My least favorite Doctor: Doctor Who, Season 22

Watching the DOCTOR WHO serial Twin Dilemma, I said I didn’t remember finding Sixth Doctor Colin Baker so annoying when I first caught it and wondering if that would change as he grew into the role. Despite the title of this post, he has grown on me — just not enough. He’s Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor but with the arrogance and impulsiveness turned up to 11 and the charm turned down to 5. And Peri isn’t a strong enough companion to match him — paired with Mary Tamm’s Romana, Leela or Tegan, he might have worked better.

That said, his first season is considerably better than the crappy Twin Dilemma. First up we have Attack of the Cybermen in which the Doctor and Peri arrive on Earth on Earth in the viewers’ present, 1985 — which is one year before the Cybermen arrive on Earth in the First Doctor serial The Tenth Planet (one of the lost stories that’s since been recreated, though I haven’t seen it). That series ended with the eponymous planet Mondas blown to kingdom come; the Cybermen plan to change history by blowing up Earth first.

It’s a solid story told in two 45-minute episodes, the new format for this season. Maurice Collborne returns as Lytton in a solid performance with a twist (I can see why he got a spinoff comics miniseries later). However it’s hard to believe the Cybermen are so puny one blow with a blunt instrument can knock their heads off. “It’s not often I have the opportunity to see a Time Lord squirm.”

VENGEANCE ON VAROS has the TARDIS materialize on the eponymous planet, where the leaders entertain the submissive population by broadcasting the grotesque deaths of revolutionaries such as Jason Connery (as usual showing none of his father’s talent) — and why not the Doctor and Peri too? A good one, reminiscent of Max Headroom in its portrayal of entertainment and those who consume it.  “I think we’re in what they call the ‘end game.’”

Kate O’Mara steals the show as a new renegade Time Lord in THE MARK OF THE RANI, arriving in England’s mining country during the early Industrial Revolution. She needs to extract chemicals from human brains for use on another planet under her control; that the loss of the chemicals will aggravate labor violence against the mineowners doesn’t concern her a whit. But now the Master, having survived his death in last season’s Planet of Fire (he tosses off an observation that nobody can kill him — that’s all the explanation we get), has shown up and so has the Doctor …

The Rani is quite simply a hoot. She sees both the Master and the Doctor as obstacles to her own goals and has no particular interest in them otherwise. She mocks the Master, both for his obsession with revenge and his elaborate plans for getting it ( “It’s something devious and over-complicated — he’d get dizzy if he tried to walk in a straight line.”). I fully expected her to become a major foe but she made one more appearance, in Time and the Rani, then nothing (I’m not the only fan who kept anticipating one of the adversaries in the reboot series would turn out to be her). O’Mari does very well with the role. “That was pure spite on the Lord President’s part, just because they ate his cat.”

THE TWO DOCTORS gets three forty-five minute episodes and deserves it — after all, this brings back Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines as the Second Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon in an adventure set partly in space, partly in Spain, (obviously) spanning two eras and pitting the Doctors against both Sontarans and the anthropophagous Androgums. This was just pure fun, and not at all padded. Continuity-wise it’s a headscratcher, treating the second Doctor as a reluctant agent of the Time Lords rather than a fugitive from Gallifreyan justice (his role as an agent wouldn’t be until the Pertwee years), but I can forgive that. “No, sir, I’m afraid nouvelle cuisine has yet to penetrate this establishment.”TIMELASH is an unpopular one that I personally enjoyed. The Doctor and Peri arrive on a world he visited in an earlier incarnation, now under the tyrannical rule of the Borad; can the Doctor live up to his reputation and liberate them? And what role will a British writer Herbert play in this story of alien invasions, invisible men and far-future dystopia? This had some dreadful moments — the Doctor and Peri lashing themselves in with seatbelts is as bad an effect as the Mara’s rubber snake — but overall it worked for me. And while the disfigured Borad is a disability cliche, at least his disfigurement is memorable (a lot of similar scarfaced fiends don’t look impressively awful enough). “When time particles implode inside a trans-dimensional corridor, that’s no place to be.”

S22 wrapped up with REVELATION OF THE DALEKS, which reminded me a lot of the previous season’s Caves of Androzani in having multiple agendas, lots of schemers and a lot of plot (but not too much). The TARDIS lands on a cemetery world, Tranquil Repose, which offers cryonic preservation to those hoping science will eventually cure whatever killed them. However there are multiple schemes and agendas and there’s also Daleks and Davros … A satisfactory season ender. “I am so honored, my tongue speaks aloud what I dare not think.”

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