Delta & the The Bannermen is legitimately my favorite 7th Doctor serial. Its my favorite version of the 7th Doctor (the one who was actually The Doctor, not the one who felt like an evil emotionless mastermind pretending to be The Doctor), and the story is fine overall. My second favorite 7th Doctor story is The Happiness Patrol, and third is Battlefield. I also like Silver Nemesis a lot, and I guess I'd put Rememberance of the Daleks at the fifth spot if I was doing a top 5. I'm not saying this to be contrary or anything, its actually what I think so I found it a bit funny how opposite we are in opinion.
As for the show in general, Classic Who is generally better then RTD Who anyway in my opinion. Then again I generally prefer the show when The Doctor is the main character, the companions are generally not super special "impossible people", and the stories don't constantly take place in modern UK (although I give the 3rd Doctor a pass for that), so it makes sense that I'd prefer Classic who. I still like NuWho alot, with Mofatt's era being my favorite NuWho stuff and the 11th Doctor being my second favorite Doctor after 6, but there is just something special about Classic Who that NuWho rarely matches.
Oh, we’re not so opposite as you’d think. I like Delta fine as a novelisation, but the staging whenever I try to watch it never keeps me focused these days. I don’t think he became emotionless… far from it to be honest, mind you. Happiness Patrol grew on me, and I have always liked Battlefield (though due to a timing error on a VHS I didn’t get to see the opening scene until it was released on DVD. For years I watched it over and over starting with Zbrigniev answering Bambera’s “who was that little man?”) and could easily make an argument for it being my favourite, if I have such a thing. I never had a problem with Nemesis, but I only watched it once prior to its VHS release and mostly read the book. Watching it again, some bits don’t land so well — but as one of the few eight years olds watching the show who actually knew who Courtney Pine was (I suspect) I have an attachment to it. To be honest, my like for Ace turned up with puberty, and that’s always going to give me a heavy bias. As to Remembrance’s general rep with fans, yeah, it’s good — but Greatest Show was better. XD
I didn’t get to see Dragonfire until the official VHS release. And I’m with Cartmel… release the hairy underarms cut. lol.
I don’t mind things like Clara/Impossible Girl in the new show — it borrows from Sam in the Eighth Doctor books quite heavily — but when RTD decided to have every other companion love the Doctor, and stripped away the relative assxuality of the character, it represented a sea change that doesn’t really work the more you look at it. It took Moff a while to roll it back organically — River Somg both showing the only way you can have a ‘romance’ with the Doctor really work, whilst outright having her state on screen precisely why it shouldn’t happen and won’t really work.
It is astonishing how often we had Wales doubling as everywhere else in the UK, London particularly, rather than using modern techniques to have Wales double as alien worlds. Can’t believe they couldn’t find a decent quarry more often.
(The Death Zone is in Wales of course. But the planet of the Cheetah People was oddly more convincing that a lot of modern alien worlds.)
I’m with you on Eleven, though not so much on Six. He’s the ‘between’ Doctor for me, where I had to stop watching as a then five year old. Davison was my first Doctor (it’s possible I started with Baker One, but don’t remember it) and Sylv was ‘my’ Doctor. Credit where it’s due though, Smith was possibly the most Doctory Doctor to ever Doctor, and Capaldi gives him a run for his money. (And echoes the original planned arc for Six.) But then, the Eight of the novels was excellent too.
Either way, I am not sure it’s anywhere near the same show now. I think RTD internalised a lot of Whophobia in his teenage years, and is still very ashamed of it even when he’s writing it…