Doctor Who Fandom Challenge Day 7: Favourite Season

[miss_s_b]

(a list of the questions and links to all the answers can be found on this entry)

Season 22.

Oh, you want more than that? OK, well, season 22 includes Attack of the Cybermen (Colin's mighty organ and Colin's shiny helmet, plus The Fat Controller), Vengeance on Varos (Proper Scifi with some really prescient stuff about reality television), The Mark of the Rani (in which Peri the botanist actually gets to use her botanical knowledge, Colin is well-hung, and Colin gets to fanboy George Stephenson), The Two Doctors (bums galore, Jacks Pearce, and Two and Jamie), Timeslash (OK, admittedly Timeslash is crap, but it does have Paul Darrow's Richard III impression and a really rather good monster), and Revelation of the Daleks (which is just bloody awesome).

Season 22 is a fine mixture of old and new - lots of continuity references and yet a fixed chameleon circuit. Daleks, Sontarans and cybermen and yet Sil and Androgums. It has the glass dalek scene, which is seared into my brain from childhood. It has Six/Davros. It has militant vegetarianism.

I suspect I am probably the only person who has picked season 22 for this meme, but I don't care.

Comments

[magister]

Okay, there's a whole bunch of possibilities for this one. Series one with Hartnell obviously, because it just sets everything running and because you have the makers working out on the fly what they want this series to be. Series 4 - end of Hartnell and Troughton's first year - has two of the best Dalek stories, plus the first Cybermen ones. Pertwee's first year is his best by a long way and is experimenting with whether they want to make Quatermass, the Avengers or the new ITC series - any of which would have been fun. Mad Tom's second series has one of the great Doctor/companion pairings and includes Zygons, Sutekh, Morbius and the Krynoid. Plus it's ripping off classic horror and sci fi films left right and centre, even more blatantly than usual. Series 17 has City of Death and Horns of Nimon, as well as a much more interesting attitude to science than the following year, for all Christopher H Bidmead's wibbling on about it. Plus it's edited by Douglas Adams and has Tom Mark 2 in full cry, with Romana Mark 2 alongside him. It's also the first full season I watched. I like the cohesiveness of McCoy's last year. Onto the revival of the series, Eccleston's year is excellent and I'm very fond of the first Smith/Moffat year.

Overall, I think I'll go for season 14. You've got the swan song of the Baker/Sladen partnership. Then Deadly Assassin, which could have been the climax of the whole series, with the Doctor returning to the planet which rejected him and proving that he's out grown them. And then you have the debut of Leela, supebly performed by Louise Jameson and, for these 3 stories at lest, extremely well written by Chris Boucher & Bob Holmes.

[gominokouhai]

The Mark of the Rani was deeply, deeply awful television with a nice location shoot. The Two Doctors was godawful writer-on-board nonsense. Okay, it had Two and Jamie in it, but then so did the far superior seasons four, five, and six.

Season 22 is why French and Saunders did a skit taking the piss out of us all, and even that wasn't funny. Season 22 broke French and Saunders.

[gominokouhai]

Oh yes and Davros was a... crooked mortician? Bit of a comedown from the Michael Wisher days, there.

[miss_s_b]

Lets the icon do the talking.

[gominokouhai]

Awesome continuity references like getting the same actor to play the Cyber Controller as in Tomb Of The Cybermen eighteen years previously! You couldn't see him inside the cybersuit, but sweaty nerds well beyond the programme's target demographic probably knew he was there! And all it meant on television was that the Cyber Controller was suddenly fat!

But yeah okay there was the glass Dalek (sweaty nerds would know that there was one in the original shooting script for 1964's The Chase). And there was Peri in a nice period dress.

[miss_s_b]

I *like* the fat controller :P

[magister]

Wasn't the glass Dalek in the original script for the Daleks? Oh, and The Chase was 1965. (Nerd, but not currently sweaty).

[andrewhickey.info]

I LOVED Attack Of The Cybermen when I was six, when it was first broadcast. I didn't get the same actor being used, but I *did* pick up on the Totter's Lane reference, and the tie-ins with The Tenth Planet and Tomb, and loved the chameleon circuit being fixed. I was possibly not a typical six-year-old, admittedly, but I think nerdy six year old kids fall squarely into the target demographic...

I think Attack is a load of old toss *now*, but didn't then. Three of the stories from Season 22 -- Varos, Two Doctors and Revelation -- are among my all-time favourite Who stories. The other three... aren't.

But Season 22 is My Doctor Who. My strongest memories of the show as a child are all from that series -- the Sontarans meeting Troughton, Sil, the cliffhanger at part one of Revelation with the memorial falling on the Doctor, the glass Dalek. It's not my favourite season (that would be one... or six... or twelve... or eighteen (if you count Castrovalva as part of 18, anyway)) but if they'd just been able to get three more scripts the quality of the three good ones, it would be.

[pmoodie]

Ooh, what a splendid meme! I'd have a go, but I don't think there are any Who fans on my LJ f-list any more, and I doubt I have the attention span to stick with it anyway, so I'll just comment on yours! :)

I think it would have to be Season 13 for me. There's just such a wonderful bunch of sci-fi horror classics, only let down by The Android Invasion, which really isn't that bad. It's just nowhere near as good as the greatness that surrounds it.

In second place, I'd go for Season 11, which may not be full of brilliance, but it's when I started to watch the programme regularly so it will always have a special place in my heart.

[miss_s_b]

Yay Hello you! hope you had a good birthday.

[pmoodie]

I did, thanks! :)