HomeTVRevisiting Colin Baker's era of 'Doctor Who'

Revisiting Colin Baker’s era of ‘Doctor Who’

The Doctor takes far too long to get into the story

This is a consequence of the previous point. Look how long the Doctor spends messing about in the TARDIS in ‘Vengeance on Varos’ and ‘Timelash’ before he arrives in the story. In the highly-rated ‘Varos’, all that we really need to know is that the Doctor needs a rare mineral for his TARDIS. Unlike the Doctor faking a need for mercury for his fluid link in order to get to the Dalek city in the show’s earliest days, the Sixth Doctor instead takes to sulking in the TARDIS for half an episode and behaving like a teenager. In ‘Timelash’, the Doctor and Peri dig out seat belts in order to navigate a kontron tunnel in a laughably bad and horribly drawn-out sequence. In the most highly-rated of Colin Baker’s stories, ‘Revelation of the Daleks’, the Doctor and Peri spend the first half of the story simply getting to where the action is taking place. Apart from rolling around in the snow with a mutant, they don’t even meet any other characters. It’s almost inexcusable to sideline the Doctor in this way, and certainly wouldn’t have happened with a stronger leading actor. It is indicative of tensions behind the scenes. Eric Saward, the writer for that serial, who was also the script editor at the time, later spectacularly fell out with Colin Baker and has said on record that he did not rate his performance.

Greg Jameson
Greg Jameson
Book editor, with an interest in cult TV.

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