Every time Doctor Who reaches the end of a decade, it seems to be an automatic point of change and renewal for the series. Here's the second in a series of blogs looking back over a decade of Doctor Who.
The 1970s
So here I am, more than two years after I wrote about the 1960s, at the end of another decade of Doctor Who. It's not quite the end of an era, but it definitely feels like the end of Doctor Who's 1970s with the final episode of The Horns of Nimon, broadcast just 12 days into 1980. A lot changes after Season 17, and although there's another season of Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor to go, it's a good opportunity to stop, take stock and look back at what has been a rollercoaster 10 years.
Whereas the 1960s began as a mild curiosity in a junkyard, the 1970s began with a technicolour bang at a cottage hospital in deepest Essex. Doctor Who changed so much between Seasons 6 and 7 that it was almost unrecognisable to what had gone before. The War Games had been an epic finale for the season, the Second Doctor and the decade, but as soon as Jon Pertwee collapsed out of the TARDIS in Oxley Woods in Spearhead from Space - in colour, and on film - it was clear the series had a renewed impetus. Pertwee was an older leading man, but that didn't matter because this new Doctor was all about the action! It was like Doctor Who had been given an ITC transplant, and suddenly it felt like a contemporary of one of Lord Lew Grade's genre-twisting action-packed exports such as Department S or Strange Report.
I think it levels the quality of the programme's output in the Pertwee era considerably. Before, you could quite easily lurch from cheap, camp-looking B-movie sci-fi such as Galaxy 4 or The Dominators to a beautifully designed and written historical such as Marco Polo or The Abominable Snowmen. In the Pertwee era, almost every story was set today (or tomorrow), in a recognisable world of motor cars, high streets and country lanes. So there was no danger of a set designer with barely three shillings to rub together coming up with a dodgy alien world like Dulkis, or a costume designer producing ridiculous outfits like those for the Dulcians (I've got a real downer on that story today!).
The Third Doctor's era had its clunkers, but they tended to be stories not set on contemporary Earth (The Monster of Peladon, Frontier in Space, The Mutants), whereas the very best ones were those that had the alien menace visiting us in the here and now (Spearhead from Space, The Sea Devils, The Green Death). Pertwee did have cracking alien planet stories (one of my favourites of all is Death to the Daleks), but his era was at its best when he was acting as UNIT's chief scientific advisor (were there other advisors who worked under him?).
One thing I have learnt through this Doctor Who marathon is that I like the Third Doctor more than I thought I did. Before starting Season 7, I had my preconceptions of a rather humourless authoritarian who didn't suffer fools gladly and waltzed about making demands and throwing hissy fits. And I wasn't wrong, he is all those things, but he's also so much more, especially when working alchemically with Katy Manning's Jo Grant. Jo tempered the Third Doctor (except perhaps in The Daemons where he's just a mansplaining boor towards her) and the two work so well together that it's genuinely upsetting when she leaves in The Green Death. Almost 50 years later, the beauty of that leaving scene has lost none of its power.
And after Jon Pertwee came another tall crazy-haired actor to take on the mantle. Tom Baker was born to play Dr Who. There may never be another actor better suited to defining what the character is. Perhaps the Doctor isn't a fictional creation of that very first production team back in 1963. Perhaps the "real" Dr Who is Tom Baker, and everybody else is just playing their version of him? Baker hits the ground running in Robot and never stops, he is the Doctor from the very first moment we see him. It's rare that an actor clicks into the role quite so instantly (perhaps only Matt Smith has enjoyed the same sorcerous luck), but the Fourth Doctor was more than what Tom Baker makes him in Robot.
And then Philip Hinchcliffe left, Graham Williams came in, and the BBC bosses asked for less scary Doctor Who. And so the series became more light-hearted and throwaway, with Season 15 in particular degenerating into a farcical mess (after starting with such promise, it ended with such tripe). The Fourth Doctor of the Williams era is not the same creature as that of Hinchcliffe's. The Doctor is more off the wall, glib and sometimes quite childish (as opposed to child-like). I never used to appreciate that version of the Fourth Doctor, and before this marathon I had my preconceptions: Season 15 OK, Season 16 pleasant enough, Season 17 appalling.
How wrong I was. Because while I still much prefer the Hinchcliffe version of the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker is pretty much perfection for me in Horror of Fang Rock, Pyramids of Mars and Terror of the Zygons), I've come to appreciate him a bit more in Season 17. I still think he has moments of embarrassing silliness (most often confined to introductory TARDIS scenes), but he's still capable of turning on a penny, with powerful moments in stories such as The Pirate Planet, The Creature from the Pit and Nightmare of Eden.
Something I have less admiration for is the Key to Time season, which was unexpected. It's a pleasant enough run, but I think Tom Baker is at his most disengaged here, his most frivolous, and the stories, while "fine", are rarely "great". There's a blandness to them as a whole which isn't the case elsewhere in his era.
On my journey through the 1970s I've also come to love Jo Grant more, Harry Sullivan an awful lot more, and have appreciated the fine performances that Louise Jameson put in week after week as Leela, against everything thrown at her. I've learnt that Mary Tamm is my favourite Romana, and that K-9 is actually quite annoying and largely superfluous. And Sarah Jane Smith remains Sarah Jane Smith, an indomitable lynchpin in the Doctor Who canon. Nothing can dim Elisabeth Sladen's brilliance. Not time, not familiarity, not even the awful clothes she was sometimes given to wear. Sladen had so much joy and success to come, but watching her can still hurt sometimes, now that she's gone too soon.
And Jon's gone, and Caroline, and Nicholas, and Roger, and Ian, and Mary. But the magic they weaved while in Doctor Who is captured forever, like lightning in a bottle, and they will never be forgotten or unloved, not while Doctor Who fans still live and breath.
So what were my favourite stories of the decade? My favourite story of the 1970s (statistically by points average) turns out to be my favourite Doctor Who story so far overall: Horror of Fang Rock. I didn't expect that when I sat down to start this marathon, just as I didn't expect The Tomb of the Cybermen to turn out to be my favourite 1960s story. But this is all based upon how I score the episode out of 10 on the day that I watch it, in the context of the episode that went before and how I feel the programme was doing generally at that time. I'd still rather sit down and watch something from Season 13 than Season 14 or 15, for fun, but there's no denying that I think Horror of Fang Rock is as close to perfect Doctor Who as it's possible to get. Similarly, I acknowledge that The Caves of Androzani is a masterpiece, but I'd much rather sit down and watch something carefree and fun like The Awakening.
My Top 10 is dominated by Tom Baker stories, principally because I prefer his Doctor and think the stories (especially the ones featured) are more effective than most of Pertwee's. For me, the dark, gothic mystery of Seasons 13 and 14 are 1970s Doctor Who, and its lead actor, at its height. The Third Doctor gets four stories in the Top 10, from all over the era - the first season, the middle season and the last season. There's no real common factor in why I like these stories, I think they're just good stories well told, or at the very least, OK stories very well made. Inferno is one of the finest examples of British science-fiction television, not just Doctor Who, while Death to the Daleks is Terry Nation's unique and irresistible blend of space adventure given a spooky twist.
= 6. Spearhead from Space
= 6. Death to the Daleks
= 6. The Ark in Space
9. Inferno
= 10. The Sea Devils
= 10. Genesis of the Daleks
But what about the bottom of the 1970s barrel? There are some stories in this decade which break my cardinal rule, which is that if nothing else, Doctor Who should always be entertaining, never dull. There aren't many that break that rule, but there are a fair few which fall short of entertaining well, or convincingly, or consistently. It's often that the story's poorly written too. For instance, there are plenty of reasons to enjoy Frontier in Space, but when you take a step back, 75% of it is people getting locked up and escaping. It might be well acted or designed while they're doing it, but it's still not going anywhere very fast, and fails to meet its considerable potential. And then there's eye-wateringly boring fare like The Monster of Peladon, which is like watching brown paint dry in a darkened room. And that, for me, is unforgivable.
Here are my least favourite serials of the 70s, with number 1 being my worst:
= 4. The Time Monster
= 4. Frontier in Space
= 4. Underworld
8. The Mutants
= 9. The Three Doctors
= 9. The Sun Makers
There are surprises in there. I never expected to find The Hand of Fear so tedious, or The Three Doctors so poor. I love the female Eldrad and I love Patrick Troughton, but they can't save the stories as a whole for me. I'm also surprised to see The Sun Makers score so low, but when I actually watched it properly, contextually, critically, I just didn't think it was very good. Season 15 is definitely the nadir of 1970s Doctor Who, despite including my favourite story ever. Weird, huh? But then, that's the beauty of Doctor Who. One week you get an all-time classic, the next you get a stinker. But we just move on to the next, and the next, and for that we must be grateful.
And so I stand on the brink of Season 18, a brand new era for Doctor Who, a transition between the 1970s and the real 1980s. The Fourth Doctor would undergo another change to his character in this final season, one I imagine is quite jarring after the frivolity of Season 17. It took me 18 months to wade through the 1960s (March 2017 to September 2018), and it's taken me an exhausting two years and two months to get through the 1970s (October 2018 to November 2020). It's taken longer than it should have due to some protracted pauses when Real Life got in the way, but the 1980s will hopefully be a little easier. There are fewer episodes, but conversely there's probably a lot more to write about: three new Doctors, countless companions, and some very interesting and contrasting approaches to the show.
Exciting, hey? Bring on the Foamasi!
~ Steve, December 2020
PS... A total of 18 episodes shown in the 1970s scored 10/10 from me. Those episodes were: Spearhead from Space 3, Doctor Who and the Silurians 3, Inferno 3, The Claws of Axos 1, The Green Death 6, Invasion [of the Dinosaurs] 1, Invasion of the Dinosaurs 3, Death to the Daleks 1, Genesis of the Daleks 1, Terror of the Zygons 1 & 2, Pyramids of Mars 1 & 2, The Seeds of Doom 2, The Robots of Death 2 and Horror of Fang Rock 1, 2 & 3. The Williams era never quite regained the glory of that lighthouse adventure (it was pretty much a Hinchcliffe story anyway).
And the worst? I hadn't scored an episode of Doctor Who as low as 1/10 in the 1960s, but the 1970s certainly took me there. Only one episode scored that poorly, The Monster of Peladon 2, which makes it officially my worst episode ever (thus far!). There were nine episodes scoring a paltry 2/10. Those episodes were: The Mutants 5 & 6, The Time Monster 4, Frontier in Space 2, The Monster of Peladon 5, Underworld 2 & 4, The Invasion of Time 6 and The Power of Kroll 3.
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