Season 19

Similar to the Season 18 thread.

How do you rate Davison's first season?

Between the divisive Adric and the return of the Cybermen, is it a great season overall or only really worth it for Earthshock? Is there more that's overlooked about the season? Is it a solid continuation for the show after Tom Baker's era or is it too far removed from what came before? Does Time-Flight ruin everything or does it get a pass?

What say you: Saint or sinner?

I quite like Season 19 to be honest. It's a mixed bag but most the stuff in there I like outweighs the stuff I dislike

Castrovalva's plot may be flawed but it is still an enjoyable outing and makes for nice viewing when I'm ill. It's more entertaining and less underwhelming than Logopolis and Davison gets off to a great start.

Four To Doomsday is sadly one of the dullest stories of the original series up there with the likes of The Mutants and Underworld. The whole cast is badly characterized and the plastic, glossy artificial feel of the season is at its worst here. Just dire stuff

Kinda is overrated, pretentious bollocks and is very dodgy on a narrative ground but for the most part, I still enjoy it. Davison's good in it and Janet Fielding actually gets to be interesting for once. Overrated but not terrible

The Visitation is an oddity as it's perhaps the first traditional Doctor Who story since Meglos and in context of Eric Saward's other scripts, it lacks the violence, grimness and high body count. It's one that has gone up and down for me over the years and I feel very uncertain about it at the minute.

Black Orchid is great fun. A lovely period drama where everyone is well characterized and the classic BBC period drama charm to it stands out and leaves me feeling fuzzy. Just 50 minutes of pure entertainment.

Earthshock is a classic and is tied with Tomb as being my favorite Cyberman story. Adric gets a memorable sendoff and Davison is on top form here.

Time Flight. The less said about it, the better.

Season 19 is far from being the best season of 80s Who or the original series but it is still a fairly solid season in my books.

Castrovalva: 3.5/5
Four To Doomsday: 2/5
Kinda: 3/5
The Visitation: 3/5
Black Orchid: 4/5
Earthshock: 4.5/5
Time Flight: 2/5

I've kind of turned around on it lately to be honest. It's one of those seasons I bounce back and forth on. The companions are pretty shit and the worst thing about the season but Davison is good and most of the stories are at least entertaining. Not a fave but generally solid.

I’ve grown to rather like it recently. There’s a certain freshness and charm to much of the season which compliments Davison’s youthful yet reserved Doctor very well, and there’s a certain atmosphere to much of it that feels oddly surreal in an understated way (this is especially evident in stories like Castrovalva and Kinda, where cerebral narrative elements take centre stage). Castrovalva is a story I’ve warmed to recently- it’s quite slow to start with, but I love Kingsland’s score and the Escher influences, and Davison really comes into his own by episode 3 (although, as stated above, he is a little inconsistent in his performance throughout his era, ranging from superb to comatose). Four to Doomsday isn’t anything special, but it’s watchable all the same- I’ve seen far worse, anyway. I recognise Kinda’s writing issues in abundance, but there’s a certain psychedelic surrealism to it that really appeals to me (something rarely found in much of NuWho). The Visitation is passable enough, and Black Orchid is something of an underrated gem as far as I’m concerned. Earthshock is very good indeed (if slightly overrated), and is objectively the season highlight without any doubt. Time-Flight is utter shite, though, and does undermine the season considerably.

It’s far from an absolute favourite, but I’m far less lukewarm to it as I used to be after re-watching it several months back. There is a rather artificial vibe to some of the stories, and some of it is lethargic (not to mention Time-Flight’s sheer awfulness), and the companions are universally rubbish (bar perhaps Nyssa at times due to her reserved nature compared to the other two, though she is considerably wooden at other times) but there’s still much to enjoy here too.

For me it’s both Davison’s worst season, and yet it also feels very much like a continuation of S18, in so much as it’s flat out dull for the most part, and very much more so.
Castrovalva, Four to Doomsday, and Timeflight are the worst offenders, but Kinda and the inconsequential Black Orchid are only marginally less boring.
That leaves the overrated Earthshock, which is only average, but at least something happens. And finally The Visitation; nothing special, but not a bad little story, and the best of a weak season.

I think like Season 18, it's a bit of both saint and sinner. But possibly the one Davison season I am tempted to treat as a keeper after all, if only for the sake of Earthshock.

It feels plastic, hollow and horribly soapish in a way the show hasn't felt before. I still think Kinda is extremely clunky and contrived, Four To Doomsday has enough infantile sexism to leave a bad taste in my mouth, and The Visitation is rather on the depressing side. The characterization of the companions is almost unbearably histrionic and invidious. But come Earthshock it all suddenly comes alive and it all seems worth it. The doomsday stakes feeling real and believable in a way rarely felt in the show, and for a moment it even feels like it's justified the cast swelling of companions, and Davison gets to be a lot more badass than usual.

I think why it works in a way Davison's subsequent seasons don't for me, is that it starts with the Master vanquished, giving some closure to Logopolis, which frees up the rest of Davison's adventures to be focused on new concerns, new stakes and dilemmas and Davison is good at getting us behind him and conveying a Doctor who cares. What heart there is to the season largely comes from him. Comparatively in later seasons it's hard to wonder why his Doctor is more preoccupied with Mawdryn Undead or Enlightenment's smaller stakes when the mass-murdering Master is still on the loose. But for the brief period between Castrovalva and Time-Flight that's a resolved issue.

Unfortunately Time-Flight is where it all falls apart. In every sense. Even Davison's best efforts can't hold it together. Its an incredibly sloppy narrative in which events seem to happen not based on any cause and effect but simply based on 'because JNT wished it'. The way that Adric's death is handled is just horribly insincere, and by undoing the closure of Castrovalva, it kind of makes it near impossible to care about any narrative progression, or anything that happens in the show again if it can now all just unhappen in an instant.

There was a certain freshness and a bit of pace to much of it, and it does feel more forward-looking than backward-looking. Certainly it'd be nice if fan-pleasers like Earthshock and the Master's reappearances here had just been a one-off. There is again that sense that the show could've gone either way from here, and really should've gone more for the promise than the pitfalls.

Ronnie wrote:For me it’s both Davison’s worst season, and yet it also feels very much like a continuation of S18, in so much as it’s flat out dull for the most part, and very much more so.

I'd have said of the three, it was probably S20 that was the dullest (though for me S21 is the most insulting and objectionable).

That leaves the overrated Earthshock, which is only average, but at least something happens.

I thought it was a bit overrated and didn't entirely make sense the first time I watched it. But it has grown on me over the years, into a favourite mainly based on pure viscera. I suppose you could say it's more like a rollercoaster ride than a plotted story, and in that I think it allowed me to bond with the characters in a way much of the era didn't.

See, I like S20 best of the three. There's no accounting for taste.  
Apart from Arc of Infinity and Kings Demons, I'm relatively happy with the rest of the stories.

And Caves alone lifts S21 way above 19, for me. Plus, I like The Awakening, and despite its faults I don't mind Ressurection either.

My favourite Davison season. Pretty much all of the stories are entertaining with the exception of The Visitation. Kinda, Black Orchid and Earthshock are bona fide classics and the rest are fairly enjoyable outings. Time-Flight isn't that bad at all.


Tegan and Nyssa are sooooo hot! Can we get a drooling emoticon?

Pepsi Maxil wrote:Time-Flight isn't that bad at all.

If Time-Flight was a road, it'd be closed for repairs for a year!

Tanmann wrote:

Pepsi Maxil wrote:Time-Flight isn't that bad at all.

If Time-Flight was a road, it'd be closed for repairs for a year!

Half of the stories I do like, but the other half can actually fuck off to the sun. Castrovalva takes way too long for the plot to actually start moving, and the atmosphere and settings feel too claustrophobic and garish.
Four To Doomsday is one of the dullest Who stories ever, the characterisation of 5 makes him to be an absolute goofy loon without any nuance, Tegan and Adric are downright insufferable in this and make me wish that they were sucked in the vacuum of space, the plot makes itself up as it goes on, and the guest characters are unbelievably boring. There's no tension in this story either, at least with Time-Flight, I can actually laugh at how shite it is, but Four to Doomsday is awful in nearly every conceivable way.
Kinda may not be perfect, but I admire it for its ambition. Janet Fielding actually feels like she's acting this time instead of being an annoying bugger, I will defend Simon Rouse's performance and say that he's utterly chilling in his role, the dialogue actually feels mature with both the technological characters and the primitive characters feeling distinctive. It's not perfect, the forest design feels fake and the story can at times feel pretentious, but I can certainly watch this story much more than the previous 2, and other Davison stories.
The Visitation is... ok. The first attack on the manor is wonderfully atmospheric, and the locations and sets are generally great to look at when Peter Moffatt is actually allowed to direct. When he puts the directing on autopilot though, everything feels sterile, the villains don't feel effective, Adric and Tegan are about as insufferable as in Four To Doomsday and there's no form of pace. Not really a memorable story, all things considered.
Black Orchid, I actually love, and consider it to be one of my favourite pure historicals. All 4 main cast are finally beaming with life and fun and actually feel like a family, the guest characters are lovely in a quintessential British manner and the locations are filled with detail. It's one of my feel-good Who stories and I'm always filled with joy when watching this.
Earthshock deserves all of the praise and then some. The Cybermen feel like an unstoppable force, the atmosphere and direction feels dreary and grim but for the right reasons, Davison actually feels like an authoritative and effective Doctor, Adric gets some great characterisation and a fantastic send off and the action is superb. One of my favourite Davison stories and maybe my favourite Cyberman story next to The Moonbase and The Invasion.
Time-Flight was doomed from the start with its premise alone. Why exactly does The Master want to steal a plane? For shits and giggles? What the fuck happened to an effective villain? All of the drama that should have been built up from the ending of Earthshock is quickly dropped in 3 minutes, and said 3 minutes have some of the most clunky and badly written dialogue in Who History. The direction and atmosphere are non-existent, and are equally as abysmal as Warriors of the Deep, perhaps even more so. The Davison era at its lowest, and sadly, it's not even the worst story out of the era.

I really enjoy some episodes in this season particularly castravalva,Earthshock ,black orchid just awesome episodes love the music,the acting by the cast

I don't care what people say I really love peter as the doctor he is not dull in my opinion at all.

Castrovalva 7/10
Four to Doomsday 7.5/10
Kinda 10/10
The Visitation 5/10
Black Orchid 7.5/10
Earthshock 10/10
Time-Flight 7/10

Castrovalva 10/10
Four to Doomsday 10/10
Kinda 9/10
The Visitation 9.5/10
Black Orchid 8/10
Earthshock 7/10
Time-Flight 10/10

My second favorite season after 18, I love season 19!