissed & leery last night, & Ralph was egging me on.
*Wayne half passing the buck.

[Andrew Curnow]

Oh yes, "Ralph made me do it" a likely story!

[Dirk Gently]

That Ralph is a sh!t stirring git at times!

[Si Hunt]

the Cybermen have become so allergic to gold that even coins fired from a catapult cause them to explode

I've never understood why people have a problem with this. Why is having gold shot into your chest unit by a catapult apparently less of a vulnerability than having it injected by a Cybermat or rubbed in with a badge or whatever?

Si.

[Ralph]

That Ralph is a sh!t stirring git at times!

I won't have that!

I'll have you know I'm a fine upstanding member of society!


























except when I'm on this board......

[SiHart]

I've never understood why people have a problem with this. Why is having gold shot into your chest unit by a catapult apparently less of a vulnerability than having it injected by a Cybermat or rubbed in with a badge or whatever?

It's certainly better than them running away in a panic from an arrow that nearly hit them! I don't mind the gold coins. At leats it's an exciting sequence and well shot. Especially the bits on the high gantry.

Si xx

[Andrew Curnow]

Agreed, the arrow is worse (as is the bizarre claim by the Nazi guy that the arrows won't hurt him in the same way - maybe you're not allergic to gold, De Flores, but it'll still bloody hurt you loon!!) but the coins are still pretty bad. Revenge made a good case for the gold DUST clogging the Cyb's respirators, but a solid coin... I don't really think so.

[shada pavlova]

Maybe certain chemicals within the cyberman's chest cause the coins to dissolve and infiltrate the system, thereby poisoning them?

[Jason Thompson]

I've never understood why people have a problem with this. Why is having gold shot into your chest unit by a catapult apparently less of a vulnerability than having it injected by a Cybermat or rubbed in with a badge or whatever?

Si.

Because if it's gold dust being injected, or gold fragments being scraped directly onto the chest unit and sucked into the inner workings, that makes sense, but why in hell doesn't a gold coin with no sharp edges and propelled only as fast as a piece of elastic can make it go not only not bounce off the chest unit of a supposedly technologically advanced creature but get so far inside it to cause an immediately fatal and explosive reaction? Bullets bounce off without leaving a scratch, but gold coins don't?!

If someone shoved gold dust down your throat you'd choke. If you were shot the bullet would in all likelihood go straight through you, shattering bone on the way. A catapulted gold coin would hurt but would only leave a bit of a bruise at best (as the Mythbusters showed, even a coin travelling at terminal velocity, as fast as it physically can go in air, will only be a bit painful when it hits you and probably won't even break the skin).

In Revenge of the Cybermen, the Doctor, Harry and Lester jumped two Cybermen with handfuls of gold dust and totally failed to get any of it into their chest units. Only the modified cybermat that injected it right into one Cyberman was effective. In Earthshock the Doctor had to grapple with the Cyberleader and scrape the gold on his chest unit, and even that only caused him to lurch around apparently gasping for breath. It wasn't until he was shot in the chest nine times at point blank range that the Cyberleader actually died. In Silver Nemesis these supposedly powerful aliens can be taken out with what amount to soft metal discs devoid of sharp edges and fragments, fired by a teenager with a kids' toy slingshot. At least when Ace beat up a Dalek with a baseball bat it had been souped up with extra power by the Gallifreyan superweapon. Not only that, but the Cybermen can't hit a barn door at three paces. There's no threat from them: they're crap shots, weak as pussycats, and so stupid they stand right by the rocket engines and allow the Doctor to explain exactly how he's going to use those engines to kill them before, well, he kills them.