Time to finish what I could call "Classic Doctor Who Month" with the final post about my initial viewing of Classic Who episodes. After the First to Third Doctor and the Fourth to Sixth Doctor, I've now come to the last two Doctors belonging to the classic era.
Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy). Episodes watched: Remembrance of the Daleks, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, The Curse of Fenric.
A good place to start? Yep. I have to reluctantly admit, the times I forego the box sets and cherry pick Classic Who adventures I've heard praised or think sound interesting it tends to pay off. I didn't expect to like the Seventh Doctor much. What with all those question marks and the umbrella, he certainly looked as if he was supposed to be a goofier version of the Doctor which would appeal more to a young audience than the Sixth. That instantly made me want to prefer his less crowd-pleasing predecessor. Which one I do prefer is still undecided, but I have to admit McCoy's Doctor is a solid one, brainy and a great deal less whimsical than I feared. It's probably a good thing that I picked late adventures with the Seventh, as I gather he grew more Machiavellian with time, which is fine by me. The pairing with feisty young companion Ace also works very well.
Admittedly, the plots in the adventures I watched are more than a bit confused at times, but the pacing is better than in much of the earlier Classic Who episodes, so I can roll with it. The side characters are not quite as strong as in the very best episodes of the classic era (usually penned by Robert Holmes, who had died by this time), but they are good nonetheless, and often make more of an impression than the cannon fodder we meet in some episodes of New Who. But why do the bad guys in Greatest Show turn out to be "the gods of Ragnarok" of all things? They look more Egyptian to me, and there's not a wolf or snake in sight. I suspect the name's just an excuse so as to allow McCoy to roll his r-s a lot: a mannerism that irritated me at first but which I soon got used to. It suits his "maverick uncle" take on the Doctor.
Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann). Watched: Doctor Who The Movie from 1996.
A good place to start? Well, where else would you start? Maybe with the new Who short The Night of the Doctor, where McGann reappears and gives a memorable enough performance for the viewer to regret that we never got a chance to become better acquainted with his Doctor. Otherwise, the TV movie is the only time we get to see McGann's Doctor on screen (though there are a great deal of audio dramas at hand).
The TV movie, which had American backing (hence the "movie" part), is a strange thing. It does try to capture some of the quirkiness of the original show, but that means it rather falls between two chairs. It's too off-beat for a mainstream action film, but it's not Who-ish enough for most Whovians. Concepts are introduced for mere mechanical plot reasons which would have serious consequences to Who lore if they weren't routinely ignored by fans and show runners alike (yes, I'm thinking about the Doctor supposedly being half human). All things considered, though, I found the film/movie closer to the show than I'd imagined, maybe because I'm so used to new Who that a Doctor kissing his companion (and what's more, not very romantically, because he's relieved to have regained his memory) doesn't really shock me. Eric Roberts's Master has been much criticised and usually ends up at the bottom of Master rankings, but I quite liked him and his dynamic with confused youngster Lee - it's as if the Master's trying out the whole companion thing for himself, but isn't sure it does much for him. Again, having started with New Who probably helps. It's hard to imagine how a Master could be too over the top after the rampant insanity of John Simm's Master in the third series of new Who - and campness isn't an unheard of trait for this character either, surely?
McGann puts on a good show, but we're not given much of a hint of how his Doctor would have turned out had the TV movie become the prelude to a series. My guess is, considerably closer to Tennant than McCoy: the Doctor comes across as a bit of a glamorous action hero, which was certainly new for the time. McGann was unfortunate enough to land the role of the loathsome Eugene Wrayburn in a Nineties adaptation of Our Mutual Friend, and this combined with one of his brothers playing a smug jerk (who was meant to be dangerously attractive) in the TV series The Grand made me allergic to the distinctive handsome-in-a-horsey-way McGann features for a while. But I'm over that now: holding it against McGann that he played Wrayburn convincingly is taking the Lucky Luke audience syndrome a step too far. And he is very good in those audio dramas.
