Doctor Who - Meglos

For many years the most recent Doctor Who DVD release Meglos was a sort of Doctor Who Holy Grail for me; it wasn’t available on video, few people wrote about it, few people commented on it. What was this oddly neglected story actually like? Was it a hidden classic, just waiting to be found?

Quite simply, the answer is no. Unfortunately, it is just a bit shit.

It has one of those scripts that badly needs editing and rewriting; it feels like a first draft from a couple of writers who didn’t care much about the show or the quality of what they were producing. It is filled with padding, with endless info dumps and little to reward the discerning viewer. Mind you, the script isn’t helped by the production values that just exude a sense of “that’ll have to do”. The alien planets come across as a sort of clichéd take on Doctor Who - more for a lazy satire of the show that an actual story. And not for the first or the last time, we can tell that we’re dealing with aliens because they have stupid hats.

Upsides to the story? Well, Baker isn’t bad in the lead role, and Jacqueline Hill makes a welcome return to the show years after playing one of the first companions. Plus, the cactus people transformations are quite effective. But that’s it. And that’s not a lot for 4 episodes of TV. Mind you, even if this was on the verge of being a classic, having a villain who (at least initially) is a pot plant is always going to undermine the story somewhat.

There was some talk of bringing Meglos back as the villain in last year’s The Lodger. Thank God they didn’t – it would have pushed a comedic episode into the realms of absolute farce. The sad truth is that Meglos isn’t a lost classic waiting to be rediscovered. It’s a vapid story that is instantly forgettable – which is just as well, because this story heartily deserves to be forgotten about.

Doctor Who: Time and the Rani

Another month, another Doctor Who DVD from the "classic" series. And, like last month's offerings, the most recent release is widely regarded as one of the series' all time clunkers. Seriously, Time and the Rani languishes towards the bottom of nearly every fan poll - and sometimes even manages to hit the bottom spot. To many, it makes Revenge of the Cybermen and Silver Nemesis look great. But I don't agree.

I frickin' love Time and the Rani.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not unaware of the story's weaknesses - it would be difficult not to be aware of them, as they are so numerous. Sylvester McCoy is still figuring out how to be the Doctor, and his decision to prat about rather than act for a lot of the story is misjudged. Bonnie Langford's Mel - easily one of the weakest companions in a show that has been around for nearly half a century - is never worse than here, where she runs around in a costume that insults even the tasteless eighties and does little more than scream or whine. The Tetraps are most effective when they are not seen, and the tedious Lakertyans are next to impossible to sympathise with. The plot is bland, and the CGI of the pre-title sequence looks like a bad cartoon, not a bold new start for the show. But - worst of all - the "death" of the Sixth Doctor appears to have happened because he fell off an exercise bike. This is the same Time Lord who died the last time from a virulent disease that he had the antidote for, but decided to give it to his companion instead. It is an insult to the Sixth Doctor - a Doctor already much insulted by the costume he had to wear and the generally low quality of scripts he had to wade through.

So yeah, there's a lot not to like about Time and the Rani. And I know this - the only reason why I like it so much is for reasons of nostalgia. See, this story is perhaps Doctor Who at its most childish - a story written for children, rather than for all the family. And - unlike so many other fans - I had the fortunre to watch this story when I was eight years old. I was a child, so as far as I was concerned, this was one of the most exciting things ever! There was a new Doctor, there were monsters, decent cliff-hangers, and a simple plot. The special effects were good (and some of them still stand up to this day) and there was a sense of palpable excitement to the whole thing. I watch Time and the Rani and revert back to the days when I could watch Doctor Who for what it is, rather than critically evaluating it and also assessing its commitment to continuity.

Don't get me wrong, this is a poor introduction to the Seventh Doctor and not even close to the genuinely great post-regeneration stories (The Power of the Daleks and The Eleventh Hour if you're interested). Most people won't be able to see in it what I see. But that's one of the things that's great about Doctor Who. You can have stories you love because they are great, and stories you love because they seemed great when you were a kid.

Oh, and even if you're not a fan of the story, it is worth buying this DVD anyway for the extra features. In particular, seeing the video audition for Sylvester McCoy shows why he was cast, and shades of the portrayal that would later make his Doctor genuinely great even if that side of his performance was missing from his debut story.

Doctor Who - Revenge of the Cybermen and Silver Nemesis

The BBC have chosen to give us two "classic" Doctor Who stories on DVD - a boxed set of Cybermen adventures. I suppose it makes marketing sense to do it this way, but it is just a shame that the two stories they've chosen are, well, a bit shit.

First up is Revenge of the Cybermen. And it is appalling. The story is split between a space station and Voga - the planet of gold. Or Wookey Hole, to you and me. The latter setting works quite well - at least until the Vogans appear, with their tiny motorboats and stupid electric locomotive. But it isn't just the Vogans' equipment that undermines them as a credible alien race. They also look rubbish. Their masks make then look like Michael Foot with severe liver failure. They are largely indistinguishable from each other, and the only two that stand out are the wheezing, doom-mongering leader and the "let's blow 'em all up" would-be leader. I can't even remember what, if anything, the individual Vogans are called. Because, basically, I don't care.

Up on the space station, there are bland, generic space-farers and a faintly shifty civilian all trying to cope with a space plague. Except it isn't a space plague - it is a Cybermat attack. And the Cybermats fail to look in any way like a threat - rather, they resemble giant metal turds. Furthermore, when they attack, it is painfully clear that they are basically giant sock puppets controlled by the person being attacked. Still, all this should have be rendered irrelevant when the Cybermen finally arrive on the space station.

Except the Cybermen are the weakest element of this already incredibly weak story. They are dressed in spray painted seventies style boiler suits, and for reasons that defy understanding shoot from their foreheads - meaning a Cyberman attacking you in this story resembles someone having a neck spasm. They are also led by the most notorious Cyber Leader in the show's history - a pompous Cyberman with a special half black head strutting around with his hands on his hips. It is ridiculous to think that he is meant to be the leader of a band of logical, emotionless killers. He's actually the cybernetic equivalent of Captain Mainwaring. Furthermore, the script sets up the Cybermen as desperately fighting for survival. Unfortunately, it does so by undermining a famous foe of the Doctor in a story where the production values are already working to undermine that foe. The Doctor calls the Cyber force "just a pathetic bunch of tin soldiers skulking about the galaxy in an ancient spaceship", and that it exactly how they look. The Cybermen in this story are pathetic.

About the only thing this story has going for it are the performances of Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen and Ian Marter - they are a great TARDIS team and each actor plays their role with admirable gusto and a certain level of conviction. However, every single other story featuring this crew is better, and almost all of them are already available on DVD. Go to them first.

Silver Nemesis is better, although not by much. It at least has some ambition - taking time travellers from the Elizabethan era, neo-Nazi's led by a survivor of the Third Reich, and Cyberman and pitting them against each other in a race for an ancient Time Lord weapon. Unfortunately, the reality is that there is some awkward fish-out-of-water comedy stylings for the Elizabethan pair, and a lot of running about in fields and then a warehouse/hanger for the different parties in the story. Likewise, after years of over-familiarity with the main character, this story tries to make the Doctor mysterious again. However, this too is undermined by the way it is realised in the show, since it is basically done by one of the guest characters going "oooo, isn't the Doctor mysterious" all the time. Still, I'd rather Doctor Who was overly ambitious than not trying at all - ambitious and a bit silly is better than pedestrian and dull.

The problem with Silver Nemesis is two-fold. Firstly, it tries to suggest darkness in the central character, but is actually far more childish than the other stories being produced at the time. Ace in particular suffers. In every other story from this era, she is a feisty, brave character - sometimes abrasive and naive, but far more interesting than your standard Doctor Who companion of the classic series era. Here, she is a bit whiney, a bit pathetic, and seemingly scared by the concept of Cybermen when, within the continuity of the show, a few weeks before she'd taken on a Dalek assault squad single-handedly. This feels like what it is - a jobbing writer creating a story about what he thinks Doctor Who is, rather than creating a interesting story that actually fits with the overall tone of the show.

But a far bigger problem is the treatment of the Cybermen in this story. They look impressive - they actually look as if someone has spent some money on them. They get a decent looking spaceship. Unfortunately, though, that's it. The rest of the presentation again undermines them. They have the booming voices typical of eighties Cybermen - that it meant to make them sound impressive but actually makes them sound like boorish and pompous public school teachers. They are also utterly inept and incredibly vulnerable. They are taken down by Nazi gunfire, arrows tipped with gold and - wait for it - Ace shooting them with gold coins using a catapult (again, also undermining Ace - since when was she Dennis the Menace?) Their cyber signals can be intercepted and overcome by jazz music. And they are fooled by a really rather obvious trick from the Doctor - in fact, exactly the same one he'd used to defeat the Daleks just weeks before this story was originally broadcast. The Cybermen in this story are pointless - which in a way is even worse than them being pathetic. If they were removed from this story them it wouldn't have a detrimental affect on it.

The problem with these DVDs isn't so much that the stories are far below par - there are plenty of ropey and disappointing Doctor Who stories if you look hard enough. The real disappointment with this set is it takes two classic era's from the show's history - the early Baker years and the later McCoy years - and one of the most famous monsters from the show's history - the Cybermen - and show us at the same time the worst elements of all three. If you watch Earthshock or Tomb of the Cybermen then you'll know why the Cybermen are famous. If you watch Genesis of the Daleks or The Seeds of Doom then you'll see why the Fourth Doctor is famous, and likewise the same for the Seventh Doctor if you watch adventures such as The Greatest Show in the Galaxy or Ghost Light. Anyone watching these stories for the first time really will end up wondering what all the fuss is about.