Retro ‘Doctor Who’ Reviews – Vol. 7.1

If you’re a regular follower of this series you’d know that I wasn’t a fan of the Sixth Doctor. But now that chapter has come to a close it’s time to see what what the Seventh is all about.

Time and the Rani

This new season takes a rather drastic turn when the TARDIS is shot down in the opening scene and crashes on a nearby planet. The attack came from the Rani, who requires the Doctor for an experiment. Before he is taken he undergoes his next regeneration whilst lying unconscious on the floor of the console room.

With this episode having been scripted before the new Doctor had been cast the character isn’t written with Sylvester McCoy in mind. It isn’t easy to get a sense of what a crafty and manipulative character he would be. The Doctor in this serial bumbles quite a bit and mixes up idioms, traits that wouldn’t be standard behavior for this version.

Whilst the Doctor is being held by the Rani and her bat like Tetraps Mel joins a group of rebels to fight back. The Rani is plotting to kidnap the greatest minds of history and plug them into a single artificial brain. The ultimate goal is to create a time manipulator, and she’s already plugged in many well-known figures such as Einstein. The Doctor upsets the system when he is plugged in, caused the brain to turn schizophrenic and argue with itself. This, along with Einstein trying to understand the TARDIS, make this an enjoyable serial.

The return of the Rani seems somewhat anti-climatic, with the Doctor not being conscious for enough of the serial to give her a good run for her money. If the script was better tailored for the new actor and the Rani was made more threatening then this would be a fantastic introduction. 

Paradise Towers

Like so many Doctor Who adventures this one begins with the Doctor and his companion trying to get some vacation time. Specifically Mel and the Doctor want to use a swimming pool, so they head to the luxurious Paradise Towers. They arrive at an point in the future where the towers have not only closed for business but turned into a dystopian microcosm. They encounter gangs of young girls called Kangs, divided by the colours they wear, being hunted by the Caretakers, who keep a strict and violent rule over the inhabitants.

The Doctor and Mel get separated, with the Doctor being indoctrinated into the Red Kangs and helping them defends against the Caretakers. Mel runs afoul of Rezzies, elderly women with cannibalistic tendencies before teaming up with wannabe hero Pex. As it turns out Pex is mostly talk and is mocked by the Kangs for his cowardice. Mel does eventually find her way to the pool but foolishly doesn’t heed warnings and finds that a robot already occupies it. Eventually it all comes down to Caretakers and Kangs teaming up to defeat the architect who created the building, and Pex having the opportunity to prove himself.

The concept behind the episode is rich and imaginative. The notion of a destructive society occupying a single building may stretch credibility of it is extremely well executed. The Kangs all take their names from the household items that they find around the place, such as Bin Liner, and their limited vocabulary does paint them as people who grew up in a limited environment. The architect who is introduced late in the story as an enemy almost derails things as it has little bearing on the rest of the plot, but it is a really well scripted serial.

Delta and the Bannermen

One is left wondering if the title or the story for this serial came first. It’s such a glaring reference to the 1980s band Echo and the Bunnymen that it’s hard to imagine that the characters and villains in this serial had been named Delta and Bannermen coincidently. Delta is the queen of the Chimeron people who are becoming the victims of genocide by Gavrok and his Bannermen. She escapes along with an egg that represents the future of her race.

She arrives as a spaceport occupied by shape changing tourist aliens at the same time as the Doctor and Mel. Delta takes the opportunity to hide among the tourists and travel to Earth where she, the Doctor and Mel and the alien tourists wind up in a Welsh seaside resort. Before long the Bannermen track them down the Doctor finds himself in the position of protecting Delta and the egg, which promptly becomes a rapidly growing child. 

It’s a real hit and miss story. The Bannermen make for some menacing villains and the threat level remains high. Delta also makes for an interesting character, and the physiology of the rapidly growing child is solid science fiction. The jarring contrast between the bloodthirsty Bannermen and the colourful seaside resort doesn’t work. It’s clear what they are shooting for but they don’t manage to hit the target. The battle between the different factions at the conclusion of the episode is nowhere near climatic enough to justify the build-up of the previous episodes. This is always going to be a problem when your titular hero is a pacifist by nature and the battle is already in motion when the story begins.