Pepsi Maxil Foley wrote:A big problem with Season 22 is The Doctor is sometimes sidelined for the first half an hour or so. This isn't the case all of the time, but if you look at stories like Varos, Timelash and Revelation he arrives very late on the scene.
Resurrection has a similar problem, but in a strange way, much of Season 22 feels like it's Saward reeling back a bit too much from his mistake of having too much incident happening in Resurrection, by going to the other extreme of having long stretches of nothing for the Sixth Doctor to deal with.
But again I think it's just that Saward didn't like the Doctor and now saw him as an inconvenience.
If Varos and Timelash were four part stories then The Doctor doesn't arrive at the main location until the beginning of the second part.
Well, when I first watched Revelation, aged 11, back in the BBC's 1993 repeat season, it was broadcast in four parts, so in the whole first episode, the most progress the Doctor and Peri had made into the plot was finally managing to climb over a wall.
I must admit, thinking back to that first time, it does feel like a cheap exercise in false advertising. Like "The Doctor's gonna have a new exciting adventure with the Daleks this episode..... like really soon he will.... any moment now..... haha! just kidding, I've been spending 45 minutes stalling him as best I can."
The mutant attack does throw us a bone early on, but otherwise gets forgotten about for most of the first episode, and the aforementioned wall-climbing scene is just taking the piss.
I will say that things are kept interesting enough elsewhere to disguise that, as Harper's direction maintains a thick atmosphere, but I can see the kids getting frustrated and bored with wondering why their hero's not involved in it all yet or why there's no-one to latch onto.
The Doctor vs the Daleks should be a big event. How is he going to fight them, how's he going to survive and win against them? And that's an anticipation the story ends up botching by having other characters largely fight his battles for him whilst he traipses in the snow.
But I think the main thing lost by his delayed involvement is that if you're not paying attention to every single second of dialogue, you could completely miss that the Doctor's name-dropped friend Arthur Stengos, and Natasha's father are actually meant to be the same person.
If he was more proactively involved from the start in the action, that link might've been made more lucid. Hell, it might've made more sense if there was even a scene where the Doctor actually recognized Natasha. Maybe even saw her image on the "wanted" security bulletins and pointed out to Peri that he knows her. Or maybe he could've come across Natasha's ship en route, and found evidence of what she was planning to do. Maybe she could've left him a pre-recorded message.
I suppose if I was to amend it, I'd still probably keep everything up to the Mutant's attack the same. And then try and build on that.
Then I think I'd have to have various encounters with Daleks along the way. Hell, maybe the Doctor and Peri get into a chase and firefight in the woods, and are nearly killed, until Orcini arrives in the nick of time and takes it out.
Another possibility is that he actually, whilst searching Natasha's ship, finds a radar contact from an approaching ship, and realizes it's a Dalek ship coming from Skaro.
Or maybe both happen at once.
This gives him an incentive to momentarily forget the mystery of the Mutant or Stengos as a secondary concern, and rush to Tranquil Repose and warn them they could be under attack by Daleks very soon, only for it to later emerge that the Daleks are already there as part of the facility.
Maybe Peri runs when she sees the Daleks, and finds herself taking refuge in the DJ's studio.
I suppose that largely covers it.
Significant changes I'd make.
I'd want to have a go at some explanation of how the humans came to work with Davros and allow the Daleks to be bred, given human history with them. Maybe some way he held people to ransom here. Maybe an important figure in cryostasis he could always threaten the life of if his demands weren't met.
I was tempted for a moment to suggest cutting Tasambeker out completely, as her sub-plot didn't really seem to go anywhere that relevant.... but on the other hand her death does provide a dramatic shift where Tranquil Repose suddenly becomes a more lethal place and the Daleks begin showing their true colours.
But I'd maybe make her manipulation by Davros more lucid than just a sudden bout of psychosis.
Natasha and Grigory's death I thought was too nastily set up. It never being questioned that Orcini deliberately gives them an exhausted lazer blaster for reasons that can only be sheer malice. A change I might make is showing Natasha use it several times to overcome hunting guards/Daleks or blast through security locks, so there's a reason it's out of power by the time they're at the incubator room.
I'd be somewhat tempted not to kill them at all though, and infact I would've preferred if Natasha had stayed on as the new companion to replace Peri. It would make sense the Doctor would take Stengos' daughter under his wing. Through travelling with him, she could at once work through the guilt of having taken a life, whilst the Doctor teaches her better ways, but she'd also have a motivation in hoping to avenge her father by helping the Doctor's next fight with the Daleks. Plus, again she'd be more likely to stand up to Coin's Doctor and hold her own than Peri was.
I would've maybe added a few more thrills to the final chase to escape Tranquil Repose. I think we should've seen much more of the emerging new Dalek army, and the Doctor and friends having to evade their fire until they're all hopefully destroyed in the explosion. Plus they would've given some sense of the galactic stakes here.
I'd say that's about it for my amendments really.