That would be it; Silver Nemesis would have been largely written by the time Aaronovitch pitched his idea for Remembrance, so it would have been iffy to have ditched Nemesis to make way for Rem ("Kevin, great script, unfortunately we've decided to nick your main idea for the Dalek story. Sorry."), but equally the time pressure to get Remembrance written and OKed by Nation would have made it difficult to say "Nice idea Ben, but Kevin Clarke's already done it, come back with something else".
The Lytton two parter of Resurrection Of The Daleks and Attack Of The Cybermen. Resurrection is a good one but I think it's more than alittle dated now, hard to believe it beat Caves Of Androzani at the time for best story of that season. But really it's Lytton and Stein who're the real focus of the story. Davros had already become a stereotype, but addition of Dalek troopers were new. But I guess the Daleks have had a number of slaves over the yearss Robomen, Dalek troopers and of course the pig men. The story does have a bit of plot hole in it, the Doctor was unwilling to Davros but was perfectly willing to kill the Daleks in the warehouse. Tegan's departure echoed Sarah Jane's and I'm glad it was the focus of the story, although she had little to do in the story which I'm sure is one of the reasons Janet Fielding wanted to leave. Attack Of The Cybemen, it's vastly different in tone from Resurrection and Lytton became a more romantic figure of the tragic bad guy. I've always had a problem with the pacing of the second part and Peri went from being a fairly smart, independant woman to something of a whiner. But it feels lke a more epic storyline than Resurrection. In a way though it's a shame they killed off Lytton for an unrelenting tough guy there was more to him than meets the eye, he had knowledge of Time Lords and the future history of the Cybermen. I'm sure the knowledge was gained from the Dalek databanks, but he seemed to have forst hand knowledge of a great many things, he might even have made for an interesting companion.
I think Ressurection/Revelation/Rememberance are interesting for the Dalek civil war concept (Although Daleks vs. Daleks had been done in the Troughton era), which sort of formed a loose arc, of Davros "correcting" the mistake he made at the end of "Genesis" by not making the Daleks obedient to him.
Planet Of Fire another fine story from the 21st season, IMO it was the last good Ainley Master story and it has some great location shoot on Lanzarote. Peter Grimwade wrote and excellent story and Cummng's direction complimented the storyline and we got some closure for Turlough. We saw teh departure of two companions and arrival of a new one the form of Peri, who gave us the first ever bikini shot in Doctor Who history. Peter Wyngarde was an excellent guest star, he had a sort Peter O'Toole look in the story and I had no idea he was Klytus in Flash Gordon, like many great Dcotor Who guest stars he also has a great theater voice. The final scene with Peri was echoed in Smith And Jones, with similar dialogue and a nice lurch from the TARDIS.
"The Web of Fear" - the "lost" story I hoped most would be found because of my childhood memories. And it didn't disappoint, although scrumptious Victoria was more of a twit than usual.
Last year I rewatched Planet of Fire and just last week I watched the re-edited 66 minute version on the DVD and really enjoyed that. I thought the story flowed much more nicely. I didn't care for the new SFx. Unlike Enlightenment, in which I thought the new SFx really added, in Fire they seemed to slightly detract. But, the pacing of the story was much better. Agree that it is a good story, probably underated by fans. Sladen was in a two piece in Death to the Daleks, but that wasn't nearly as revealing. Great story! Agreed, Victoria's legs in this one were very distracting! Mr Awe
I just found and purchased "The War Games" from an on-line dealer for $15... on VHS. My roommate still has a VCR that he will let me borrow. I'm looking forward to this as I love Troughton's Doctor, and want to see his final story. It's not available on streaming sites, and the price of the DVD from on-line sellers is over the top expensive so I wasn't sure if/when I'd ever get to see this.
I have all the Classic Doctor Who on DVD. I watched the tv movie. I thought it was in the middle, around a 5 or 6. I would have liked to have seen more of the Eighth Doctor. I didn't like the Master; hopefully, Michele Gomez can breathe more life into this character in Season 9.
Mcgann reprises his role in the audio dramas and of course in Night of the Doctor. Eric Roberts was a very camp Master, but it's interesting that Simm and Gomez's masters have a similar 'camp' version of the character. Then again, the other Master's sometimes were fairly campy as well.
The new Master, voice-acted by Alex McQueen in the Dark Eyes series is pretty effective. Might be my third favorite after Delgado and Beevers.
Just wrapped up the Key to Time season last night. Cripes, "Armageddon Factor" is god-awful. It is a not-terrible premise terribly executed. It goes on twice as long as it needs to and...you know what? I don't even want to think about it enough to analyze it--very cardboard and simplistic. Also a lot of things that happen in it make absolutely no sense. And the pacing is slow enough that it highlights the flaws. It really needs Joel and the robots in silhouette, heckling it. I was having to catch the episodes on Saturdays because I worked nights, but after 3 years of marking time I finally got promoted to a desk job during normal hours and could start binging on the weeknight episodes. Saturdays are up to the Pertwee episodes that I've seen recently, but I think I'll catch most of them again and then watch Baker up to maybe "Sunmakers" and then get an hour of my weeknights back. (90 minutes, actually, because I catch "Jeopardy!" and then have a half hour before "Who" so I watch syndicated "Big Bang Theory" that I've seen a million times.)
Terror Of The Zygons and The Seeds Of Doom, both had the same creative team behind them and thanks to Camfield's direction both were excellent move styled storylines. I loved Geoffrey Burgon's music as well I have been listening to the soundtrack CD and that really made me want to see them back to back. Neither story really feels dated to me, they're both still very entertaining and both were very well made.
The Armageddon Factor was the victim of double digit inflation, high taxes on entertainment and a couple of rewrites. Since the original writers were no longer available it was up to Anthony Read and possibly some help from Douglas Adams to rewrite the story. As is it's a hard story to defend but it the seaon failed to live up to Williams' abitious goals for it. If done today however I do think the original concept could be finally realized.
Anthony Read would have done the majority of the rewrites, but Douglas Adams was responsible for changing the final scenes - originally, the Guardian didn't appear, there was just a slightly anti-climactic ending with the Doctor deciding that the Key's too powerful to keep it intact and hand over to anyone, without the more obvious dramatic underscoring of the Black Guardian turning up pretending to be the White (as I recall, the original script did raise the possibility that it had been the Black Guardian who'd assigned the Doctor to assemble the Key in the first place - or even that there was only one Guardian who was both Black and White in one - and that it never really needed assembling at all).
The banana peel line and the Doctor's speech about controlling Romana with the Key To Time, I figure was a cross bewteen Tom Baker's adlibbing and Adams' rewrites. It isa shame though that The Armageddon Factor turned out to be the last of the six parters.
City of Death wrapped up last night. Entertaining, on the whole, although it really falls apart toward the end. Duggan is helplessly trapped in the cell. Then Skaroth chucks them all in there with orders to his butler/toady to guard them until he's completed his MUAHAHAHAHAHA! plan and then kill them. What happens next? Butler/toady is nowhere to be seen and Duggan easily smashes the door. We won't even get into grandfather paradoxes. If Skaroth was successful, everything should have disappeared as soon as he was transported. For that matter, it shouldn't have happened at all, which means it would have happened, which meant...I mean, it did make for better television to have the Doctor et al frantically dash for the TARDIS, but it would have been funny to see him take his time: "Doctor, shouldn't we hurry?" "One, we're still here, ergo we must have stopped him and B I have a TIME machine. ..." Since the Doctor, Romana, and the TARDIS aren't from Earth, Skaroth's meddling wouldn't make them disappear. So just as long as there's enough atmosphere to keep them alive until they get to the TARDIS, they can still set the controls to get back before Skaroth.
Unless you get into the frankly mindbending problem about how the Doctor's personsl history will be messed up if Earth history (past and future) gets wiped.
What's funny about City of Death is that the TARDIS is suprisingly accurate given the presense of the randomizer. And you have to wonder how the Countess had no knowledge taht she was married to an alien, even the actors were alittle taken aback by that one. Douglas Adams' rewrite of the story was a hastey one to be sure.