A Doctor Who link and a fannish mini-rant
Just listened to a rather lovely Radio 4 documentary, The Doctor And Douglas about Douglas Adams's time as script editor on Doctor Who. It's a really fun little program, and you get to hear Steven Moffat gush about "City of Death", and Lalla Ward talking about how Douglas introduced her to Richard Dawkins.
My one very small quibble is that I wish they'd left out the now semi-obligatory dumping on Adams's successor as script editor, Christopher H. Bidmead. (Whom they don't even mention by name. But they do say things like, "Tom and Lalla left the show the following year. Doctor Who slowly lost it's audience, and was cancelled in 1989." Way to dismiss ten years of show and the work of half-a-dozen script editors in two short sentences.)
Now, I'm not going to deny that Adams was a far more talented writer than Bidmead. And I'm not going to deny that Bidmead often comes across as an utter doink in interviews. And I have to confess that it's been years since I've watched most of the Bidmead-edited stories, so I have no idea how I'd react to them now.
But here's what else I must confess: When I was a kid, I loved Season 18 with a passion. And really, how can you not? You've got "State of Decay", in which our heroes kill a giant vampire by staking it through the heart with a rocket ship. You've got the sheer surreality of "Warrior's Gate". You've got the gorgeous-looking "Keeper of Traken", which brings back the Master to boot. Even in a relative clunker like "Meglos", you've still got Tom Baker turning into a giant cactus. You can't get that in "Creature from the Pit".
Thanks to Season 18, I still get a secret science-fictional thrill every time I say the word "entropy". That alone probably got me through freshman physical chemistry.
So, whaddya say, my fellow fans? Can we show Season 18 some love? Or at least not go out of our way to diss it while ostensibly discussing other areas of the show?
My one very small quibble is that I wish they'd left out the now semi-obligatory dumping on Adams's successor as script editor, Christopher H. Bidmead. (Whom they don't even mention by name. But they do say things like, "Tom and Lalla left the show the following year. Doctor Who slowly lost it's audience, and was cancelled in 1989." Way to dismiss ten years of show and the work of half-a-dozen script editors in two short sentences.)
Now, I'm not going to deny that Adams was a far more talented writer than Bidmead. And I'm not going to deny that Bidmead often comes across as an utter doink in interviews. And I have to confess that it's been years since I've watched most of the Bidmead-edited stories, so I have no idea how I'd react to them now.
But here's what else I must confess: When I was a kid, I loved Season 18 with a passion. And really, how can you not? You've got "State of Decay", in which our heroes kill a giant vampire by staking it through the heart with a rocket ship. You've got the sheer surreality of "Warrior's Gate". You've got the gorgeous-looking "Keeper of Traken", which brings back the Master to boot. Even in a relative clunker like "Meglos", you've still got Tom Baker turning into a giant cactus. You can't get that in "Creature from the Pit".
Thanks to Season 18, I still get a secret science-fictional thrill every time I say the word "entropy". That alone probably got me through freshman physical chemistry.
So, whaddya say, my fellow fans? Can we show Season 18 some love? Or at least not go out of our way to diss it while ostensibly discussing other areas of the show?