I rewatched both of them a year or so ago and had the same exact impression. Traken did an astounding job of creating the impression of an entire society. It felt like a real place in terms of culture and history. I didn't remember that from when I had last watched it. Logopolis was good as well. To me, it seemed liked the Doctor and Adric hadn't really bonded until Logopolis, a bit father and son. A shame that didn't happen a bit earlier! Mr Awe
I enjoyed Good Neighbors/The Good Life quite a bit and remembered looking forward to seeing the actor who played "Tom Good" in Doctor Who. I ended up very dissappointed because he was horrible in that role, way too OTT! Mr Awe
Adric worked well with the Fourth Doctor. This was noticeable in Traken. Tom Baker's charisma could swallow him up and Adric would seem like he disappeared off the screen at times. But the combination of 4 and Adric worked well.
^ I think it worked well on only several occassions. Just enough to show what they had squandered by not showing it more!
That was the last regular episode, however, there were two episodes after that: Christmas 1977...Silly but it's Fun Reunion Special 1978...When I'm 65 I'm pretty sure I found them streaming on Youtube or Dailymotion, last time I watched S1 - 4
Halfway through "Delta and the Bannermen." Holy Elvis, I'll never say anything bad about the RTD/Tennant era of the series again. In the first 5 minutes, the "story" manages to jump between 3 completely unrelated, unexplained, and painfully badly executed plotlines 4-5 times. People shoot and smash the control panels of the spaceships they are flying. When was the last time you shot your car radio because you didn't like the song it was playing? I'm going to stop there, because there were literally so many things about this story that annoyed me that I'd have a heart attack and carpal tunnel syndrome trying to type them all out.
"Keeper" is an interesting story. It's sort of a Garden of Eden type of thing (Which "Kinda" would later use) when you think about it-Traaken is fairly innocent and harmonious until the Master/Melkur arrives, and starts to corrupt everything. Heck, Melkur even hangs out in a garden.
Traken seems a bit like a paradise on the surface (and the snake in the garden thing must be deliberate), but the interesting thing is that all the evil/corruption is already there at the start, it just needs the pebble of Melkur being active to start the avalanche. For starters, the Traken legal system is a bit dodgy: Adric and the Doctor are sentenced to death in a minute, then Tremas intervenes by 'Consular Privilege', but in the process will suffer the same penalty if they're actually guilty: this is a bit like the defence council in a murder case being at risk of execution if the client is found guilty... And then: Tremas comments early on that Proctor Neman is "too fond of money". And when Neman stops Nyssa getting into the Grove, her first response is to tell him to send the ordinary citizens away, then remind him that "my father and his fellow consuls decide what is lawful," and then bribe him. Next episode, when her father's under arrest, she tries to bribe Neman again.. and when it doesn't work, she stuns him with an adapted lab tool (that she just happens to have with her ready for use!). Later stories might have presented her as naive, nice and innocent, but in Traken she's a privileged brat who thinks laws are for the peasantry, not people like her...
I had the impression that it was more of a teacher/student relationship, since Adric wanted to learn from the Doctor (in addition to getting away from the society in which he was a misfit). But yeah, there were occasional scenes when a father/son vibe was there. If you're at all into Shakespeare movies, I recommend the Kenneth Branagh version of Much Ado About Nothing. Richard Briers is in that one, and he plays Beatrice's father. He does a really good job of it - a minor aristocrat who is concerned about making sure his headstrong, super-opinionated daughter (Beatrice) and her cousin (Hero) find worthy husbands, while keeping the peace with Don John (the villain of the play, portrayed by Keanu Reeves). It's a really fun movie, and Richard Briers was good in Shakespearean roles. (I just looked him up on Wikipedia and it turns out he died two years ago... ) Fun fact: The first role I ever saw Felicity Kendal (Barbara) in was in Twelfth Night (a play that was televised). Ah, thanks. I'll check those out. Nyssa went through a lot of changes during her time on the show (literally - she came on as Traken royalty and left in her underwear). I have to admit that I never really liked Nyssa. She was always too... refined. There were times when she was even more stuck-up than the first Romana, if that was possible.
Nyssa's intro sort of feels like someone cocked up at the end of Traken, but I agree that one of the better things about the serial was that Traken actually felt like a real place. Something the show had sort of forgotten for a little while. Castrovalva was not what I expected.
Its definitely not for everyone, but Delta and the Bannermen is probably tied with Battlefield as my favorite 7th Doctor story. I can totally see why some people hate it, though.
Image Of The Fendahl: One of my all time favourite Tom Baker stories. I liked the idea behind the Fendahl. They seemed like a great scary monster. I'd love to see them again in New Who with updated effects.. Logopolis: Another good story and the Doctor regenerates at the end.. Sad to see Tom Baker leaving too. I was and still am a little confused by "the watcher" as that has never happened before or after in Doctor Who..
Romana 1 was also bloody gorgeous. I had the hots for her when I first saw her aged 13 and she had that long white dress, and then in Kroll that outfit ...I just melted
"Fendahl" is one that makes me reconsider my cutoff for when the show started to suck. My rule of thumb is the addition of K9/when Tom Baker can no longer be bothered to wear a tie and vest. And I think he does put the tie and vest back on for this one--and K9 stays in his kennel in the TARDIS for this one. It is neat, the stories where the Time Lords aren't the Big Bad in the universe, isn't it? This, "Pyramids of Mars", "State of Decay." If things get to bad, in theory the Doc could call in help, "War Games" style, but on some of them, even the Time Lords are outmatched (Omega is maybe 50/50 because "Arc of Infinity" is a turd, IMO). But I digress. Wrapped up "Dragonfire" tonight and Holy Mother of Elvis... How do you have a show on the air for over 2 decades and suddenly completely forget how to make a program that is in any way watchable? I mean... just no. Again, don't get me started. They shoehorn in unnecessary clunky exposition, and then leave out important exposition. I mean, Leela's departure was kind of tacked on, but at least they gave her something, but Mel? "Oh, hey, we saved the day. (OK, no we didn't. The Big Bad, after living for over 3,000 years, decides to commit suicide for...OK, I have no idea why, the writer couldn't figure out any other way to end the story?) I'm leaving now. Here's your new partner." As I've said, if I had a million dollars, I'd sink it into a no-load mutual fund, indexed to the Dow or the S&P 500 and live off the interest. If I had 2 million dollars I'd do the mutual fund thing and then use the other million to redo all the stories. And I have a hard time figuring out how to rework some of the Pertwee Master stories so the Master isn't MUWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!EEEEEEVIL!!!!!!, but damn, I don't even know if I could figure out a way to do this story. There are so many horrible, glaring holes in it. Oh, and why go to all the trouble of rounding everyone up, putting them onto a ship, and then killing them? Why not just kill them on the planet? Once the're on the ship, why bother killing them at all? It is terrible, stupid writing. If I every manage to go to England, I will piss on not just Mary Whitehouse's grave, but also John Nathan Turner's.
Agreed. I quite enjoyed both Delta and Battlefield. I'm not a big McCoy fan either. Although when I rewatched all of his stories recently for the first time since they originally aired, I did adjust my opinion of a number upwards a bit. I didn't like Delta at all the first time but found it quite entertaining. Mr Awe
Retro moved Who up tonight, unannounced. Luckily(?) I caught it. "Happiness Patrol." My God. I assume at some point McCoy will get an episode that isn't completely terrible, but it hasn't happened yet. It's like someone just decided to edit out important parts of the story for no reason. To wit: Ace and Doc are loitering around, possibly as prisoners. The Doc asks about stealing some "go kart" and because of the reaction, assumes it is a trap. Next thing you know, he's got the bomb that is wired to the starter pulled out and he's mucking with it. The guard asks what he's doing and he says "nothing" so she just wanders off and disappears. They manage to bypass the bomb and soon they're making their escape--at the speed of a riding lawn-mower in 1st gear, low-range--slightly slower than they could have walked away. Luckily, no one seems to care. So then we get an edit and they're working on it again. Apparently it was too slow (or something--we aren't told, we just have to make that part up for ourselves), because the Doc is working on the engine again. Ace points out they're about to be caught so he asks her for a distraction. Apparently her distraction is to get caught. But somehow the patrol at this point forgets about the go kart and the other escapee and the Doc pretty quickly forgets he had a companion. Actually he seems to forget the go kart fairly quickly too. He may drive it a few frames more and then it is gone and forgotten. But Ace! We have to find out what happened to Ace! She's apparently been captured. And placed under guard by a single guard who hates her job. So she lets Ace go. Then some other inexplicable stuff happens and the next time we see Ace again--I mean the very next time--she's captured again. Eventually it becomes apparent that the guard that let her go is also a prisoner now, but again, you kind of have to figure that out for yourself and make up how it happened, because they can't be bothered to show it to you. And that's just a tiny, compact fraction of the painfully bad storytelling going on in this serial. Like all the other stories, it is just random stuff that barely relates to each other and is completely implausible. The Doctor regularly tricks or outsmarts his adversaries. But given that his adversaries are all apparently severely retarded and subsist on a diet of paint chips and airplane glue fumes, that doesn't take much doing. I feel so, so cheated that I've waited...almost 30 years to see these episodes.
I wasn't a huge fan of The Happiness Patrol, but it wasn't my most hated story of the run, although I'd probably say its my fifth most hated. It had some slightly funny moments, but I think you might actually have to be familiar with 80s British Politics to get much out of it, at least from what I've heard (several parts are apparently a big dig at Margaret Thatcher). I did kind of find the pink TARDIS and Candyman funny, but besides that there isn't much I liked about it.
This is one story that genuinely scared me. It was just that creepy and horrible, what happened to the scientist who got taken over. This is one of the stories in which the Doctor explains that when people see ghosts, they're actually seeing through a rift in time. Can anyone explain to me why Leela kissed that scientist? I've been wondering about that for over 30 years now... By this time I didn't care how they got rid of Mel. I'm just glad they did. There is exactly one reason why I can tolerate this story, and that's because one of the guest actresses played Livilla in I, Claudius. Patricia Quinn played a villain in both roles, and she did it very well. The company that makes that licorice candy should have sued for damages. To this day I haven't bought a single bag or package of that stuff because it reminds me of this horrible Doctor Who story. There are only three Sylvester McCoy stories I enjoyed: Paradise Towers, Silver Nemesis (another I, Claudius actress is in it - the one who played Agrippina the Elder), and Battlefield - because there are not just one but two Brigadiers. It was great to see Lethbridge-Stewart again, and I really liked Winifred Bambera. This story was also the first time we ever got a real sense of U.N.I.T. being truly international in scope.