First vs Last: Season 12

[SiHart]

It's back!

This week Tom Baker over as the Doctor, in the twelfth season of the show. He's eased in with a UNIT story, battling Hilda Winters, Professor Kettlewell and their Robot in, of course, Robot.

The season a little prematurely than planned with the return of the Cybermen, who are invading Wookey Hole, sorry, Voga to wipe the planet of Gold from the solar system.

But which is better, first or last?

[Rob McCow]

Ooo - now you've foxed me! I'm completely enamoured of both these stories, so it'll be incredibly hard for me to decide. Both of them are real nostalgia-blasts to me. They've both got robots, great location shooting, gun fights, wonderful characters and Sarah and Harry - it's a real tough call!

[Dino]

It was close! Very close! Both had a lot to commend them. But went with Revenge Of The Cybermen as it had space and the future. Plus a member of the cast almost died making it!
And on the commentary I love the story about Elizabeth Sladen and Ian Marter leaning against the Witch of Wookey Hole and finding a scene they didn't understand, so they went to the director to ask about it... and the scene had vanished! How can a toy tank compete with that?

[Anthony Williams]

Definitely Cybermen - Robot still feels like a Pertwee to me (unsurprising), while Cybermen feels like it truly belongs in the Tom era

[Larry]

Tom, did hit the floor running and even in Robot, he is well into his stride - having said that Tom, performance is the only good thing in what for me is a pretty mundane debut story.

Revenge, has it's faults but it's a far better story than some may claim, Kelman, makes a great villain and for me the Cybermen design is one of the best.

[Alex Me]

Revenge of the Cybermen, was the very first doctor who video I got. Must of been around 1995 or so. It always hold's a special place in my hearth therefore.

[J.R. Southall]

I love them both for the same reasons: Tom, Ian, and Lis. And Robot has a kind of laid-back atmosphere (with lots of outdoor work!) that's absolutely charming. However, it's another vote for Revenge from me. It's the mutant offspring of Letts, Hinchcliffe and Gerry Davis. And completely mad.

[Dirk Gently]

Like Steve I'm finding this a really tough call.
I like them both & they are probably both 7/10's...probably (I really need to work out a 10 step criteria about scoring stories).

In the end I've sided with the mad Kettlewell (whom I'm sure I'll end up like if I get old, but without the brilliance) & voting Robot. It's probably all the new Doctor stuff & Ian Marter's reactions to him.
I can forgive the Action Man tank & the CSO giant robot because it's a great story about how Science is powerful but has to be tempered with humanity.

[stuartdg]

Robot,it just ticks all the boxes in terms of a debut story,Revenge just takes too long to get going for my liking

[SiHart]

I chose Robot. I love Revenge of the Cybermen, but there's just something about robot I like more. The Robot is great (mostly looks great until it has complicated moves to do), Hilda Winters is a formidable womens lib villain, Tom shines trying his hardest to make you like him and be different to Pertwee, Sarah does some investigating, The Brig gets exasperated, makes the Robot grow and finds another enemy that's immune to bullets and well, the whole story is terribly charming and summery and you come away from watching it with a great big smile on your face.

[Terry Leptil]

I've gone for Robot. It's a better story. Revenge of the Cybermen has to be one of the weakest Cybermen stories.

[Si Hunt]

Battle of the clunkers if you ask me. I thought this was supposed to be a good season!

I'll go for Revenge because I love Cybermen! And Robot is very dull.

Si.

[Andrew Curnow]

I think I've said before that I love Doctor Who when it feels fresh & new, so I'm going for Robot. Quite apart from the new Doctor, the videotape look makes it somehow feel totally different to the Pertwee UNIT days, and there's a vibrancy to it, and a newness everywhere - from the new Doctor, to the new companion, even down to such things as Sarah wearing a dress, and the villain being a woman.

Though I like Revenge too!

[duncan]

I love them both as it's the start of my golden era. However, Revenge just pipped it as I have always liked the Cybermen.

Cyberbums!

[Junkyard]

Difficult decision for me because both stories are overshadowed by others in this series. In the end I went with Robot as I think it has the better plot. But only by a whisker.

[Paul Clement]

Robot feels like a poor later season Pertwee UNIT story, where anything worthwhile had already been done. There are some good moments but the story itself is rather staid and boring.

Revenge of the Cybermen is a real mixed bag for me. The parts on the beacon are really quite good, but the Cybermen's built in gun in the head looks daft. The sections of Voga are pretty dull really.

Overall though, Revenge gets the nod from me.

[Jonno]

I've struggled on this one because, although Tom may be my favourite Doctor, neither of these two rank highly in my estimation. From original transmission, I have slightly stronger memories of Robot, notably the scene where Sarah was hiding in the hall but the robot came and got her - found that rather scary! And even at 5 years old, I recognised that Revenge was set in the same place as Ark!

I've given the nod to Revenge on the basis that it was, like many of us, the first BBC Video I saw (late 1986), I've been in the Wookey Hole caves and it's my favourite design of Cybermen.

It would have been easier of course if we could have voted for Zygons!

[Stuart Wallis]

Surely that's what the Temple's for...?

In the end I've sided with the mad Kettlewell (whom I'm sure I'll end up like if I get old, but without the brilliance)

Assuming Kettlewell has a side we don'y know about...

Both stories are flawed, Revenge less so; so that's the one I've gone with.

[Ssarl]

The sections on Voga are among the worst bits of Doctor Who ever made. It has that horrible beigeness that occasionally marred Tom Baker stories; dull masks, dull costumes, dull sets. The masks seem to really restrict the actors; none of them speak clearly or animatedly and I never once get into the story and stop noticing the masks. It's an impressive achievement, in a way, getting Kevin Stoney and Michael Wisher in a room together and making them utterly unwatchable!

It might have been saved by the Cybermen, but their amazing campness pulls the story in two opposing directions of awful and all is lost. It's a shame, as I suspect I'd adore these camp Cybermen in a story that was otherwise interesting. Just watch the Cyberleader when he doesn't have any lines. The amount of camp he manages even in the background is staggering.

The only bit I like about the story is the opening. Doctor Who can never go wrong starting off by exploring a dead spaceship.

The best word I can think of to describe Robot is 'typical'. It's lots of fun, there's nothing particularly wrong with it, or great about it. New viewers love it (they showed it in a bar here recently, to applause) but it has no real originality or uniqueness if you've seen the rest of the series.

The Robot itself is one of the best designs ever - one of those where I looked at photos ten years before I saw the story, and created a playground version that was the best story ever. I bet I'd call Robot an all-time classic if I'd seen as a kid, instead of an adult who had about six stories left in the whole series.

[Stuart Wallis]

The sections on Voga are among the worst bits of Doctor Who ever made. It has that horrible beigeness that occasionally marred Tom Baker stories

We've asked Tom for a right to reply...

AAhhh, well I've always suffered from a certain amount of beigeness, that's why I act the way I do - to cheer myself up; especially now the nights are drawing in, I have to get some amusement from somewhere. The reason why little old ladies with heaving bosoms come up tp me is, they feel sorry for me - "look at the poor dear, doesn't he look beige?", "Well wouldn't you in his condition?" It's the main reason why I married Lalla you know: to take away some of the attention from this bloody beigeness! You don't notice it so much in Liverpool, everything was beige there when I was growing up.

[Jason Thompson]

I've had to go for Revenge. Robot is a good little story, but somehow it never quite feels substantial enough. Tom is of course brilliant, as is the robot costume, but other than that...

Why would Think Tank, an organisation at the cutting edge of research that has the facility to build a massive robot in the first place, need to send the robot out to steal electronic components rather than, say, just ordering them in with the rest of their research equipment? Why, if they are within days of pulling off the plan to blackmail the world, are they allowing journalists in at all, never mind escorting them past a room they don't want anyone to know the contents of? Middle of the night or not, didn't anyone spot this huge robot wandering around, especially when it apparently wandered around near Kettlewell's place after one of its forays?

Then there's the action man tank, the abysmal giant robot effects, and the at least two occasions Miss Winters tells us she's going to kill Sarah and doesn't, even when Jellicoe has a gun pointed at her and they think they've won anyway.

Revenge isn't a classic by any means, but there is more threat, and I just feel it works better as a story. I even like the music, although much of that is because Hinchcliffe desperately had extra bits added to Carey Blyton's original score to make it fit the tension better.

[Dave Tudor]

It's a tough one, as I like them both for one reason or another, despite the fact that neither are particularly great. I could have gone for either, mostly for nostalgic reasons, but in the end, it was 'Robot' which got my vote: it was one of the earliest Target books I owned, and even though the story didn't quite live up to expectations when I saw it nearly ten years later, it was a good, solid - and thoughtful - script from Terrance Dicks, with some strong performances, and a brilliant, whirlwind debut from Tom.

[Rob McCow]

Just - but only just - Robot. Because the Robot is bigger.

[Stuart Wallis]

Oh, you should ignore her idle boasts!

[MacNimon]

This one's a hard choice for the wrong reasons...they're the two weakest stories of the season! Not that they're bad by any stretch of the imagination, but just not as good as what lies between. Robot gets my vote, but only just, because it's a great intoduction to the character of Tom's Doctor...I'd say Revenge has a better story, though. My choice could easily change tomorrow.