What do you like most about the Colin Baker era?

I admire how shamelessly in love it is with the show's past. With all the call backs it feels like one giant celebration of Doctor Who!

You have:

Telos
Lytton
The name dropping of Susan, Victoria, Zoe and Tegan
Totter's Lane
Cybermen in the sewers
The Cyber Controller
The referencing of Cyber history
The Master
The Sontarans
The Second Doctor and Jamie
A painting of Pertwee
A picture of Jo
The Daleks
The Matrix
The Timelords

The Whittaker era rarely brings up the show's illustrious history and actually seems embarrassed to have Doctor Who related things in there at all.

It wasn't necessarily the classic show's high point due to the inconsistent quality of the stories but I liked its cynical, gritty quality, its violent edginess compared to the likes of The A Team, and its sharp satire: it felt very grown up for a 'family show'. Very far from the show's tone since 2005.

I second Mott1 on this.

Yeah, Mott1 essentially has it. For me, its not the call-backs to the past that appeal so much (and these have been exaggerated in their number and importance by the era's detractors, as whenever these come into play they are always utilised very differently) but the era's gritty, stark tone, counter-balanced by a pitch-black humour, subversive satire and twisted characterisation. The overall effect is a wonderfully queasy tonal balancing act between humour and horror; like "cheese-dream" Doctor Who, if you will.

All this is bolstered, of course, by Colin Baker's imperious, mercurial, slightly-cracked but highly intelligent doctor. A man who still has a strong moral compass but also now an occasionally ruthless pragmatist, capable of standing toe-to-toe with some of the more deranged villains of the era.

Overall, for me, I guess its the imagination and the surreality, essentially. Something like Mindwarp, for example, has absolutely no interest in narrative convention and plunges the viewer into a completely alien world, with no mundane reference points to attempt to hold the viewer's hand. A far cry from the pandering rubbish we are being fed now.

I would have to say, though, that I disagree somewhat with the assertion regarding inconsistent stories; with any Doctor Who season there are stronger stories and there are weaker ones (often determined, to a degree, by budget) and I don't really feel that the Colin Baker era is any more guilty of this than any other. Of course, part of this is having become sick and tired of the era's detractors constantly disparaging the quality of the writing, when there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

I feel that the ratio of good:bad stories only appears less impressive  because of the relative brevity of the era. Had it been allowed to continue as intended I'm sure we would have seen many more stories of the quality of Varos and Revelation.

Overall, an excellent and distinctive era of Doctor Who that established its own identity and tone very quickly. At this point, contary to "fan consensus" Doctor's Who's writing had become more adult and layered and had moved beyond "Yeti invading the underground". That is to be praised, not condemned. If only it had been allowed to run its course, as we are unlikely to see its like again.

Bouncy Nicola Bryant in tight spandex.

bryanbraddock wrote:Bouncy Nicola Bryant in tight spandex.

...and there's that.

His costume, while tasteless to some, is an awful lot of fun to draw:

Queen Angvia wrote:His costume, while tasteless to some, is an awful lot of fun to draw:

Very nice

Commander Maxil wrote:

Queen Angvia wrote:His costume, while tasteless to some, is an awful lot of fun to draw:

Very nice

Thanks!

It may seem trivial (inconsequential, even) but I really like how cultured and literate CB's version of the Doctor could be - often quoting from classic literature and poetry (for example, in 'The Ultimate Foe', he quotes from Hamlet and A Tale Of Two Cities, but there are lots of other instances throughout his tenure).  I like that academic, bookish side to Number 6, but appreciate how it also makes him sometimes appear pompous and affected - yet that's good, we don't want a perfect,100% likeable Doctor.

Also, I find his over-the-top verbosity pleasing:

The Doctor: "Fortuitous would be a more apposite epithet!"
Peri: "Or, as we humans say, 'Lucky would be a better word.'" ('The Mark Of The Rani').

My wife thinks Colin has the nicest voice of any Classic era Doctor.

The decline in the Doctor's vocabulary is another of the worst things about New Who. Probably down to the writers being barely literate themselves these days, one suspects...

Pip and Jane Baker interview in 1988:

"Take the Rani – now if you’re creating somebody who’s supposed to be a superior being, somebody at the apex of all evolution – she can’t start talking, I don’t think, in an ordinary way. As we understand it – Eric told us this – the Time Lords have no magic power, all they’ve got is this ability to think more and use their minds in a way most of us haven’t yet evolved to. You’ve got to demonstrate that. The Valeyard was a tremendous villain. He had this tremendous intellectual capacity. You’ve got to give him something that matches that. You’re trying to say ‘This is a character different from the rest’, he can’t just mouth mundane chit chat."

"If anyone is polysyllabic, they’re accused of being pretentious, which is a shame because if you got back to the end of the last century and read Dickens, you can’t accuse him of being monosyllabic, and he was writing for a mass audience. It’s a shame that something’s happened to the working vocabulary nowadays, so that it’s gradually being gleaned down to a much smaller range. We don’t believe in writing down (to the audience). We’d have thought ‘Doctor Who’ followers would appreciate that."

I appreciate that. I wish the modern writers would take a leaf out of Pip and Jane's book.

I agree. One of the positives of Trial Of A Time Lord (particularly Terror Of The Vervoids) was the wonderfully verbose dialogue. Some thought it pretentious but there was an intelligence there that RTD replaced with double-entendres and Moffat replaced with prattle.

It's obvious that most of NuWho's writers deeply resent the original character of the Doctor. RTD's entire pitch for the character was to "move on" from his professorial, aristocratic qualities. That cringeworthy "I would of" line in Whittaker's first episode confirmed to me that not even the faintest trace of Hartnell's original character remained.

iank wrote:The decline in the Doctor's vocabulary is another of the worst things about New Who. Probably down to the writers being barely literate themselves these days, one suspects...

Exactly - but it's far more impressive and interesting to have your lead character say things like 'Tea at Yaz's? Amazing!' and 'Are you Ed Sheeran?' than to quote stuffy old Shakespeare or Dickens...

ClockworkOcean wrote:It's obvious that most of NuWho's writers deeply resent the original character of the Doctor. RTD's entire pitch for the character was to "move on" from his professorial, aristocratic qualities. That cringeworthy "I would of" line in Whittaker's first episode confirmed to me that not even the faintest trace of Hartnell's original character remained.

Indeed.

Mott1 wrote:I agree. One of the positives of Trial Of A Time Lord (particularly Terror Of The Vervoids) was the wonderfully verbose dialogue. Some thought it pretentious but there was an intelligence there that RTD replaced with double-entendres and Moffat replaced with prattle.

Agree 100%.  Well said.

Queen Angvia wrote:

iank wrote:The decline in the Doctor's vocabulary is another of the worst things about New Who. Probably down to the writers being barely literate themselves these days, one suspects...

Exactly - but it's far more impressive and interesting to have your lead character say things like 'Tea at Yaz's? Amazing!' and 'Are you Ed Sheeran?' than to quote stuffy old Shakespeare or Dickens...

Colin Baker wanted kids to reach for the dictionary which is why he insisted on having his Doctor talk in a certain way. Some of the language used in the modern era is downright insulting.

Bingo to everyone.

Mott1 wrote:I agree. One of the positives of Trial Of A Time Lord (particularly Terror Of The Vervoids) was the wonderfully verbose dialogue.

Pip and Jane's material is by far the most auspicious of the entire Trial season. The quality improves once Pip, Jane, Chris and Bonnie come on-board.  Sadly, it was a little too late for any of them to completely redeem the season as the damage had already been done in Mindwarp.

Very bright and colourful, yet with a great contrast to dark themes and horror.

I agree on the dialogue. It's probably my favourite era to write for - largely on that foundation.

Evidently there's a good deal of appreciation for the Colin Baker era around these parts. Any thoughts as to why it is so widely disparaged within "fandom"?

The execution performance-wise
Pantomimic exaggeration conveyed by Colin Baker.

Clayton Dickman wrote:The execution performance-wise
Pantomimic exaggeration conveyed by Colin Baker.

Bollocks, quite frankly. Precisely the sort of lazy, spurious fan myths I'm talking about.

UncleDeadly wrote:Evidently there's a good deal of appreciation for the Colin Baker era around these parts. Any thoughts as to why it is so widely disparaged within "fandom"?

I'm not quite sure. I'm sick to death of the repetitive rubbish they spout on so many occassions. It goes a little like this:


"Colin Baker was a good Doctor but he was let down by the writing and terrible scripts. He's so much better in Big Finish because you don't see that awful coat"

You only need to go on YouTube or Facebook to see comments like this made by Derrick or Joe or Timothy or Daniel or whoever.

This is another one that gets repeated again and again and again and again and again:


"If you think insert modern writer, era or actor here is bad then you clearly haven't heard of insert 80s writer, era or actor here"

Sorry, but this fandom is full of absolute dullards. Don't get me started on the anti-McCoy brigade. What a bunch of tasteless prats.

The other cliche that got repeated ad nauseam even pre-2005 was that 'the rot' set in with Peter Davison, apparently.