(Words by Chris Heasman, Richard Hughes, Kitkat MacAthley and Tim Kennington)



(CH)

Doctor Who’s a funny old thing. And by ‘funny old’, I do, of course, mean ‘very often completely goddamn awful’. Amongst all the regenerations and Daleks and Cybermen and sci-fi and spaceships and time travel and everything, there is an undeniable, inexplicable, unpredictable void space of total shit. Some stories, of course, are beautiful and funny and brilliant, but others are so very much not. These episodes, in particular, are not. They are beyond not. They are on the end of the spectrum that has far surpassed not. They are a triumph of woe. They are the episodes they show to Guantanamo detainees on a daily basis. They are, frankly, what we have watched so you don’t have to. They are, for the first time in our short history of reviewing things whilst drunk, something that we have had to be drunk to be able to endure. Do not underestimate what we have been through for this. Do not underestimate out plight. Four of us have endured these episodes – four writers who have given their evening and their sanity for the sake of your enjoyment. Appreciate our sacrifice. We shall not grow old, as you that are left grow old. Age shall not weary us, nor the years condemn. Let’s get started.

—

THE TWIN DILEMMA

(RH)

Right. Well. I might as well admit that I am something of a Dr Who fan, and that this endeavour was largely devised by me. And funnily enough, I only regret it slightly. The Twin Dilemma is a notoriously bad story – but in the grand landscape of classic Who, it’s actually not too distinct from the stories that surround it. I may already be a fan (and slightly drunk), but the biggest flaws in this story actually come from overall designs and ideas; not the minutiae of the story. Yes it’s slow, confusing, drawn out, and often boring – but that was serial television in the eighties – compared to now. What makes this story particularly bad is the idea that the Doctor should be unlikeable. No, scratch that, it’s the way that idea is executed. Which is sporadically and poorly. One moment he’s utterly unlikeable, trying to murder his companion – and the next he’s as human as your dad. It’s only at the conclusion of the entire story (i.e., after about 2 hours) that he finally tells us ‘I’m an alien… I am The Doctor. Whether you like it or not’. And if you have to distil it, that’s the problem – the ‘plot’ (and particularly the stretching out if) gets in the way of what should be most important here, and what could have been a fantastic and interesting direction for the series – just what on earth has happened to the Doctor?

—

(TK)

I’m not a master script writer, but I can tell you one thing. It is not a good idea to reveal the plot 75% of the way through the story. I had watched essentially 90 minutes of silver people with feathers glues to their face argue with a sleeping bag before we found out WHY this shit is happening… and you know what? I’m still not entirely sure. So instead of focusing on the plot (as three bloody episodes go by when we’re just expected to roll with it) let us instead look at the excellent, excellent costumes and the needless complications. The story keeps adding stuff – adding other aliens, adding that guy from Pirates of the Caribbean, adding the slowest gun fight in history and yet – is it interesting? No. No it is not.

I did like Colin Baker though – he had a nice tone of voice and a pompous face. I can relate to that. But the villains and narrative are just the worst. This episode left me as moved as the bad guy’s face.

—

(KM)

I’m undercover. I’m in hiding; deeper down the rabbit hole than Neo with a JCB digger and a rucksack full of dynamite. I’ve been allowed into the hallowed sanctum of the uber geek. Actually I’m not being entirely honest here. I am an uber geek myself of sorts; my knowledge of Star Wars and Xena Warrior Princess could probably rival that of the average ComicCon tourist. But this is unknown territory for me.

I date a Whovian, so my knowledge of The Dr Who universe is not entirely civilian, but I’m not even approaching a ‘fan’. I know Tom Baker wore a long scarf. And Billie Piper was in it for a bit. That’s about as far as it goes. So half an hour into the first of three ‘bad’ episodes I’m as lost as an English stag party in the Egyptology section of the Louvre. Although I get the impression we all are. There is literally no plot. Zero plot. The Doctor has just regenerated, but then spends the first 40 mins of his incarnation finding himself a new wardrobe, settling at last on a jacket consisting entirely of rainbow vomit. There’s some twins with a distracting speech impediment who are good at equations (or at least filling in blocks of colour on a screen). There’s a man – the apparent super villain – a giant, mutant slug dressed up like a limb-repressed giant grey bumble bee. There’s a companion of sorts, Peri (short for…Don Perignion or something else made up) whose sole purpose seems to be to scowl, moan, wear short skirts, get strangled, have an attractive cleavage and haircut, and then smile coquettishly when the Doctor unsurprisingly triumphs. 80s girl power right there! The strangling and short shrift the Doctor gives young Peri apparently made him a dislikeable Doctor, though I can’t help feeling he’s the only one worth feeling anything about, good or bad. At least Baker is having FUN, whereas watching every other actor in this three episode arc is like watching a march of people waiting to die by firing squad. Or who have no clue where they are. Appropriately enough.

My overwhelming memories from the whole experience are of mind-controlling wrist-Haribos, shaking cardboard sets, disinterested acting, no peril whatsoever and green embolism-causing light effects. I hope it’s actually as bad as I think it is because otherwise I’ll have to start feigning interest in my boyfriend’s obsession. Which doesn’t sound like the sort of thing women do…

—

(CH)

I’d like to play Devil’s Advocate, here. I’d like to be the one who writes a little lovely paragraph about how great this episode actually is – how the acting is actually kinda great in an ironic sort of way, or how the plot is actually kinda great in an ironic sort of way, or how the show was really making progress in an ironic sort of way, but the simple fact is that no matter how much irony I can muster, there is simply no way to excuse The Twin Dilemma. It is the bowel cancer of Doctor Who episodes. Seriously. There’s nothing more that I can add to what has already been said. It is an abomination against television. It is what lurks in the dark and prowls the inner recesses of our hearts, preying on the shadows of the world and feeding from the sorrow in our minds. The Twin Dilemma is a war crime. It is something from which we shall never be set free. It is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. It is the night. Fear for we who have seen it. Fear for our stars.

Right. Next one. Timelash. Serious stage actors being forced to play lizard mutant people.

—

TIMELASH

(TK)

GUYS! There is an Easter Egg in the Timelash DVD which is just a giant Jimmy Savile face.

This is weird

Ok – so this is a much better episode. Borat is half a lizard and he is making some people go to war with some worms. Meanwhile there is some magical tinsel which takes you back to 1885 where H G Wells is doing a séance. So, there we go, some pretty heavy shit to deal with – and I can tell you this – this is a good 90 minutes of TV. Well… good isn’t the right word… but it is enjoyable.

All the special effects are there – great make up, squeaky voiced blue people with cartoon hair, worm puppets, space tinsel and skeletons bopping around. You couldn’t ask for anything more…. Not a thing.

Fun for all the family I think. And you get to see H G Wells getting all of his ideas for The Time Machine.

Ooooh – there are Morlocks (well one Morlock) and though it can’t move its body it has a great wobbling head.

It is basically shit. But fun. A fun shit.

—

(RH)

Right. First off, he isn’t half a lizard – he’s a genetic mutation. OK? Let’s please just be clear about that before Tim leads you all astray.

Oh for goodness sake, this is all pants, there’s no two ways about it – but my goodness it’s more enjoyable than The Twin Dilemma. If you want any kind of real analysis (and you’re going to get it whether you do or not), the problem with Dr Who in the mid-eighties was that it was trying to work on the same format as Dr Who had (more or less) always done… So whoever the writer, whatever the scenario, whatever the planet and/or time, you tended to end up with an archaic white, Western-culture based society, most often ruled by a malevolent dictator of some sort.. who most often hid his identity in some way from the common populace.

However, despite conforming to this, Timelash does actually manage to be a fun romp – simply because it’s more to the point. The Twin Dilemma is a 45 minute story stretched painfully out over 100 minutes – but this is silly camp nonsense with far fewer pretensions – and when drunk, it certainly entertains. And Paul Darrow…

He was playing Tekker as Richard III! It’s worth watching for him alone.

—

(KM)

Right, by comparison to the preceding episode can I just say can I say we’ve just seen Citizen bloody Kane. Citizen Kane with a melted-face-mutant-lizard, H.G. Wells and a vortex of tinsel and blue foam.

I doubt it needs explaining that we’re still in the realms of toe-curlingly bad television. Laugh out loud, filmed in the garden shed, costumes made out of literal tinfoil, bad television. It had to be repeatedly pointed out that THIS IS THE BBC!! Star Wars was made earlier than this (and probably for less money) to a higher standard.

What I will grant is that the actors have come on immeasurably. Or at least they’ve come to terms with the fact that eating the scenery is going to give them all the actorly nutrients they need to help them through the 1.5 hour stretch. Those actors who truly went for chewing the cardboard and Styrofoam we fell in love with (including the poor actor lumbered with portraying a hapless H.G.Wells – leave him alone boys) whereas poor Peri was again confined to screaming pointlessly in a corner with a lizard glove puppet roaring at her for all of 40 minutes. There was still so little (and yet so much!) plot that none of us knew what was going on, but by now the chief entertainment – at least for me – was the geekish interjections that keep cropping up at every available moment. The debate between Poncho and Rich on Who-universe rules and tropes is raging as loudly as Etna and is a beautiful distraction from Peri’s shoulder pads and the gratingly outdated sexisms of saving the universe being ‘a man’s work’.

Basically we’ve just watched The Last Crusade, Jurassic Park and The Time Machine on a budget. A plastic-flowered, silver-tinseled, polystyrene budget.

—

(CH)

Peri’s pretty fucking hot and, as far as I’m aware, Colin Baker’s a lovely guy. Apart from that, Jesus Christ: Timelash, The Twin Dilemma, a vicious stabbing in Doncaster – it’s all the same to me. One more to go. Time and the Rani, now. Radagast the Brown as the Doctor as Radagast the Brown. Welcome to the event horizon. Welcome to hell.

—

TIME AND THE RANI

(TK)

I AM NOT ALLOWED to review this episode because I have been largely asleep and I am now leabing early to go t osleep…. But that hardly bodes well for this episode does it? Hardly leaving me gripped…

Sylvestor McCoy is excellent – I like him and I also got his autograph when I was young. True fact. He Is however lagely been doing DIY for the Rani, who happens to have a perfect identical Bonnie Langford costume. Bonnie Langford is running around a quarry in her puffy shirt.

Maybe I slept through all th eplot bits. Maybe ey! But Time and The Rani is not for me

—

(KM)

I’ve disappeared into the deepest darkest realms of the geek. Rich and Ponch are arguing about umbrellas. And bow ties. And I’m watching giant cute/scary multi-eyed Mogwai ‘baddie aliens’ fight yellow-scaled, blonde dreadlocked ‘goodie aliens’. Why? I STILL DON’T KNOW!! I haven’t discerned any more in terms of plot from this episode than anything that came before it. There’s a giant brain. There’s a companion with even bigger shoulder pads and a really squeaky voice. I have literally zero idea what’s going on, and the four musketeers have been reduced to three. Tim has run away. And my boyfriend has become a mathematician. He keeps shouting numbers at me. “Eight! Remember when Eight…? And Four and Sarah Jane! Remember how One, Two and Three hated each other?”

I’m getting through by concentrating on Sylvester McCoy. Sylvester McCoy is wonderful; a playful, joyful, promising treat. His utter delight in the role is pretty much the only thing keeping me holding on as the tinsel special effects from last season come back to haunt us like the twins from the Overlook Hotel. As alien A runs away from alien B with all the peril of a Kellogs commercial I am honestly compelled by McCoy’s sparkle and playfulness.

Even while I’m typing the argument behind me rages. “Baker! McCoy! Eccleston! Scarfs! Fezzes! The other Baker!! Conventions!!! Let’s go to a convention…”

I’m deep down the geek hole, people. Send pizza… Please..?

—

(RH)

SO here we are. This story has sent at least one of our party to bed, and others to sending desperate SOS signals… Honestly though, it’s not as bad as some might think. Yes it’s camp, silly, lazy, pathetic and frankly odd – but it’s also actually quite a fitting debut for the Seventh Doctor, who in the end, despite all odds, turned out to be just fantastic.

What’s sad is that despite all this, despite all the behind-the-scenes wrangling, the disputes, the firing and recasting, the series was cancelled for good three years later… but the past cannot be undone, and here we are, drunk and undone at 1 in the morning, watching what is essentially kitsch dross and trying (in my case) to justify and e-assess it in context of the series at large.

I love Dr Who, and I think that’s probably clear by now (God, I’d give anything for those rumoured found missing episodes to be announced and released) – but there’s only so much defence that can be given for the worst of classic Who. It’s bad. By modern standards – and even by contemporary ones. But what these stories do is continue the mythology; and with a show like this one, that mythology is so rich, so fertile, so original – that even the worst of stories can offers glimmers of insight to the bizarre and fantastic idea of an incredible benevolent alien, indestructible and yet so vulnerable, changing everything when he has to – apart from himself. Just as well we got drunk, really.