Flecks of turd in the gold

As a companion piece to Ronnie’s ‘Flecks of gold in the turds’ thread discussing the redeeming qualities in individual New Who episodes, are there any particular moments in Classic Who that stand out to you guys as being distinctively shit?

Thought I’d make this for fun, and to verify that I am capable of praising and criticising TruWho and NuWho, even if the latter is inferior in every conceivable way.

Frontier in Space. Two particular scenes bother me. One is Jo trying to bluff that she's having a conversation with the Doctor in their cell where she just waffles on a load of pat nonsense about how the Master deserves a fair chance and the Doctor's always being a meanie to him (I guess you could say it's a bluff to try and fool the Master, but it leaves a bit of a nasty aftertaste, and feels a bit of patronising nonsense to the viewer), and also the way the Master manages to persuade the Daleks not to kill the Doctor is just a bit unconvincing.

The whining and bickering moments between Adric and Tegan in the last episode of Kinda are just horrid.

Time-Flight's a pretty rubbish story but the way Adric's death is brushed off at the beginning was particularly crass.

Arc of Infinity. The scene of Robin exploding at the hostel receptionist when she asks about Colin is just tacky and awful.

Warriors is of course rubbish but I think it's the final ten-fifteen minutes that make it particularly irredeemable as the last surviving humans are forced to valiantly take a bullet for the useless Doctor after he wrote them off as 'pathetic'.

Resurrection of the Daleks, I think what really made me groan over the story was the unbearable petulance of the surviving crew "I'd rather die quickly than slowly of dehydration", and the shooting of Chloe Ashcroft I just thought was where it got ridiculously gratuitous.

Twin Dilemma. That first cliffhanger! It just completely floored me in one go. The fact that the petty Doctor-Peri bickering was pushed to utterly unbearable levels. The fact that Hugo immediately assumes by braindead logic that his rescuers who didn't even bother disarming him, must be the ones who attacked him. And the fact the Doctor only has to give him a little kick to survive this one, and that he's been such a prick so far, I'm not sure I want him to.

Time and the Rani. The final scene where the stupid Lakertyans decide to pour away the Doctor's antidote to the killer bees because they'd rather work for it or something.

Battlefield. Some of the feminist militancy in this leaves a bad taste with me. That the Brigadier is expected to respect a wounded Lavelle's female independence by not sticking with her so that she later gets vapourized. And of course the special edition scene of Ace chewing the Brigadier out for the heinous crime of offering her a blanket.

Survival. That scene of McCoy tripping a cheetah and then doffing his hat to it I always thought was particularly inane. To be honest the finale feels a bit of a cop-out rush job that's abruptly cut short.

Those bloody awful scenes in Arc of Infinity that feature Tegan's idiot cousin and his numpty mate. Absolutely horrendous acting. The Ergon is bloody shite, too.

I will still stay away from the '80s bashing which would be far too easy (oops can't help it)

One off the top of my head from one of my favourite stories is Jenny Laird's atrocious performance in Planet of the Spiders as Nesca. The woman is awful. The very definition of wooden.

There is usually sthg in a classic Who story I like that causes minor irritation. Examples i can think of off-hand and in stories I like ...

The Magma Beast in Androzani.

The way the silurians bob heir heads when they talk in Pertwee's first season adventure The Silurians.

Cotton / Rick James in The Mutants. Very poor acting.

The acting of the prison ship crew in Resurrection was poor. And Rodney Bewes (Stein). And Chloe Ashcroft (Laird).

Jenny Tomasin's acting in Revelation - i.e.,the character Tasembeker. In her defence i do wonder if it was a difficult script for her though. She was being asked to fawn over Clive Swift / Jobel like an idiot for the best part of 90 minutes.

Alexi Sayle (the DJ) in Revelation.

The Krynoid tentacles attacking the cottage in Seeds of Doom. They just look like fake rubber tentacles to me. Otherwise brilliant story though.

Brian Croucher in Robots of Death. He wasn't very good as Travis II in Blakes 7 either.

The last two episodes of Face of Evil. The quality just seems to take a dive and I don't quite know why. Partly its the way people die in the gunfights, carefully lowering themselves to the ground as if they are going to have a quick kip during a filming break.

George Roubicek / Captain Hopper in Tomb of the Cybermen. Acting was very poor i thought. Really like the story though.

Occasionally Jo Grant. Sometimes she could be such a star struck idiot in awe of the Doctor it got on my wick.

stengos wrote:Occasionally Jo Grant. Sometimes she could be such a star struck idiot in awe of the Doctor it got on my wick.

I'm definitely with you there.

Agreed about Jo Grant, although I'm pretty complacent about it. I have a little laugh to myself about it, but it doesn't actively annoy me.