read DWM or the Marvel collected editions of the 6th Doctor and Peri.. with Frobisher. You'll love the Colin Baker era all the more.
OK so I ended up rewatching Vengeance last night (couldn't get Netflix working to watch what I'd planned so had to resort to my DVD collection instead). It's really not as bad as I remember it. Peri doesn't get much to do in it (aside from whine a lot and get turned into a bird temporarily) and the two TV viewers commenting on what they were watching got a bit annoying at times (although it's clearly a meta-commentary on the show itself). But it definitely deserves to be higher on my list. I'd probably move it above The Ultimate Foe. It's still not a favourite episode but it's far more watchable than I'd remembered.
Peri always whines. I wonder if King Yrcanos will tolerate it or if he'll realize that he didn't really get that much of a bargain with "Perpugilliam of the Brown" for his Queen.
That's true. It's a shame because she could have been a great companion if she'd been better written.
IDK, Peri's whining all the time I felt was a great dynamic when set against the smug and rather irassable 6th Doctor. She served to take him down a peg and keep his lofty speeches and self adulation in context while they were on walkabout on adventures.
As far as I'm concerned Peri died. That ending where she married King Yrcanos was just made up to make the Doctor feel better. I'll deny that ending until my dying breath
But she whined from the get-go, when she was with the Fifth Doctor. Even Turlough noticed it and wasn't impressed.
True, but latter series she wasn't so whiny, and always got the Doctor back on track with solving the episode puzzle and getting him off the tangents the 6th Doctor frequently got drawn into with his own mind.
Conversely, I thought Peri was paired the best with Five. Even with the audios taken into account - now, Six did become closer to Peri, as insinuated in the Trial of a Time Lord season, but in her adventures with Five and Erimem, the rapport just feels more natural.
Best To Worst Brilliant Revelation of the Daleks Attack of the Cybermen Very Good Vengeance on Varos The Two Doctors Good The Ultimate Foe The Mysterious Planet The Mark of the Rani Okay Timelash Bad Terror of the Vervoids The Twin Dilemma Mindwarp
She could whine to me all day and I wouldn't tire. Besides, in season 22 I just pretend the non-whining events are all off-screen events. Makes it easier to accept that she never wanted to go back home. Ycarnos was always a joy to watch. But I also like Brian Blessed's style of acting.
Shame there were only two TV stories but the chemistry between her and the 5th Doctor was one of the best during his run. Arguably even better than Nyssa in some ways. If only he stayed for one more year... The 6th needed Tegan, or if Hugo stayed as a counterbalance for both Peri and the Doctor...
I've loved Brian Blessed in everything I've seen him do, whether it's King Yrcanos, one of the characters in Much Ado About Nothing, that utterly demented King Henry in Blackadder, or Augustus Caesar stomping around the Imperial Palace shouting, "Quintilius Varus, WHERE ARE MY EAGLES?!!!!"
Oh god, 6th and Tegan would have been the worst I find the 6th charming in his arrogance and he tones it down as it goes. tegan I hated from day one and she never improved. Honestly, I'd even take Mel over Tegan any day, much less Peri who I like quite well as a companion to the 6th Doctor.
The Sixth Doctor and Tegan... yikes. She's always whining about wanting to get back to Heathrow, and I bet, if Time-Flight had been a Sixth Doctor story instead of a Fifth Doctor story, he'd have left her there... at Heathrow, but in the remote past. I wonder how Mel and the Fifth Doctor would have gotten along. She was into carrot juice, and he was into celery.
Tegan I thought was cool, but the 6th carried it better and without the whinge (which Peri got saddled with, which was apocryphal to her character as introduced in "Planet of Fire".) Mel was the perfect complement to the 6th. Peri would be as well if they kept Herbert or Hugo or Jamie for the whole season to balance everyone out. Well, Jamie was the 2nd doctor's companion so he couldn't stay for any extended period of time I suppose but Hugo and Herbert easily could have. Ugh, missed opportunities... ...5 minutes later... The Sixth likely would have obliged! Especially if Eric Saward wrote it, after it was revealed he hated Colin (who did have the energy and eccentricity!), I wasn't the first to wonder if Eric was trying to sabotage the show in season 22 what with the strange absence of the Doctor and Peri so early on in stories. (And yet, when he gets to them in his own stories, he puts in enough moments of compassion and thought into the Doctor so the claims he was trying to wreck the show seem a bit odd... just conflicting ideas between him and the producer that spiraled out of control and JNT wasn't perfect either (Colin was right, that outfit was not... it tries to be eccentric but fails and for all the wrong reasons.) And to think I could have had a V8!
My favorite memory of "Planet of Fire" is Turlough finally ditching the suit and getting into a lot less. He turned out to be a rather interesting character, once the whole Black Guardian arc was finished. I liked the companions who grew, who became better persons as a result of traveling with the Doctor. Peri and Jamie and the Sixth Doctor for a whole season? Somehow I don't think that combination would have worked too well, just because of personality clash. The Second and Sixth Doctors were so unlike, and Jamie was used to his Doctor as a sort of mentor/friend who respected him. I never had the impression that the Sixth Doctor had much respect for his companions. He might have come to like them, but not respect them. I don't know much about the behind the scenes politics - who liked whom, and which producers and head writers had issues with which cast members. I just know which characters I liked, and which stories. The only one of the actors I ever met was Sylvester McCoy, who was gracious and friendly (at a promotional event at the PBS studio in Spokane, Washington), but I ended up not really liking his Doctor much, nor did I like many of his stories. From some of the videos I've seen of Colin Baker, he seems to be much nicer in person than the Sixth Doctor was! I can see it now... Mel joins the TARDIS gang early in the Fifth Doctor's era and promptly has all of them drinking veggie juice and doing aerobics (except Adric, since Alzarians are super-healthy and don't need to worry about weight gain). Tegan and Mel wouldn't get along, Nyssa would go along with it so she could flange up some new weird costumes, and the Doctor would be good-natured and try to be the peacemaker among everybody. Then there's an external shot of the TARDIS, whirling through time and space, and the background music is whatever aerobics tune might be popular and even the TARDIS seems to be bopping along to it.
Never heard of issues between Seward and Baker before. Was it simply a personal dislike or more to it?