Defend you bad story, You alone love this story

Branching off the Next Doctor thread, what stories do you love but have to defend due to their unashamed awfulness.

Timelash

Featuring more ham than a Sunday roast, Paul Darrow just cannot take his bland sock puppet world seriously. I do not particually blame him, though I do have a soft spot for this story as it did open my Doctor Who viewing. Yes, this story introduced me into the series of the time travelling world of Doctor Who and I loved the whole premise of the show.
Taking place in two time zones with references to a hidden history with a past Doctor, I loved how actions in the past affected the present. The "monster" scared me a little, and the burning android seemed so creepy.Paul Darrow seemed such a strong, threatening character to me and the whole story kept offering new aspects and possibilities.
That said, even at eight I could spot tinsel, but I did not care. I probably will never view this story dispassionately due to the rose tinted glasses I wear, but the whole base premise still excites me - time travel within a story. Few adventures featured this, but it really makes my skin tingle. This is about as sad fanboy as I get. Pyramids of Mars (a brief glimpse of an alternate time line) and Time Warrior have the save effect as they feature that twist.

Who else has stories the need to defend? Go on, guilty secret time!

Definitely The Time Warrior. Indeed all of the Australian season 11, which consisted of The Time Warrior, Death to the Daleks and Monster of Peladon. Planet of the Spiders was held over an extra year. Pure dramatic gold all of them, despite their flaws, which are multitude.

Anyway, Time Warrior. A space Ogre lands in a tennis ball (check it out sometime...) in a heartily non-specific time and offers his aid to a mob of medieval stereotypes. Meanwhile, some X hundreds of years later, an investigative reporter has infiltrated UNIT by using someone else's name. So it's not just the Master who seems to find UNIT an open house. Anyway, the Doctor follows the trail of missing scientists back to X time, only to find the country apparently drained by Crusades or plague or a low budget for hiring extras. After dueling with the space Troll, his fragmentation grenade-like space ship explodes (big surprise there), destroying the castle in what appears to be stock footage of a quarry explosion. Fortunately when this was released on DVD the disappointing SFX sequences were replaced with much, much worse CGI effects, apparently cribbed from Jane and the Dragon.

Need I mention this tale of a space Gnome was my first story?

I have several favourite stories, and find it hard to separate them from each other as outright favourites. Most people who would know me, and going on my forum name would know that City of Death is one of them - it is, as I say, only one of them!

Whilst City of Death requires little defence, the stories I have to justify the most are all Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) ones. Of all of my favourites in this Doctor (Battlefield, Remembrance of the Daleks, Dragonfire and Paradise Towers), the story I am constantly defending is Happiness Patrol.

Fair enough - it's not up there with the pantheon of great Doctor Who stories. However, I find it has a certain panache, or junoesque (excuse my French - literally).

To paraphrase a quote used in this story, it has to me a certain melancholy. The concept of happiness not being able to exist without a certain amount of sadness somehow appeals to me in many aspects.

I also enjoyed the idea of an "evil candyman", and the entire concept of "Fifi".

Finally, to continue the theme of the above posts: I can't really remember what my first "Doctor Who Story" was, except to say it was probably one of the first three Doctors.

Imagine this; a Who script editor, famous enough to have been heard of by *non*-fans, irrevocably changed by his time on the show to write on his own terms for the rest of this life, the only story he writes and edits and makes it to air...

And the commercial opposition is off the air. What a burden the fact it's the highest ever rated show!

Interesting philosophy, but I don't really see what that has to do with this topic.

The other Story I wish to defend is "Paradise Towers".

Anyone watched "The Good Life", or anything else that Richard Briers has been in? Enough said!!

OK, I didn't like those "Old Ladies" being "Humanovores", and this story wasn't in the Pantheon of all time greats either - or maybe it is.

Either way, Richard Briers makes this story what it is. I saw part of the making to this one. They spent most of the time enduring practical jokes from both Sylvester and Richard. They obviously had a great time making this one!

And I had a great time watching them go at it!! I especially love the entire "Rule Book" interplay, in which the Doctor uses the Rule book to escape!

It still gives me a good chuckle.

And as I always say - if you don't like something, don't watch it!!

Suddenly, I'm feeling Hungry !

You don't know that City of Death was and remains the highest rating story ever??!!

Yes, I did! But I didn't click that that's what you were referring to .

He also Wroth Shada - Alas it wasn't finished!

All Adams' contributions were unique in some way, and his time as script editor was a turning point in his career. I wasn't impressed with his apparent contribution to the other stories until I found out his major change to Destiny of the Daleks. Terry Nation intended the Daleks' motivation being to recover a rare element in Davros' chair. Adams made the rare item Davros himself, and introduced the concept of the space war turning on too highly mirrored strategic advice from computers; a very Adams touch.

To continue with season eleven, Antony Howe believes the first episode of Invasion of the Dinosaurs was destroyed *prior* to being considered for overseas sales, I don't know if that's the case but can confirm it was never evaluated by the Department of Customs.

On with Death to the Daleks. Everyone seems to hate this story based on what it isn't. It's not Genesis and suffers with comparison. It's not the Master Plan with which it shares the rare element plot (but not Destiny!). It's not Invasion of Earth with its space plague. Indeed, there's much of the ur Nation here, as if this was boiled down from a larger story with most of his tropes, or indeed his career generally. All it seems to be missing is the death of a walk on character in a first scene, before the TARDIS materializes, to be a notable compendium of Nation cliches! However, if you didn't know this at the time it was an excellent introduction to the show.
I'm also fond of the Cary Blyton score, which many cite as an irritant.

This part of the forum seems to be a two way banter - speaking of which, I'd better re-kick-start Doctor Who from another point of view sometime soon - I have a lot of fun making up something completely outrageous!

Death to the Daleks was one of my first Dalek stories that I remember - with great fondness I might add! It still remains one of my favourites!!

Time to make a brief defence: The Sontaran Experiment and Planet of the Giants.

On The Sontaran Experiment

• True, it was two parts long
• It was obviously put in to have a plausable explanation as to what happens between the Ark in Space and Genesis
• Tom Baker may or may not have broken a few bones

But for a two parter, it was - in my opinion - ranks well above Edge of Destruction, and only slightly below Planet of the Giants (The only other two parters I can think of that existed up until this point).

It also rates well above any of the fifth Doctor Ones (But I'm not big on him in general - except the Turlough years and his last story. But that's a different story).

The Sixth Doctor Ones are not what I call two parters - and I'm not includung Modern Doctor Who either!

For me, The Sontaran Experiment was an ideal filler, and was suited to the two part format. This story is a classic example of how much you can pack into two episodes, and still have a story line.

Sontaran Experiment was designed to fill in a gap, and they produces a very passable story. It is ideal at Two Episodes - any more, and it would have felt dragged out!

Planet of the Giants

Ok, maybe I'm defending two stories here, but I don't care!

• I know not why Planet of the Giants was only two parts - I felt it could have been stretched to three!
• It was one of my favourite First Doctor Stories
• And YES, Ian and Barabara are two of my Favourite Companions ever!

This was a two parter that I just wanted to keep going. It was well written, well paced and kept me glued to the set! Not sure as to how much defence this story rates, as I consider it up there in the Pantheon of all time Doctor Who Stories (Sounds like a theme for a new topic. Might start one off!)

Anyway, I digress: A worthy sotory and a pleasure to watch - both of them!

Your turn, Martin - but won't mind if someone else puts their two cents in!

Planet of Giants was originally a four part story. Episodes three and four were edited together after the head of serials requested that the pace be dramatically increased so the season would not get off to a slow start. Basically a whole episode worth of padding was removed to form a tighter three part story.

Planet of the Giants was quite a good concept, and Sydney Newman used the plot in his foundation briefings in creating the show. This means there was an entire extra episode's worth of B&W Who which only Verity Lambert and Douglas Camfield (who directed it) and such got to see! I don't expect the discarded episode's worth of footage to have been kept, and it was reportedly cut down because it featured the not so interesting adventures of Bert the country policeman and his snooping telephone operator wife Hilda, but it's still quite a thought. Like the Hidden Planet hoax, but not the hoax part! If you're really interested, Dicks wrote his novelisation from the scripts and so it retains the missing material.

The knock on from this shortening of the second year's production output was directly responsible for Mission to the Unknown. Which I thought was quite good too. About as good an episode I'll probably never get to see (recons notwithstanding).

BTW Since when was the Sontaran Experiment being 'regarded' as an bad story amongst fandom, I was always assuming it had a decent reputation amongst fandom, even if it isn't regarded as a classic (Ditto Time Warrior has always been well recieved amongst fandom, esp since it's DVD release)

I must defend The Twin Dilemma, I love this romp, I thikn it's marvellous fan and I love the idea of a manical/psychotic imbalaced Doctor who suffers post-regeneration trauma ..

The fact is though given the garish material and lines, Colin Baker really does excellent throught this story, and I love the jancodians, they are a great looking alien race as well, mestor is a wonderfully sluggish villian, and Maurice Denham is wonderful as Azmael, the only downer is those annoying twins Romuls and Remus .


The Time Monster is another 'clunker' I really enjoy, it is a very enjoyable and charming romp, and lets face it any story with Roger Delgado in it (well apart from Colony in Space which is a big yawn) has to be good.

Well kiddies, you're in for a treat. The theme for our next meeting is DR.WHO B-GRADES. The very worst-of!!!!!!!!!!

heres a list

-Paridise Towers solid script would've worked well as an audio
-Any Story featuring mel her acting is underated but is usually falt of the script as writers had trouble writing for her. Plus she is nowhere near as bad as adric
-i'll add some more if i think of it