MovieChat Forums > Doctor Who (1963) Discussion > Colin Baker: wrong time, wrong place?

Colin Baker: wrong time, wrong place?


Does anyone get the feeling that if Colin took on the role of The Doctor at a time when Michael Grade was not in charge of BBC1 he would had have a much longer run?

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Nice fellow, but I'm just not sure he was right for the role. And you can't blame it all on that *beep* costume, despite how tempting that might be.

I think someone like Robert Hardy would have brought off the role of the antisocial sixth Doctor much better.

ant-mac

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Not leading man material. None of JNT's Doctors were.

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He may have been cast because he'd be good in panto.

stfu about fking avatars already.

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[deleted]

Edward Tudour pole would have made a brilliant doctor.

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The BBc were all set to cancel the show after Tom's last season but they were desperate for a starring vehicle for Davison. JNT probably tried to kill two birds with one stone bu casting him.

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He was a big lump with a smug face and a squeaky voice, and he delivered each of his lines as if he expected applause. Didn't help.

stfu about fking avatars already.

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Not with that introductory story ending the season and the hideous outfit(the cat badge was a nice touch from Colin Baker though.) He is dressed awful, has a nasty character to his Doctor, and his early stories had a dark and oppressive tone that would put off many a department head. So I think Michael Grade wouldn't have been the only one upset about the new direction John Nathan Turner wanted. Would he have lasted longer though? I guess he might, but there would still have been more oversight in the show.

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What the hell, did Baker actually say that about Capaldi and every six Doctors? I seriously doubt Capaldi even watched Colin Baker's era, he was a fan of the Pertwee era.

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Sad to see so many negative responses to Colin's Doctor. I guess he'll always be the black sheep of the Doctors.

I can't say if Colin would have been ridiculously popular or not, but the following facts need to be taken into consideration when looking at how his Doctor failed.

1/ History is written by the winners: In this case sadly the winners are the people who wanted Who finished. The people at the BBC, Jonathan Powell, Michael Grade have through things like Room 101 have been able to present their image of "DW finished because it was crap and Colin was awful" over the years. Sadly because JNT is dead and also because many fans (like the unprofessional Restoration team who have never presented any kind of tribute to JNT which is shameful) still hate JNT. They are only to happy to go along with Grade and Powell's narrative and pin all the blame on JNT. Added to that finally Grade and Powell's story is an easier one for hack journalists to play up. A show finished because it was crap.

Thus it becomes received wisdom that Colin's Doctor was an utter failure from start to finish.

The truth of the matter is different. Colin's first season was popular with viewers. It averaged out with 7 million viewers and decent audience appreciation scores. Now that's not Dalekmania levels of popularity but at the same time its perfectly resepectable. Particularly for an old series. Also on top of that the show was still popular abroad and very well respected among the public and the industry.

When Grade took it off the air it was solely down to his own personal dislike. The shows cancellation made front page news, and Grade was routinely mocked on tv, with one presenter even saying she'd choke him and that every actor in the country wants to be in DW.

It was only after the 18 month hiatus, when it returned with no advertising, in a different time slot, and opposite the A-Team, a new, heavily promoted show that Who's viewing figures dropped. Even then though I might add that they still weren't as low as Tom Baker or William Hartnell or Patrick Troughton's last seasons were! Colin was made the fall guy however and canned, but even then it took another 3 years opposite Coronation Street, no advertising and the prices of its stories being raised abroad to the point where no one could afford them before the Beeb dared to try and finish it again.

Thus regardless of anything else I don't think that you can say that Colin or Sylvester for that matter, or yes even JNT were responsible for the shows cancellation. The knives were out for it, and TBH I doubt that many other producers or actors would have been as devoted to a show that the Beeb wanted finished for as long.

2/ The reason he was cast is not as bad as people make out: People often like to make out that Colin only got cast because he was entertaining at a wedding. But that's not fair.

To start with the Doctor is a personality part. You need someone who is quite eccentric in real life and will make the role their own. However obviously you need to make sure said person can act too.

Now in Colin's case JNT obviously knew he could act. Not only was Colin a big star, but he had worked with JNT before. Thus when JNT saw that he was also a larger than life presence he decided to cast him.

This is actually no different than to how Tom Baker was cast. Barry Letts met with him and based on Tom's crazy personality said to himself "this man would be an exceptional Doctor just as long as he can act, I need to know he can act" and then went to see him in a Ray Harryhausen movie. After that he was confident in his acting abilities and cast him. In JNT's case it was the same thing except that JNT knew Colin could act before hand.

3/ His ideas for the Doctor weren't so radical: Colin wanted to make the Doctor a bit darker and edgier, but soften him up over time. We'd see the same thing replicated in Eccelston's Doctor and it proved to be successful. Obviously in Colin's case they went to far, but still I don't think it was a bad idea in theory. I think that had they been given a proper second series instead of Trial and smoothed things out then Colin's Doctor would have been perfectly likable. He already IMO had calmed down and settled in by his third or so story.

4/ His comments about Capaldi were a joke: The whole every six Doctors they get it right thing was just a little joke like his "technically I'm still the Doctor as I never did my regeneration scene" I will admit he does need to get some new jokes, but he's hardly the first celeb to tell the same stories, jokes at conventions all the time. Ever seen an interview with Paul McCartney? My god! That guy rehashes the same stories about John all the time LOL.

Still anyway Colin obviously didn't mean any of it (Patrick Troughton was his favourite for starters and doesn't fall into the every 6 Doctors rule) Colin also didn't initially compare his Doctor to Capaldi's. Plenty of other people did and when it was brought up to him he again jokingly said that he's not sure if Capaldi would be delighted or utterly horrified to be compared to him.

5/ JNT's worst excesses were kept for him: I do defend JNT. By and large I think he is an unsung hero, but at the same time its true that he did do a lot of sh!t as well. By Colin's time I think he was at his most self indulgent. The success of the Davison era, the fact that he had managed to make Who popular like never before around the world (particularly in America where it had always struggled to find an audience) the adoration from the fans went to his head in Colin's time and by all accounts he became more difficult to work with and more demanding.

Thus he began to enforce his way on people which did hurt Colin, like the costume. However after the cancellation crisis and Saward stabbing him in the back, JNT I think got a bit of a shock and calmed down for McCoy's era. Davison got a young, enthusiastic JNT, McCoy a more careful, experienced JNT, but Colin got him right in the middle of his worst phase.

Thus all of these factors I think its fair to say would have hindered any Doctor. Had Colin come at another point could he have been successful? Yes I think so, but then who knows, who nose?

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1/ History is written by the winners: In this case sadly the winners are the people who wanted Who finished. The people at the BBC, Jonathan Powell, Michael Grade have through things like Room 101 have been able to present their image of "DW finished because it was crap and Colin was awful" over the years.


'History written by the winners' is a bit of a double-edged point in this case though, considering when JNT first took over the show, he did much to encourage the perception that his predecessor Graham Williams had been the worst producer, and now he was going to fix the show. Because of this, no-one had a kind word for the Williams era, and by contrast JNT was treated as a saviour, beyond reproach. And arguably because of this perception, a multitude of initial sins on JNT's part went forgiven or overlooked, until finally the breaking point was reached and the show's fate was sealed. Basically when fandom turned against JNT and decried him just like he had Williams, it was almost Karmic.

Sadly because JNT is dead and also because many fans (like the unprofessional Restoration team who have never presented any kind of tribute to JNT which is shameful) still hate JNT. They are only to happy to go along with Grade and Powell's narrative and pin all the blame on JNT.


I think its a bit much to say that fans 'hate' JNT. I can't say I hated the man because I never knew or met him. I certainly never wished ill on him. And from all accounts he was a difficult man to dislike if you fell under his mastery of the charm offensive.

But as a producer of Doctor Who, and in regards to behind the scenes, I find him to be a source of unending frustration, and there's certainly incidents in which his behavior to other creative talents struck me as downright appalling. At the same time a part of me feels an odd, altruistic sadness for the man at how he could so often be his worst enemy, and that many things didn't work out for him in the end despite some of the many things he should've had going for him.

There are fans who defend JNT just as much as condemn him. I just personally don't think that the arguments made in defence of him anywhere near as strong or compelling as those that are critical. Infact a lot of the defences of him strike me as at best insipid pleas for polite praise with lots of shaming language, and at worst seem downright cultish. The better argument for me wins out, and I do firmly believe if there was a strong case in defence of JNT's decision, either the Restoration Team would invoke it, or their many fan critics would.

Thus it becomes received wisdom that Colin's Doctor was an utter failure from start to finish.


On TV perhaps. But by and large the consensus among Big Finish listeners is that his Doctor's audios are the most highly rated of all four (well, all seven now that Tom, Hurt and Tennant have done audios too).

It was only after the 18 month hiatus, when it returned with no advertising, in a different time slot, and opposite the A-Team, a new, heavily promoted show that Who's viewing figures dropped.


I still think that's testament to how little viewer loyalty there was to the show. I think if the show had gone out strong with the previous season, then the show's return would've been seen as an unmissable event. Just like when Red Dwarf 6 ended on a superb cliffhanger, before a three years hiatus. I think most viewers wouldn't have missed the first new episode for the world.

The evidence of the ratings for Trial demonstrates otherwise.

Even then though I might add that they still weren't as low as Tom Baker or William Hartnell or Patrick Troughton's last seasons were!


Usually in those previous instances, when the talk of whether to continue or end the series came up, it usually became a case where ultimately it was decided that they didn't have or couldn't provide anything worthy to replace it with.

The problem as I see it is, with Colin's run, and also to a degree with Davison in Warriors of the Deep, what JNT and Saward had done to the show was make it one that now outright defied the audience to look elsewhere to find a better hero, which they could now find in abundance.

Doctor Who was no longer irreplaceable. It had destroyed what had made it that.

3/ His ideas for the Doctor weren't so radical: Colin wanted to make the Doctor a bit darker and edgier, but soften him up over time. We'd see the same thing replicated in Eccelston's Doctor and it proved to be successful. Obviously in Colin's case they went to far, but still I don't think it was a bad idea in theory.


The damage was done though. All The Twin Dilemma, Season 22 and the Trial arc served to do was forever needlessly confuse the issue of if or why the viewer should be rooting for this Doctor. Are they supposed to be delighting in his victories or keeping count of his worst actions and failures (to the point where Trial of a Time Lord makes its entire plot point about this)?

It wasn't a bad idea in theory to give the Doctor shadier nuances again. Davison's Doctor had been too straight laced and lily white, and Colin was a fan who remembered a time when the Doctor was more of a fascinating rogue, and more of a challenge to guess the motives of. But the way they tried to recreate that just felt artificial and repellent. Of all the Doctors that JNT cast, I'd say Colin was potentially the most believably formidable. But the way he was written seemed to pitch him as more of a snarling bully than a furious champion of the underdog. So what was on screen with him and Peri just seemed like unappealing nervous energy.

Whereas say in Genesis of the Daleks, seeing Sarah urge the Thals not to blow the charges as she sees Tom Baker's Doctor fleeing toward them is exciting, if you put Peri and Colin in this scenario, you find yourself uncomfortably questioning why Peri's so compelled to protect and preserve her own abusive situation?

Likewise compare Trial of a Time Lord to The War Games. In Troughton's brief trial, it's laid out simply that the Time Lords don't believe in interfering and helping those in need, and the Doctor does. We get behind him, and even his jurors seem almost persuaded. In Trial of a Time Lord this old discussion is dragged out needlessly until there's no such simplicity of what the Doctor is for. He's condemned as a liability, and his actions and childish rebuttals do little to convince us they're wrong about him.

I just think that completely compromises the entertainment of the show, the enjoyment of the show, and the Doctor's victories, and the experience as a whole.

Paul McGann IS the War Doctor in my fic
http://dalekwars.blogspot.co.uk/

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I agree with everything burun100 said. He got it perfectly what happened. Fans as well as the media tend to rely on their own bias against the JNT era. burun100 understanding of this era is more reasonable and accurate than all these conspiracies and wild theories such as Warriors of the Deep irreversibly destroying the Doctor's character.

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Fans as well as the media tend to rely on their own bias against the JNT era.


You say that like it's somehow not on the JNT era itself to win over its viewers. Surely the whole point of the show is to entertain and get people behind it.

If there's a fan 'bias' against the era, then that's a testament to the failures of the TV show itself in not winning those viewers over.

all these conspiracies and wild theories such as Warriors of the Deep irreversibly destroying the Doctor's character.


I don't see any conspiracy there. It's right there in the open that the final scene in which the Doctor fails is deliberately an iconic, defining moment. The Doctor is now being defined by his failure by the makers.

All the effort that usually goes into showing the Doctor well in iconic moments of champhood have been directed instead at showing the opposite.

And yes it changed everything because it meant the pendulum had to be swung back the other way, from the Doctor being an impotent pacifist to a callous thug, because the character couldn't continue otherwise.

Then inevitably and consequently the show got in trouble.

Paul McGann IS the War Doctor in my fic
http://dalekwars.blogspot.co.uk/

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I still think that's testament to how little viewer loyalty there was to the show. I think if the show had gone out strong with the previous season, then the show's return would've been seen as an unmissable event. Just like when Red Dwarf 6 ended on a superb cliffhanger, before a three years hiatus. I think most viewers wouldn't have missed the first new episode for the world.

The evidence of the ratings for Trial demonstrates otherwise.


I'm sorry but that's not fair. Red Dwarf is not the same as DW. Red Dwarf is a niche show. The highest it ever got was 8 million. Doctor Who used to average more than that for every episode including during the JNT era.

Thus good viewers for Red Dwarf season 7 probably wouldn't have been sufficient for DW. For a popular mainstream show it has to maintain a reasonably high viewership. Also an 18 month hiatus would dent any shows viewership. The star of the first season of Babylon 5 is often seen as a hero of the show because he was suffering from schizophrenia and they offered to put the show on hiatus for a few months until he got better. He said that if they did that it would really struggle to find an audience again so he persevered through the difficult times.

Thus I don't see how DW is any different.

Also its worth mentioning that the last story of Colin's first season Revelation of the Daleks is often regarded as one of the greatest DW stories ever made. It was even voted the 11th greatest in the 2003 40th anniversary poll.

Usually in those previous instances, when the talk of whether to continue or end the series came up, it usually became a case where ultimately it was decided that they didn't have or couldn't provide anything worthy to replace it with.

The problem as I see it is, with Colin's run, and also to a degree with Davison in Warriors of the Deep, what JNT and Saward had done to the show was make it one that now outright defied the audience to look elsewhere to find a better hero, which they could now find in abundance.

Doctor Who was no longer irreplaceable. It had destroyed what had made it that.


Sorry but that is not true. To start with Michael Grade said he hated the show as far back as the Baker era. There was an interview with him at that time where he said that if he were in charge of the BBC he would cancel it outright. The people who ran the BBC hated Sci Fi in general, hence why all Sci Fi on that channel vanished for 10 years. The makers of Red Dwarf were even advised by Paul Jackson to play it up as a comedy rather than Sci Fi as the heads of the BBC HATED Sci Fi.

Thus it was obvious that in contrast to the 60's and the 70's the heads of the Beeb wanted to finish it.

At the end of the Hartnell and the Troughton era viewers dropped to 3 million for some episodes. For the 60's when there are only two channels and the shows in a good timeslot and being promoted. That's utterly pathetic! Similarly in the early 80's during Tom Bakers last season the shows viewers dropped to 4 million.

No way can anybody say that in the mid 80's in Colin's first season where the viewers where over 7 million on average and there were more channels and it was the most popular British show abroad did it deserve cancellation compared to 3 million when there were only two channels. It was a completely unprofessional decision.

Also your other point about before they thought the show was irreplaceable doesn't apply as ultimately if the Beeb REALLY cared about the show in the mid 80's (when again its viewers weren't even a problem) they could have replaced the entire production team and put more money into it and so on.

Eric Saward even said that he was shocked he and the others were asked back after the cancellation crisis as it was unheard of to basically cancel a show and then bring it back with the SAME team and not give them any hint on how to improve the show LOL.

I do firmly believe if there was a strong case in defence of JNT's decision, either the Restoration Team would invoke it, or their many fan critics would.


Sorry but the Restoration Team are biased and one sided. You never get to see Colin defend JNT for instance on their docu's. Its only ever negative things he's allowed to say about the costume for instance.

Take a look at this quote from Colin and tell me if you have EVER seen anything like it on the Docus.

Well I have extremely strong opinions about that, I feel very very sympathetic towards John because what he’s done for the programme is ten times what anyone else has done for it. There’s a tiny, tiny coterie of fans who are very frustrated because they’ve never been producer of the programme, they’re mainly in Britain, but there are two or three that I could name but won’t, in the UK, who have made it their lifetime job to do everything they can to sabotage John Nathan-Turner, and I think it’s miserable, petty, ghastly behaviour and I think they’re worms that ought to be trodden into the ground. (laughs) Don’t mess around, Colin, tell them what you really think.

But John was the producer for a very long time, and he’s responsible for it being over in the US and he came over and marketed it, he always cared about the fans, he always made sure people like myself and Nicola came to conventions when our first inclinations were that we weren’t too sure about it. He persuaded people like Pat Troughton, who never wanted to talk about the programme, who found out he loved it! And John kept the programme on the air in Britain, he was the only person fighting for it. Witness the fact that now he’s been ousted, there’s nobody in the BBC who’s waving the flag.

But those same people are still campaigning to get rid of the little bit that John’s still doing, he’s working on the videos and they’ve orchestrated a sort of hate campaign based on his choice of videos now! It’s so stupid, and it’s all jealousy, simple jealousy. I think the right-minded fan… it’s like all vocal minorities, they can swamp the majority, which covers a wide range of opinions, I’m not saying that everyone agrees with everything John’s done, of course he’s made mistakes, I’ve made mistakes, you’ve made mistakes. But they’ve said ‘Doctor Who has become a pantomime’. One article said that once. I don’t see men dressed up as women, that’s pantomime, I don’t see terrible jokes, apart from mine, and that’s my choice, not John’s. John is a friend and for a while he shrugged it off but now it’s beginning to get to him. If some people want to make someone unhappy, that’s up to them, but I think the rest of us should make sure that’s not allowed to continue. I rest my case.


Also there should be a docu about him. He produced the show for 9 years. Philip Madoc who was in 4 stories gets one but no JNT? Its absurd. Eric Saward is controversial and he gets one. JNT is poorly served by the RT.

As Iank said the restoration team are a classic example of unprofessional fanboys not being objective and doing their job properly. See also New Who.

You say that like it's somehow not on the JNT era itself to win over its viewers. Surely the whole point of the show is to entertain and get people behind it.

If there's a fan 'bias' against the era, then that's a testament to the failures of the TV show itself in not winning those viewers over.


Except it did. Its viewers were consistently popular for all but its first year until it was torpedoed by the higher ups.

Again it took 5 years of sabotage until the JNT era got as low viewing figures as Patrick Troughton did in his last year, and even then that was in a poor timeslot and with no advertising!

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[deleted]

If you gave him the much trumpeted (by Colin) brilliant and fascinating "peeling of the banana" character story arc, with him making a journey from dis-likeable to likeable over the course of seven or more seasons...


You would still be left with the above, absolutely fatal and show-killing flaw.

Colin played it as if he was on stage.

Self-consciously and theatrically.

And nobody stopped him.


I don't think this theatricality would've been fatal if the show hadn't violently shaken off its theatrical roots when JNT took over and it became a much more philistine show.

I also think that to a degree the Doctor is an egotist, and that would've been fine also if the stories were more affirming of this quality, pitching him against enemies that weren't used to the self-willed and confident and placing that conflict central to the story, rather than the Peri and Colin bitching fest.

Paul McGann IS the War Doctor in my fic
http://dalekwars.blogspot.co.uk/

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And that was, I think, what doomed his era, even if everything else had been brilliant. 😞

The fact that nothing else WAS brilliant was, to my mind, just the dark icing on the cake of a doomed - by Colin's performance - era. 😞


I think for me the problem is it barely matters if it doomed the show or not. I think I'm comfortable with the show not being one that would last forever. There are however some places I'd be more comfortable with it ending than others in terms of neatness and closure. Ending on Season 14 would've been neat enough (or on Enlightenment if I were to be really generous to the early JNT era). Ending on The Five Dcotors would've left too many loose ends, and felt unfinished and unsatisfying.

I don't think I can confidently say that Colin's era got the show cancelled, or JNT's era as a whole got it canceled. I think the circumstances of JNT staying so long (which actually wasn't his fault) meant that when the cancellation crisis happened there was no-one else there who could be found to replace him.

I do think however that if you look at the era through the lense of what would bring casual viewers on-side with the show and its hero, JNT and his team did almost nothing right.

But it's still not the issue for me, and I suspect not for most of us. What doesn't matter is that it ended. What matters is it ended badly and disgracefully. If it ended at its peak it'd still be the show we loved, but it didn't and so it ended with heartache at seeing what the show had become, and that part of it absolutely can be blamed on JNT and his team. Not Grade or the BBC, or certainly not nearly as much.

Paul McGann IS the War Doctor in my fic
http://dalekwars.blogspot.co.uk/

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“I'm sorry but that's not fair. Red Dwarf is not the same as DW. Red Dwarf is a niche show. The highest it ever got was 8 million. Doctor Who used to average more than that for every episode including during the JNT era.
Thus good viewers for Red Dwarf season 7 probably wouldn't have been sufficient for DW. For a popular mainstream show it has to maintain a reasonably high viewership.”


I can’t say I agree that Red Dwarf was a niche show. I recall it as a series pretty much everyone knew about and had a wide appeal across the generations.

It might’ve been niche in its first two seasons, and it might’ve become niche since Series 6, but during the early to mid-90’s I distinctly remember it being a huge part of the zeitgeist, and franky I’d say it’s dated better and maintains a lot more substance than a lot of other lad’s comedy shows from that time.

Now I do recall that back in the late 90’s with Series 7 and 8, because it had been such a long hiatus, the BBC seemed aware that it might not immediately get the habitual ratings it used to, and so decided to have a repeat showing of each episode later in the week.

Obviously this wasn’t done for the Trial season, because the BBC wanted to promote the other shows Doctor Who had downsized for. But the huge tabloid scandal there’d been over the show’s cancellation should’ve ensured some surge of interest when it finally returned. That’s not something Red Dwarf really had on its side with Series 7 or 8.

The fact this didn’t happen, just suggests to me the rooster had come home to roost. People realized they weren’t behind the show and its hero like they used to be.


“Also an 18 month hiatus would dent any shows viewership. The star of the first season of Babylon 5 is often seen as a hero of the show because he was suffering from schizophrenia and they offered to put the show on hiatus for a few months until he got better. He said that if they did that it would really struggle to find an audience again so he persevered through the difficult times.”

But Doctor Who in the 80’s wasn’t early Babylon 5. It was a long-established show that everyone knew about. Yes a break in B5’s first season would’ve caused problems to viewership and interest because the show had barely established itself yet, and could ruin it all by standing the interested viewer up too early into the relationship.

Doctor Who was too familiar by that point to significantly pose the same problem.

However if you’re invoking the point that Colin Baker represented a new era, and like the first season’s star of B5 he needed time to ingratiate himself with the audience, then yes I agree the timing was unfortunate, but then so was the ‘plan’ to make his Doctor difficult at best for the audience to warm to.

The star of B5 stayed to not lose the audience’s good will. The creative decisions by JNT and Saward make it appear the show was determined to ruin viewer good will either way.

And I do firmly believe the low ratings of the Trial season are as testament to why that plan was a bad move, as to why the hiatus was a problem.

At the very least there’s a grey area between whether the problem was the time the show was off-air, or the time it was on-air and the Doctor was strangling Peri.

“Also its worth mentioning that the last story of Colin's first season Revelation of the Daleks is often regarded as one of the greatest DW stories ever made. It was even voted the 11th greatest in the 2003 40th anniversary poll.”

To fans like us, yes. To the general public I think they’d feel it was too off-beat, too reliant on the viewers’ knowledge of past Dalek stories, and too lacking in what they’d tuned in for: the Doctor and the Daleks.

But even as a highlight of Colin’s era, it’s an anomalous one for that era, and doesn’t quite represent the season as a whole. For them the bad stuff does. And yes admittedly that’s because the cancellation announcement happened around the time The Two Doctors’ final episode aired and Timelash was immediately next so those stood in the mind as why the show was losing people’s patience. But still Revelation would’ve seemed like a freak anomaly, rather than a return to glory (especially for those who remember the shocking gulf in quality from Caves to Twin Dilemma the year prior)

I must admit though, I do think if Doctor Who had ended there and then, then Revelation could’ve spawned one hell of an interesting New Adventures range.


“Sorry but that is not true. To start with Michael Grade said he hated the show as far back as the Baker era. There was an interview with him at that time where he said that if he were in charge of the BBC he would cancel it outright.”

I’ve no doubt he hated the show and wanted it gone even in its golden age. Whether he could’ve cancelled it back during Season 14 or 16 is another matter. I think at the time far too much was institutionally invested in having the show continue to fill that particular slot, and its staff of designers still kept in work to the schedule they were on, to risk complicating it like that.

The BBC in the 70’s knew the show got good ratings and was liked enough to justify taking more away from the budget in the knowledge people would still watch it out of nostalgic affection, and that it was a show they needed on, especially at the time because the BBC was suffering a financial crisis in the late 70’s. It needed all its old big guns.

If Grade was to cancel it then, he’d probably have faced a hell of a lot more blowback within the corporation. Maybe he’d have even known it beforehand and known not to be that stupid.


“The people who ran the BBC hated Sci Fi in general, hence why all Sci Fi on that channel vanished for 10 years. The makers of Red Dwarf were even advised by Paul Jackson to play it up as a comedy rather than Sci Fi as the heads of the BBC HATED Sci Fi.

Thus it was obvious that in contrast to the 60's and the 70's the heads of the Beeb wanted to finish it.”

But if they had ended it in the 70’s, it would’ve been a clear cut injustice.

Or maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe ending the show on Season 14, it’d be just like The Young Ones ending when it did. Immortalized as it was in a way that meant it was never really gone and we could be satisfied with what we had.

Maybe the worst thing about the 80’s and New Who as well was the feeling of the show being taken away a piece at a time.

The problem is Grade didn’t cancel it during Season 14. He cancelled it right during the mean-spirited excesses of the JNT/Saward period, and in that light was making a mean-spirited attack not on a beloved show, but an equally mean-spirited one. The case against the BBC then becomes their failure to see merit in stories like Warriors of the Deep and Twin Dilemma, at which point it’s all too easy to hand the winning argument over to Grade by default.


“At the end of the Hartnell and the Troughton era viewers dropped to 3 million for some episodes. For the 60's when there are only two channels and the shows in a good timeslot and being promoted. That's utterly pathetic!”

Whoah! Careful, you’re beginning to show a little Grade there.

I think the problem is partly that there wasn’t yet the fan lifestyle associated with the show back then that kept the flame as alive as in decades after. There was no DWM yet, the novelizations were in their infancy, and there was certainly no continuity index on the shelves.

Also at that point Dalekmania had ran its course, and the show and the BBC in general was behind the curve in terms of the turn to colour TV and the slickly edited, ITC shows, and stuff like The Prisoner.

This was something the BBC could remedy however, and indeed in 1970, they did, and the show’s ratings gradually returned to full health.

It wasn’t that easy in the mid-80’s, for reasons I’ll go into further down below.

“Similarly in the early 80's during Tom Bakers last season the shows viewers dropped to 4 million.”

Well I’ve always said Logopolis would’ve been the logical point to end it, and the ratings figures, coupled with Tom Baker handing in his notice are partly why it probably wouldn’t have seemed so controversial.

But, the BBC had already invested in a new producer to take the show ahead, and even went to the trouble of having Barry Letts drafted in as Exec producer. To go to all that trouble and then cancel the show in JNT’s first year would’ve been difficult to justify.

Add to that the fact that the BBC Saturday night viewing figures in 1980-81 were poor in general, and it becomes harder to justify penalising Doctor Who solely.

“No way can anybody say that in the mid 80's in Colin's first season where the viewers where over 7 million on average and there were more channels and it was the most popular British show abroad did it deserve cancellation compared to 3 million when there were only two channels.”

But by the same token, with that much riding on the show, that’s all the more reason it can’t afford to be spoiling that good will with something like Twin Dilemma.

The show had grown in popularity from that 3 million, yes. Grown exponentially.

But from 1979 to 1985 the show in Britain wasn’t growing, at all. There was a marked decrease in viewing figures. At their highest in Season 17 and 19, and then two million viewers disappear and they don’t come back.

In 1972, The Three Doctors did a lot to win back a huge chunk of the audience in droves. In 1983, The Five Doctors didn’t even do as well, ratings-wise as Time-Flight.

Yes it was doing well overseas where the franchise itself was a newly discovered treasure and something very refreshingly different to American TV, although I’d query whether this was on the strength of the Doctor Who, JNT and Saward were producing, or the older stuff.

But my belief is that the show wasn’t growing because it had become familiar wallpaper to the older crowd, but inaccessible and almost impenetrable at best to younger first-time viewers, and repellent at worst.

“It was a completely unprofessional decision.”

Yes it was, but so was a lot of the creative decisions made by JNT and Saward. So was going to a convention in the States when your script editor is trying to get your new Doctor’s unworkable debut script ready. So was blacklisting Peter Grimwade over a personal slight. So was driving away two of your script-editors. So was JNT slagging off his struggling, and much abused predecessor Graham Williams to an audience of fans. So was making Tegan and Adric’s characterisation so invidious. So was ending Twin Dilemma with an invidious up yours to the audience of “Whether you like it or not!” So was letting Ian Levine dictate how Warriors of the Deep and Attack of the Cybermen be written. So was ending Warriors of the Deep and Mindwarp and characterising the Doctor in both in such a way as to leave the audience feeling like the butt of a tasteless practical joke.

There’s plenty of recriminations of unprofessionalism to go round, and plenty of ways it could be argued that unprofessionalism led to the detriment of the show. Whether that be the show as it was seen, or the show is it existed. And I emphasise all this because I think what Grade did lets the production team off the hook far too much. And also because, a huge part of me just feels that the unpleasant, sordid circus the JNT era show had become in front of and behind the cameras, that wasn’t even about good triumphing over evil anymore, or good being good enough or good even triumphing over the basic competency test anymore, just needed to stop.

Also because JNT and Saward had severely crossed the line in violent content and the maladjusted way the Doctor was portrayed, Grade was able to dress his admittedly unprofessional decision up in maintaining some kind of wholesome TV standards.

Furthermore, he was brought in with the instruction to downsize the corporation. If it wasn’t someone of the contentious track record of Grade doing this, it could be argued they were just doing their job. But equally if the show wasn’t a has-been (and if JNT’s era hadn’t been wearing the proverbial bullseye on its back and front with the invidious onscreen moments in The Twin Dilemma) circumstances would’ve forced the corporation to recognise their mistake.

“Also your other point about before they thought the show was irreplaceable doesn't apply as ultimately if the Beeb REALLY cared about the show in the mid 80's (when again its viewers weren't even a problem) they could have replaced the entire production team and put more money into it and so on.”

I’m sorry but more money or budget wouldn’t have made Warriors of the Deep or Twin Dilemma remotely any more redeemable or fit for broadcast.

The show existed as long as it did because it was cheap to make. Spending more money on it would’ve defeated the point of continuing it at all.

And that’s the problem. The man left who could and would manage the show on a tight budget was JNT. At that point, no-one else would, or could be relied upon to do it. That’s what Johnathan Powell said.

The show had reached the point where it and its producer were almost inseparable now. He had become the show.

He’d changed how it was perceived, so that it was seen now as an exclusively fan-orientated continuity venture, and that the violent instability of Colin’s Doctor was just how introducing a new Doctor just has to be done now, when it never had to be that way before.

And that’s the central point. When the show was behind the times because it was in black and white, that was in time an amendable problem. But what the show had become under JNT and Saward (namely inaccessible, mean-spirited, cultish and plagued by dead wood) was now something that had reached the point of no return. The opposite of the scenario where the show was too long established and too useful for filling a TV slot, to be gotten rid of.

(continued....)

Paul McGann IS the War Doctor in my fic
http://dalekwars.blogspot.co.uk/

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“Sorry but the Restoration Team are biased and one sided. You never get to see Colin defend JNT for instance on their docu's. Its only ever negative things he's allowed to say about the costume for instance.”

I don’t buy that. The team have included archive footage of JNT himself giving the reasons for his decisions, and the predicaments he was under with both the BBC and Saward. There’s a fair amount of McCoy DVD extras where Andrew Cartmel praises a lot of what JNT did in terms of forward thinking. You even had one Who historian describing the JNT/Saward spat as one that historically for the sake of the program, JNT had to win.

Even I can find myself watching old interviews where JNT describes being fondly proud of stories like Resurrection and even Time and the Rani and feeling kind of infectiously happy for him that he could be proud of them.


“Take a look at this quote from Colin and tell me if you have EVER seen anything like it on the Docus.


Well I have extremely strong opinions about that, I feel very very sympathetic towards John because what he’s done for the programme is ten times what anyone else has done for it. There’s a tiny, tiny coterie of fans who are very frustrated because they’ve never been producer of the programme, they’re mainly in Britain, but there are two or three that I could name but won’t, in the UK, who have made it their lifetime job to do everything they can to sabotage John Nathan-Turner, and I think it’s miserable, petty, ghastly behaviour and I think they’re worms that ought to be trodden into the ground. (laughs) Don’t mess around, Colin, tell them what you really think.

But John was the producer for a very long time, and he’s responsible for it being over in the US and he came over and marketed it, he always cared about the fans, he always made sure people like myself and Nicola came to conventions when our first inclinations were that we weren’t too sure about it. He persuaded people like Pat Troughton, who never wanted to talk about the programme, who found out he loved it! And John kept the programme on the air in Britain, he was the only person fighting for it. Witness the fact that now he’s been ousted, there’s nobody in the BBC who’s waving the flag.

But those same people are still campaigning to get rid of the little bit that John’s still doing, he’s working on the videos and they’ve orchestrated a sort of hate campaign based on his choice of videos now! It’s so stupid, and it’s all jealousy, simple jealousy. I think the right-minded fan… it’s like all vocal minorities, they can swamp the majority, which covers a wide range of opinions, I’m not saying that everyone agrees with everything John’s done, of course he’s made mistakes, I’ve made mistakes, you’ve made mistakes. But they’ve said ‘Doctor Who has become a pantomime’. One article said that once. I don’t see men dressed up as women, that’s pantomime, I don’t see terrible jokes, apart from mine, and that’s my choice, not John’s. John is a friend and for a while he shrugged it off but now it’s beginning to get to him. If some people want to make someone unhappy, that’s up to them, but I think the rest of us should make sure that’s not allowed to continue. I rest my case.”


Frankly I don’t think that quote would be conducive to a balanced view at all. All Colin seems to be doing there is spitting pious invective at fans who are critical of JNT’s era, regardless of whether their criticism is sound or not, or whether they have good reason for the pre-JNT era of the show to matter to them in a way that’s been taken away for them since. Not rebuffing their criticisms in any substantial way. Just telling them to like or lump JNT’s decisions, and remember not to get ideas above their station.

I know the target of his ire is chiefly the DWB bunch, but I think Colin overplays his hand here, he’s arguing from emotion (and snobbery) rather than a sound argument to make, he frankly sounds as cultish as the show under JNT has become, and is only contributing to the balkanisation of fandom over JNT, rather than helping anyone see things from the other side.

The one point he seems to make well is that wishing JNT gone ended up being fandom not being careful what they wished for, because when he was gone, the show went with it, as did its last champion. But even that could be countered by arguing that it was down to JNT’s creative decisions that the show became such a poisoned chalice, and also down to his shunning of certain well established writers that they didn’t have the good word for the show they might otherwise have.


“Also there should be a docu about him. He produced the show for 9 years. Philip Madoc who was in 4 stories gets one but no JNT? Its absurd. Eric Saward is controversial and he gets one. JNT is poorly served by the RT.”

Where did Saward get a documentary about him?

As far as I can tell, the documentary on the Resurrection revisited is about JNT’s first four years. The one on Trial is about his next two (and I’ve met very few fans who came away from watching that who didn’t think it was Saward came off far worse), and the Time and the Rani is about the beginning of his new era with McCoy. I don’t see how you can do just one on a man who covered that much time on the show, and that much controversy.

And frankly I’d put it to you that most defenders of JNT, if provided with a documentary on JNT, still wouldn’t be satisfied unless it was completely glowing and utterly ignored all the bad decisions that came from him.


Paul McGann IS the War Doctor in my fic
http://dalekwars.blogspot.co.uk/

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“Also an 18 month hiatus would dent any shows viewership.


What the show really needed at that point was a break and a chance to step off the treadmill. The James Bond films benefitted initially from the long break between LICENSE TO KILL and GOLDENEYE. The tragedy of Dr Who was that Grade obviously wanted to run down the show and kept JNT and Seward on when logic dictated a new broom. A long break would benefit other production teams in giving them more time to hone the scripts to a higher level - unfortunately scripts were JNT's achilles heel.

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Personally I'd have liked to see a lot more of Dalton's Bond than only the two films he got. So I think that hiatus was a shame in that regard.

Paul McGann IS the War Doctor in my fic
http://dalekwars.blogspot.co.uk/

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TV series end! Get over it! It's only because the show was made by the publicly-funded BBC that the original show survived so long. The only reason! There were plenty of times when any other TV channel would have taken the excuse of low ratings to end the show.

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That was the general point I was already making, sans the dummy-spitting.

Paul McGann IS the War Doctor in my fic
http://dalekwars.blogspot.co.uk/

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Personally I'd have liked to see a lot more of Dalton's Bond than only the two films he got. So I think that hiatus was a shame in that regard.


he did bring a bit of grit and gravity back to the role after Roger Moore's run during which his eyebrow seemed permanently raised in the direction of the audience

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I don't see any conspiracy there. It's right there in the open that the final scene in which the Doctor fails is deliberately an iconic, defining moment. The Doctor is now being defined by his failure by the makers.
I'm not sure how this story so deeply affected you to the point where you consider it the worst piece of TV ever produced but I never saw at all the Doctor's character being destroyed. He wanted to help the Silurians and Sea Devils because he felt he owed them one but it didn't work because they all destroyed each other in the end. That's it! The Doctor didn't commit any crime or his character wasn't compromised. The point of this story like so many Davison ones is he's not invincible and the outcome won't always be rosy.

Also there should be a docu about him. He produced the show for 9 years. Philip Madoc who was in 4 stories gets one but no JNT? Its absurd. Eric Saward is controversial and he gets one. JNT is poorly served by the RT.
You're not the first person I've read who's said this. I totally agree by the way.

Again it took 5 years of sabotage until the JNT era got as low viewing figures as Patrick Troughton did in his last year, and even then that was in a poor timeslot and with no advertising!
Ratings for the last season were terrible but yeah it wasn't due to poor quality, it was the BBC not making an effort.

Even when Colin toned his acting down a bit in the odd scene here or there, all I could ever see was an actor whose acting practically screamed "I AM ACTING!!!! LOOK AT HOW WELL I AM DELIVERING THIS LINE!!" for every single line he ever delivered during every episode that he was in.
They needed a larger than life actor and got Colin Baker. You can't expect him to not go OTT. Anyway Tom Baker went OTT all the time.

In 1972, The Three Doctors did a lot to win back a huge chunk of the audience in droves. In 1983, The Five Doctors didn’t even do as well, ratings-wise as Time-Flight.
Except Time-Flight and The Five Doctors were in different time slots and I believe on different days.

The show existed as long as it did because it was cheap to make. Spending more money on it would’ve defeated the point of continuing it at all.
The show did at one point have a budget increase. It's not like the BBC never did give it more money and yes it would have improved those stories you mentioned in terms of production.

I don’t buy that. The team have included archive footage of JNT himself giving the reasons for his decisions, and the predicaments he was under with both the BBC and Saward.
I think his point was that we never got a life history of the guy like Barry Letts or others involved.

Where did Saward get a documentary about him?
He doesn't need one. He's not a producer, director or actor on the series. If they made one though yeah sure I would watch.

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I'm not sure how this story so deeply affected you to the point where you consider it the worst piece of TV ever produced


Because it's moral ethos is utterly cultish in a way that frankly I find sinister. It's message being that when faced with danger or prospect of murder, resist and condemn every human instinct you have to survive, and it's somehow better to let yourself die, so long as you put your killer's wellbeing above your own.

And I'll admit coming from a school system that dealt with bullying by blaming the victim and certainly punishing them harshly if they fought back, and also coming from a hard-left family that sometimes seemed to sympathise far more with the 9/11 hijackers than their thousands of victims.... yes it does strike a sore nerve to have that kind of petty, mean-spirited view of the world valorized in the show, let alone shouted down the viewers' throats. The realization that people can be that stupid, insensitive and petty, and worse still expect the mass audience to do so as well.

And the horrible realization that JNT was determined to have this story made and go ahead, and no-one could salvage it, and no-one could stop it, and worse, that the only person with the willingness and the power to stop it being made.... was Michael Grade, which puts me in the awkward position of rooting for him as the only hope to prevent the show being disgraced. And even then it was too late.

but I never saw at all the Doctor's character being destroyed.


Well again that's because it's done in slow increment. Taking the general basic things we understand about the Doctor. That he's sympathetic to the Silurians' plight, he prefers to try and make peace, is generally anti-violence and also is generally critical of the military.

He has to be all these things in this story, not because it's the best approach for him to take to the circumstances, but simply because the Silurians are back. And unfortunately we then get the conflict of the Silurians' fulfilling the same role as the Cybermen in Earthshock because that's where we're drawing our inspiration from.

So you would expect the Doctor to respond to the Silurians like they were Cybermen, but he can't, because that wouldn't seem so consistent with the Pertwee stories, so he has to, against the circumstances, become even more like his cliched self. Become in effect every horrible, stupid thing the public believes him to be.

Worse still, he becomes a fanatic of the very kind he used to rationally argue against, and a turncoat of the very kind he used to disdain.

And before you know it he's taking ridiculous stances to preserve the peace interest narrative, that he never would have before. He would've insisted on mercy to the enemy when they were unarmed or in a helpless position, but I can't recall a time he ever would've insisted on showing the enemy mercy *whilst* they're massacring people, or forced everyone else to die for his principles and then didn't even manage to uphold them anyway.

Everything that made the Doctor a rational hero, an intelligent hero, someone who understood human nature and history and was able to make moral distinctions is gone, in favour of turning him into someone who, for the purposes of this story praises and works to preserve a genocidal militia. And rather than insisting on a sensible response to a threat, insists instead on maintaining a suicidal paralysis.

So in an Orwellian way it rewrote the Doctor's character in a manner that it became a case of "This new version *is* the past and always has been".

He wanted to help the Silurians and Sea Devils because he felt he owed them one but it didn't work because they all destroyed each other in the end.


And therein lies the problem. There should be no circumstances in the world in which the Doctor feels obliged to help a genocidal militia.

That's it! The Doctor didn't commit any crime or his character wasn't compromised.


Criminal negligence resulting in avoidable deaths is a crime.

Hiding the means to instantly repel an invasion force is I believe treason, and therefore a crime.

Sucking up to a genocidal militia is, at least morally disgusting, and certainly doing more to preserve them that their victims is a crime.

The Doctor does all of this, and in the end does not seem the least bit sorry for what he did, only that the enemy he sold the humans out to didn't survive.

I don't see how his character can emerge from all this without being marked as a liability and damaged goods forever after.

The point of this story like so many Davison ones is he's not invincible and the outcome won't always be rosy.


Yes but it's the first time he's had the means to resolve the threat instantly from episode one onwards, and still failed to use it until it's too late.

So I'd reiterate that this is beyond the Doctor being fallible, and in this case actively being unfit for purpose.

And why *would* it be the point of the story to demonstrate that the Doctor is sometimes fallible and going to lose? In Genesis of the Daleks and Horror of Fang Rock he fails, but that's not the *point* of either story.

His failure in Horror of Fang Rock is what raises the stakes when the Doctor and Leela are the last ones left, fighting for survival and emphasising something vaster being at stake. In Genesis of the Daleks the Doctor's failure is a side-effect to the poetic justice of Davros' own creation destroying him, and the questions about what the future holds for the universe now.

In Warriors of the Deep, the point simply is that in the end everyone died because the Doctor didn't use the hexacromite sooner, but the only reason he didn't was so the story could end with everyone ending up dead.

Except Time-Flight and The Five Doctors were in different time slots and I believe on different days.


Yes but when The Three Doctors got its surge of viewers, arguably a huge proportion of them hadn't been watching the show regularly for a long time, but tuned in specifically. And the reason seems because a lot of them had fond memories of when Hartnell and Troughton were their Doctor and were interested in seeing them back in action again.

It should then follow that The Five Doctors would get a surge of viewers for the same reason. Even if the show wasn't on in a regular time slot, that should't really matter because this should be the event that gets people tuning in who stopped watching regularly a long while ago.

But for some reason it didn't happen. Maybe people weren't as interested because it turned out Tom Baker wasn't going to be there, and not only did it not feel the same without him, it didn't feel like a full, proper reunion with a missing guest. Many could point to the fact it clashed with the A-Team and also there was the option to video record it to watch later.

I don't know. It just seems odd that the show's 20th anniversary event was not showing quite the popularity it should, and it is tempting to see that as a sign that the show wasn't quite as beloved as it once was.

The show did at one point have a budget increase. It's not like the BBC never did give it more money


I think it became harder to justify doing so, the longer it continued and the more new shows they conceived and needed the money more for. Since the show had been on long term, you could say it was secure enough in terms of loyal but fickle viewership to not need a budget boost as much as new shows that had to hit it out the gate from the start to impress.

and yes it would have improved those stories you mentioned in terms of production.


It would paper over the superficial embarrassments but wouldn't remotely fix the fundamental problems with their scripts. Warriors with a Hollywood budget would be Aliens, only with no-one coming away seeing Ripley as an iconic, strong heroine, but rather as an incompetent insane woman whose sympathies were entirely against the audiences and with the monsters.

I think his point was that we never got a life history of the guy like Barry Letts or others involved.


That's true, but I do find myself wondering where would be the best place to put that life retrospective? On the first story of his era, The Leisure Hive? I suppose you could but it seems a bit early in his run to do a retrospective that encompassed everything after it.

Survival as his last story, possibly, but then most of the features on that were concentrating more on its import as the end of the series as a whole.

Arc of Infinity in which he personally made a cameo appearance? Well he wasn't onscreen for a substantial enough amount of time to really justify it.

Maybe The Five Doctors, since it was an out of season feature and in the tent-pole point of his era where it all seemed to be going well and he was especially prominent in promoting the show? But just like Survival it's monumental in other ways too.

Maybe Ghostlight, because it was the last story of his era in production order, and therefore the one he truly signed off on.

Maybe the last two would've been the best choice of where and when to do it. But I think if I had to be generous to the restoration team, maybe they just didn't think ahead and so missed the boat.

He doesn't need one. He's not a producer, director or actor on the series. If they made one though yeah sure I would watch.


I actually found him a very interesting guest speaker at the last Whoovers event. A documentary on him would be interesting, although fairly downbeat.

But basically my question was more querying burun on the seeming assertion that Saward, unlike JNT was privileged to get his own documentary on the DVD extras, but I certainly don't recall he did, but maybe I'd misread the point he was making.

Paul McGann IS the War Doctor in my fic
http://dalekwars.blogspot.co.uk/

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In Trial of a Timelord he had a bad perm and was obese.

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Colin Baker: wrong time, wrong place?


I think it was more of a case of 'wrong characterisation, wrong costume'.

Sadly.

Still Colin's since redeemed his Doctor via his excellent Big Finish work.

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