Season 17 vs Season 18

Both seasons are essentially extreme polar opposites in tone and are therefore equally divisive amongst Who fandom, but which of Tom Baker’s final two seasons do you prefer?

Season 17 by light years. There's not one bad story and three of them (City, Nimon and Shada) are stone cold classics. The warm, fun tone makes the stories endlessly entertaining and rewatchable and Tom and Lalla are golden.

Season 18... is not very good. State of Decay is a masterpiece, which is deeply telling since it's a Williams era commission, and Meglos is underrated but most of the rest is as dry as burnt toast. Tom and Lalla do a better job of making Bidmead gobbledygook sound cool and intelligent than the Terrible Trio, but most of the season is just so dull. Leisure Hive is one of the most boring stories ever, and Traken barely escapes the same label solely by JNT's 11th hour insertion of the Master, which really only helps the last episode anyway. Logopolis is just plain shite, and a deeply poor send-off for Tom, who aside from Decay and Meglos looks as bored as fuck for most of the season, like most of the audience.
The boring fanboy revisionism that Season 18 saved us all from more wonderful Williams madness (didn't do much for the ratings mind) always alternately pisses me off or makes me laugh depending on my mood for tolerating idiocy.  

iank wrote:Season 17 by light years. There's not one bad story and three of them (City, Nimon and Shada) are stone cold classics. The warm, fun tone makes the stories endlessly entertaining and rewatchable and Tom and Lalla are golden.

Season 18... is not very good. State of Decay is a masterpiece, which is deeply telling since it's a Williams era commission, and Meglos is underrated but most of the rest is as dry as burnt toast. Tom and Lalla do a better job of making Bidmead gobbledygook sound cool and intelligent than the Terrible Trio, but most of the season is just so dull. Leisure Hive is one of the most boring stories ever, and Traken barely escapes the same label solely by JNT's 11th hour insertion of the Master, which really only helps the last episode anyway. Logopolis is just plain shite, and a deeply poor send-off for Tom, who aside from Decay and Meglos looks as bored as fuck for most of the season, like most of the audience.
The boring fanboy revisionism that Season 18 saved us all from more wonderful Williams madness (didn't do much for the ratings mind) always alternately pisses me off or makes me laugh depending on my mood for tolerating idiocy.  

You definitely wouldn't like the ultra serious type of fans in my description in the other thread.

Overall I agree. Season 17 is more watchable and fun than sason 18. Destiny for instance isn't a great story, but its so much more enjoyable than say Meglos.

Also City of Death is better than any story in season 18. State of Decay however is a great story, and E-Space is a brilliant concept.

That said Bidemead I think was the weakest script editor of the original series after Saward and ruined many of the great ideas of the season. Traken does use the Master brilliantly though, and Logopolis is a brilliant idea.

(You got to give them props for coming up with an idea that was basically Dark Tower, before Dark Tower.)

The finished result however is very poorly done. The ramifications of the universe being partially destroyed are never played upon, the ending is too rushed.

The worst is Nyssa joking and laughing a few minutes after Traken has been destroyed.

I do like the Reichenbach falls aspect of Tom's death, but overall it falls short of expectations.

burrunjor wrote:

You definitely wouldn't like the ultra serious type of fans in my description in the other thread.

.

They were my least favourite people in fandom.

Pre-New Who of course. Now they almost seem quaint in comparison to the psychos that's brought in.

I'm not a massive fan of either, tbh. Some of 18 is simply boring, whilst 17 has far too much panto shite.
But on balance, I voted for 18.

I've never got the love for 17. City of Death, whilst not the worst story ever, is definitely a contender for most overrated classic Who story; and that's arguably the best of a dire season of rubbish like Eden and Nimon; whilst Destiny is a contender for weakest Dalek story since The Chase.

On the other hand, the likes of Warriors Gate and Logopolis are deeply dull, to the point of coma inducing, whilst Meglos is such tripe that it feels like a leftover from 17.
Stories like Leisure Hive, Traken, and Full Circle are pretty average, but they are at least watchable. They're not as boring as the worst offenders, and certainly not as eye-rollingly dumb as 17's so-called "comedy". And finally, there's State of Decay which is the nearest thing to a classic in these two seasons, and were it not for the shit companions of the day, it would be on a par with Fang Rock, as it was originally conceived as the Hinchcliffe handover, in the same way that 'Robot' was a Barry Letts handover.
So basically 18 has more going for it, despite 3 big clunkers.

Technically I think Season 18 has the more numerous, solid stock of stories, and indeed a greater variety of stories than Season 17 (which becomes very samey toward the end).

For Season 17, City of Death is still a veritable jewel. It might win against Season 18's jewel, State of Decay some days for me, other times State of Decay does.

Sadly much of Season 17 is pretty shoddy. I go through phases with Destiny of the Daleks, and there's times I've really got a lot of momentary joys out of it. Lately I've not been able to ignore its flaws however. Nightmare of Eden always rubbed me up the wrong way, it's rather out of control, and might be the one story where I really find myself not liking Tom's Doctor.

Creature From the Pit I always found rather on the trite side, though I think as a production it actually holds up mostly well in spite of Erato. I certainly find it an easier watch than Nightmare.

I actually find Horns of Nimon a guilty pleasure, though mainly on the strength of Lalla taking the lead so well. But I suspect if I'd been watching at the time, my patience with the show would've been wearing thin by then.

However, for Season 18 I've always found The Leisure Hive one of the hardest slogs of any story to get through. I just find it noisy incoherence that nonetheless looks very cutting edge. Meglos has some gem moments, but is mostly throwaway and forgettable.

The E-Space trilogy is pretty solid for the most part, even in spite of Adric. Keeper of Traken's a bit of a slog though, although probably to date Nyssa's strongest TV outing.

As for Logopolis, I'm afraid whilst I can respect its ambition, I still think it was a mistake to bring the Master back, and an omen for how fannish the show was about to get (I still firmly believe he should've been left in the past back in The Deadly Assassin), and I also think it was a terrible move to essentially end Tom's era of heroism and planet-saving by essentially undoing nearly all his good work in one go, to the point he might as well have never bothered.

That to me was a bit of a disrespect to the previous legacy and the building of a heroic figure. And Season 17 was never really guilty of that, for all its faults. Plus it didn't have Adric.

Season 18 might be the stronger season, but to be honest, Season 17 is much more how I generally prefer to remember the classic series. So I think it gets my vote.

Both are pretty average seasons for the most part for me. I like 17 and think it's a load of good fun if not as good as the previous season and although I'd argue 18 has more interesting concepts and ideas, it's let down by a lack of action and can veer into being a bit too staunch and humourless. Also with the exceptions of Meglos, Decay and Traken, Tom seems burned out and past his best by this point.

I'll settle on 17 in the end as I feel it doesn't deserve it's horrendous reputation and it's weaker stories are less crushing than 18's.

Indrid Mercury wrote:Both are pretty average seasons for the most part for me. I like 17 and think it's a load of good fun if not as good as the previous season and although I'd argue 18 has more interesting concepts and ideas, it's let down by a lack of action and can veer into being a bit too staunch and humourless. Also with the exceptions of Meglos, Decay and Traken, Tom seems burned out and past his best by this point.

I'll settle on 17 in the end as I feel it doesn't deserve it's horrendous reputation and it's weaker stories are less crushing than 18's.

I've never been JNT's biggest fan, but I am grateful to him that we got State of Decay at last (Bidmead apparently wasn't in favour of it, and it was JNT who pushed for it to be made).

[quote="Tanmann"]

Indrid Mercury wrote:
I've never been JNT's biggest fan

18 > 17

I rate both seasons every highly. If I were to rank all the stories in each season out of 10, and then average them: S18 gets a 9.4 and S17 gets a 9.0.

But I've always regarded 18 as more a refinement of the direction of S17, not a drastic change. I like season 17, a lot. 17 is a lighter season, but I don't find any of it it overly silly like some of the stories in seasons 23-25, and I like the combination of 4 and Romana II. 18 just got a little more serious, kept the main characters of the 4th Doctor and Romana the basically same, and I think added stories with a lot of interesting concepts and ideas. Yes, they did change companions at the end of the season, but of all the companions in all of Doctor Who, Nyssa is the only one I like better than Romana. To me 18 is really the pinnacle of Doctor Who - although 19-20 more or less kept the same tone as 18.

The way I've always separated the 4th Doctor's seasons is: (11-)12, 13-15, 16-18(-20).

12 always seemed to me to be very similar to 11, but more boring. 11 had some stories I really like, like Time Warrior and Spiders, but while 12 had a similar tone it has no stories that do that much for me.

I really consider 13-15, not 12-14 to be the era with the more horror-themed darker stories people talk about as the Hinchcliffe era even though Williams was there in 15. My favorite story of that style is Fendahl which is in season 15. Talons is also very much in that style and in S15. Invisible Enemy perhaps contains elements of s16 and 14. Sunmakers is perhaps a bit more S16. But then Stones of Blood is done in a s13-14 style and it's up in 16.

I tend to lump in 16-20 as all being very similar, I see the changes from 16 to 17 and 17 to 18 as more ones of minor refinement than any drastic changes in direction. I think it improved slightly each time and reached a height in 18, and then I would say it stayed very similar to 18 in 19 and 20.

Fendelman wrote:18 > 17

I rate both seasons every highly. If I were to rank all the stories in each season out of 10, and then average them: S18 gets a 9.4 and S17 gets a 9.0.

But I've always regarded 18 as more a refinement of the direction of S17, not a drastic change. I like season 17, a lot. 17 is a lighter season, but I don't find any of it it overly silly like some of the stories in seasons 23-25, and I like the combination of 4 and Romana II. 18 just got a little more serious, kept the main characters of the 4th Doctor and Romana the basically same, and I think added stories with a lot of interesting concepts and ideas. Yes, they did change companions at the end of the season, but of all the companions in all of Doctor Who, Nyssa is the only one I like better than Romana. To me 18 is really the pinnacle of Doctor Who - although 19-20 more or less kept the same tone as 18.

The way I've always separated the 4th Doctor's seasons is: (11-)12, 13-15, 16-18(-20).

12 always seemed to me to be very similar to 11, but more boring. 11 had some stories I really like, like Time Warrior and Spiders, but while 12 had a similar tone it has no stories that do that much for me.

I really consider 13-15, not 12-14 to be the era with the more horror-themed darker stories people talk about as the Hinchcliffe era even though Williams was there in 15. My favorite story of that style is Fendahl which is in season 15. Talons is also very much in that style and in S15. Invisible Enemy perhaps contains elements of s16 and 14. Sunmakers is perhaps a bit more S16. But then Stones of Blood is done in a s13-14 style and it's up in 16.

I tend to lump in 16-20 as all being very similar, I see the changes from 16 to 17 and 17 to 18 as more ones of minor refinement than any drastic changes in direction. I think it improved slightly each time and reached a height in 18, and then I would say it stayed very similar to 18 in 19 and 20.

I would say for me, the Williams era really begins with Robots of Death. Maybe Hinchcliffe ends on The Deadly Assassin.

There is kind of a continuation of the Williams style or tone a bit into Season 18, but I tend to see Season 17 as the last island of the Williams approach. Partly because it's one of the few seasons (aside from Season 10 or Hand of Fear) where I think the show could've come to a neat close on it.

Season 18 by contrast I see as more the shock cliffhanger for everything else to come, and the beginnings of an approach where each season seems to end on something of an unresolved cliffhanger to the next, a lot of threads and continuity are left unresolved, and even neatly resolved ones are gratuitously undone.

I see what you mean about the refinement element to Season 18. It did seem more in mind to be a fix to the previous era than anything. The Leisure Hive has the Cambridge spirit of a Williams story but feels like it was directed by an avant garde film school who were on a different page. But even then that's not so unprecedented, since City of Death had its foreign art cinema aspirations too.

Romana I thought proved a very good fit with Bidmead's approach, which is why it was dismaying to see her dropped as she was (and not with the best replacements).

The JNT era as a whole is hard to pin down, because in a strange way it feels almost like several loose, rogue mini-era eras vying against and running roughshod over each other for supremacy. It's hard to see anything in Four to Doomsday, that betrays a road headed to Resurrection of the Daleks' approach, for instance.

I tend to see Full Circle to Earthshock as a loose Peter Grimwade era (I've often said maybe Grimwade was the best producer the show never had). Time-Flight I think really is the beginnings of the JNT era of unpopular infamy, and indeed it does feel like a product of producer's fiat that's running roughshod over the natural direction and shape the previous two seasons were taking.

Season 20-22 is pretty much where the Ian Levine era becomes full on (which I could perhaps have lived with had it stopped on The Five Doctors). I suppose you could say for Season 20, that within it there's a quite beautiful mini-Fiona Cumming era, and that The King's Demons and The Five Doctors marks the refinement and end of the Terence Dudley era.

Season 21-Mindwarp I see more the angry Eric Saward backlash era. It's all been Saward's era, but hereon it feels a more disillusioned, nihilisitc Saward driven to aggressively macho up the show (at the Doctor's expense) as reaction against the light-weight previous seasons, and I find that a very ugly era indeed. But within it there's a very beautiful, brief Graeme Harper era, which showed how even that could've been refined.

Season 24 is the Cartmel era but with aggressive neutering by Johnathan Powell dictating that this is just to be kept a children's show now.

Season 25 and 26 is Cartmel more asserting his own claim, but it almost feels like an era's evolution on speed, ironically.

Season 17 by a country mile, Destiny isn't the best Dalek story, but City of Death is an all-time great, Creature from the Pit is... interesting, and Nightmare of Eden and Horns of Nimon are hilarious. Plus Shada would have been great, if ever finished.

Season 18 only has Keeper of Traken and maybe State of Decay that doesn't bore me rigid. Bidmead and Chibnall could have a bore off with Season 18 and Series 11

Season 18, I even wrote an article about it. I feel Meglos is a very Williams-era story, for the most part, but otherwise the show had to grow up or it could have turned into a 1980s new who - as fun as City Of Death was! And it was further proof how the show could change so much and so confidently.