The show is humbled from Season 23
For the first time since the 1970s, there are no 16mm film elements for location filming in Colin’s second full season. Videotape automatically gives the programme a cheaper appearance. Not only that, but we’re now down to a very short season of only fourteen episodes. For some perspective, there are 46 episodes in William Hartnell’s first season. That’s over three times more ‘Doctor Who’ than the Trial season, and more in one year than Colin Baker would ever record. It ends up feeling like Groundhog Day given how many of the episodes end with a crash-zoom into Colin Baker’s face. There was an opportunity during the eighteen-month hiatus between 1985 and 1986 to address mistakes and set a new course. But even the Doctor’s garish costume is carried over, and expensively re-tailored in order to fit the leading man, who had added a fair amount of timber in the intervening months. This is not a show heading in the right direction.
