A Quick Guide to Classic Who Season 25

0:00 [Music] tumbling through. You don't know where you land. It's so dark in mythology. Treasures of history to be found. The legends of time. All the hands remain only. [Music] Something weird happened between seasons

0:45 24 and 25. The doctor had a minor personality regeneration and took a level in greatness. Last time he was a primarily comic figure attempting to be Troutton and not really succeeding. He was pleasant enough, but it was like a tribute band to the best doctor there ever was. But now he's still outwardly silly, but less. He's more brooding and plans carefully. This is the chess master personification of the doctor who had sometimes already arranged his victory before the episode had even begun. I love this personification of the doctor. He walks the walk of being the epic figure favored by Moffett instead of just talking the talk. I'm the doctor and you're in the biggest library in the universe.

1:31 Look me up. It's the 25th anniversary season and they made some effort to celebrate the show's history, especially in the first story, Remembrance of the Daleks. It's got the Daleks. It's set in 1963. Features both the junkyard and the school from an earthly child. that school being the same one that Claraara works at. It brings back the figure of the Dalek Emperor from Evil of the Daleks, although he's now Davos. It follows up on Revelation of the Daleks by showing the Dalek civil war between Davos's forces and the original Daleks. It has the Doctor team up with a proto unit, and it even mentions the future Dalek invasion of Earth. The 80s were a really good time for Dalek stories. Three were made and all three were successful. Not alltime

2:17 classics, but a better hit rate than what we got in the 70s. What's going on is this. The Daleks are in London in 1963 to locate and steal the hand of Omega, a Time Lord stellar engineering device used by Omega to turn Gal of Fray star into a supernova, which was eventually turned into the Eye of Harmony, the black hole used to power timelord civilization. The Doctor brought it with them when he left Gal of Fray and buried it in 1963 for safekeeping. And if the Daleks use it, they could equal the power of the time lords. And the doctor spends much of the story making it appear like he's trying to keep the hand away from them, but actually isn't. Once the Dex have it, we begin one of the best sequences in the show's history as the Doctor uses reverse psychology on Davos to make sure he uses it on Scar's

3:04 son and then reveals that he reprogrammed the hand to instead completely destroy any son it's used on. Do you think I would let you have control of the hand of Omega? Do not do this. I beg of you. Nothing can stop it now. Have pity on me. I have pity for you. 15. Bye, Davos. It hasn't been pleasant. Like a mouse. It destroys Scaro and its solar system and then flies back to Davos's command ship and destroys that. And then as an epilogue, the doctor finds the only Dalek who survived the battle on Earth and talks it into committing suicide. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. [Music]

3:51 Now, the Ths were another sentient race who evolved on Scar and fought the Daleks. Were they all destroyed? Maybe. I don't know. They aren't mentioned in the story. They might have already been wiped out, or they could have left Scarro. I have no idea. Regardless, there's a reason the seventh doctor couldn't have fought the time war besides continuity. It would have been over in minutes. The war doctor was created to fight the time war. Well, fighting is not winning. The seventh doctor could have won easily. He might have taken half the universe with the Daleks, but he would have won. There is other good stuff in this. There are strong themes of anti-racism with white supremacists teaming up with the Daleks. And even the Dalek factions are racist to each other. It's not perfectly in

4:36 line with how they acted previously, but the Daleks were inspired by the Nazis. It makes sense. Kind of a bit. Jeffrey from The Fresh Prince of Belair has a great short appearance talking about how racism and slavery shaped his family history. Warning though, it's not exactly subtle. I file this under not perfect, but I'm still giving it a pretty damn glowing report. And we finally get to see a rank and file Dalek flying. There had been evidence that they could fly ever since the chase in season 3, but this made it 100% definite. The special weapons Dalek, the single most badass Dalek variant ever, was introduced here and wasn't seen again until it sat in the back of some shots in Asylum of the Daleks.

5:23 And for the first time, Dak Blast had a distinctive X-ray effect, showing off victim's skeletons. Anaway really damn good. An excellent start to season 25 and a great final story for the Dalek and Classic Who, even if much of it was retconed in the new show. And you know what? I still haven't named all the good stuff in the story. Watch it for yourself and see. Next is The Happiness Patrol, a story that constantly comes up as an example of bad '8s Doctor Who, and that's not fair. It's not brilliant, but it's far from a Warriors of the Deep or Twin Dilemma. It's the planet Terra Alpha and the places under the heel of a brutal and completely insane dictatorship. It's illegal to be sad. Yes, you heard that right. The dictator Helen A was a saturn

6:10 Margaret Thatcher and has her secret police, the happiness patrol, hunting down killjoys, aka radio head fans. The very worst of the killjoys are handed over to the candyman, a psychotic sweetbased monster doctor thing. He was originally supposed to be pretty much human, but someone decided that risking a lawsuit from Basset Sweets was much more important than making any sort of sense. I'm not complaining about the Candyman. I think he's a wonderfully insane creation, but that's also the problem. He's part of the reason this overthrow of the idiosyncratic dictatorship story suffers. Rather than have the craziness and then play it mostly straight like the Sunmakers, they introduce a sensient sugar-based Joseph Mangala that looks like a corporate mascot and blow the

6:56 suspension of disbelief. And as you can no doubt guess, this story involves the Doctor and Ace bringing down the government pretty damn quickly. And if you guessed that they cleverly managed to manipulate the law because what makes a revolutionary for sadness happy? Revolution. So not being sad, they can't be arrested, which makes the happiness patrol sad. So they need to be arrested. And you get the idea. So yeah, this is a clever and amusing central idea and a fine script. And it was brave to put metaphors for homophobia into the show in 1988, but it design choices make it harder to appreciate. It's not bad. It's just very easy to compare to The Sunmakers. And The Sun Makers is really good, so it suffers. The third story of season 25 is

7:41 Silver Nemesis, the last Cyberman story of the classic show. And the Cybermen go out as they've been in most stories since the show was in black and white in a bad story. This is my least favorite story of the season, and that's a pity because it was supposed to be the official 25th anniversary special. What's going on is this. The TARDIS lands in Windsor Castle and a living weapon/statue called the Nemesis is basically a comet which passes by the Earth every 25 years and because of its orbit it will crash in 1988. So vying for its power are the 16th century Lady Pain for who uses magic. Some neo-Nazis operating out of Argentina and the cybermen want to use it to conquer the earth. So it's anacronism woman versus the Nazis versus the cybermen for the

8:26 control of the nemesis and the doctors in the middle of it all. There are some funky little bits here and there, like the scene where the seventh doctor decades before 11 wore a fez and held a mop at the same time. It's got a fair amount of crap, too. The cybermen, who originally had a fairly sensible issue with gold. It had clog their respiratory systems and kill them, now die if it just touches them, admittedly with some force. It's like taking a character who can be drowned and then less than 15 years later deciding that logically they can also be killed by a water pistol. I like the Cyberman redesign even if it is pretty much taking the Earth Shock look and making its grim to shy ratio less uniform across the whole suit. Basically avoid this one. Again, it's not an

9:12 abomination like Time Flight or Time in the Ryan, but it's pretty bad. If you must have a classic alien story from season 25, then watch Remembrance of the Daleks. The final story of the season was supposed to be the second story of the season, but had some severe issues in production and greatest show in the galaxy was almost another shada. They had finished the location work when they found out that for health reasons they couldn't film the interiors at the usual studios. So, they had to build a circus tent in a car park and film it there. It's the planet Sega. And after the doctor heard Ace has a fear of clowns, he decided to take her to the circus because why not? The psychic circus was once the most famous and revered circus in history, the greatest show in the galaxy, if you will. It was taken over by the gods of Ragnarok, some powerful

9:58 aliens. Now the performers are forced to do their bidding. And the head clown is particularly happy about doing said bidding. And what is the bidding? Well, the gods live to be entertained. And if you fail to do so, you die. So many visitors are forced into performing until they're killed. at least until the doctor and days find a way to destroy the circus and escape. The cast of guest characters are eccentric to say the least. There's a Victorianish explorer, a werewolf, and the wonderfully meta whiz kid. So, you've always been interested in the psychic circus. I've never been able to visit it before now, but I've got all sorts of souvenirs, copies of all the advertising satellites that have ever been sent out. Although I never got to see the early days, I know it's not as good as it used to be, but I'm still terribly interested.

10:50 [Music] Basically, they took the idea of a longunning and once popular entertainment that was existing purely for the benefit of a tiny, dedicated, and easily angered audience and somehow decided that this could be applied to Doctor Who. Anyway, the Whiz Kid is a nerdy old school fan of the circus who loves it but realizes that it's not as good as it was before he was born back when acrobats were in black and white and jugglers wore comically long scarves. I'm kidding about that, but you get the point of the character. To me, this story's weird mix of meta and traditional story elements succeeds where Love and Monsters failed. I think it's partly because they took pot shots themselves along with the fans and because the show wasn't at the height of

11:36 its popularity. The message behind Loving Monsters was this show is amazing and you sad bastards are lucky to be in contact with it. Sure, you might die, but you touched the face of God. I mean, you saw David Tenant. I mean, you saw the doctor. I worship who. Well, the message in Greatest Show in the galaxy is that Doctor Who isn't perfect. It might be a shell, but it once was, but we still love it regardless, which I find to be a much better message. Of course, it could also be that Doctor Who will ultimately destroy everyone working on it, which at this point it pretty much did. Also, we have people forced to entertain the audience until they die. And Doctor Who at the time had a producer who had wanted to leave the show for literally years and was stopped from doing so by the BBC. Do I think all of this was

12:23 deliberate? I don't know. Is there subtext? Hell yes. And away the other cool things here we have one of the best shots in the show's history as the doctor walks out of the exploding [Music] tent. There had been a mixup behind the scenes and no one told McCoy the boom would be that big. But McCoy knew they only had one take and so kept on walking even though he was worried that he'd been injured. The gods of Ragnarok are more of the ultra powerful old ones from the Cthulhu mythos and Doctor Who form, those that predated the current universe. According to the books, they also created the land of fiction from the mind robber, which makes perfect sense. Greatest show in the galaxy is one of the season's triumphs. It's

13:09 clever, insane, imaginative, and for it to come out so well after being so close to being shelved is a minor miracle. Now, lots of people hate the 80s doctor costumes for their obsession with question marks. I'm kind of on the fence about them. I don't like them on the fourth, fifth, or sixth doctors, but I like the seventh doctor's jumper. And even more, I love his umbrella. Now, earlier in this series, I mentioned the four iconic classic who companions. Companions that were especially popular, influential, or just stayed for a long time. They were Jamie, Joe, Sarah Jane, and Ace. Okay. Season 25 was an improvement over season 24, and season 26 will be an improvement over season 25. The show was well and truly on the mend story-wise

13:54 when it ended after the next and final season. Join me next time for the last classic who appearances of the Master and the Brigadier, toxic future vampires in World War II, and what is generally considered the most confusing story in Doctor Who history. [Music] And the sun. [Music] This is BBC television. The time is a quart 5 and Saturday viewing continues with an adventure in the new science

14:40 fiction series Dr. Snake, what have you done? You changed the future.