The final season of the classic series concludes with one all-time classic and some stories approaching that
The Review
Here’s the scores for the stories
The Curse of Fenric: 10/10
Battlefield: 9/10
Survival: 8.5/10
Ghost Light: 7.5/10
The Seventh Doctor enters his final form with his dark brown coat, a look I absolutely adore. Ace also gets the most character development for a companion since…Romana? Maybe even earlier. The jewel is The Curse of Fenric, simply one of the finest stories in show history, good vs evil, vampires, British and Russian soldiers on a coastline, what more could you want? Underrated is the fun romp of Battlefield, clashing UNIT together with King Arthur in exciting ways. Survival and Ghost Light especially leave more to be desired, but with McCoy and Aldred at the helm, what fears could there be? It’s a shame there was never a real resolution to Ace’s arc (until 2022 apparently), but this season proved itself worthy to keep the torch alive.
8.75/10 Not quite as good as Season 25, but still above average for the 80s
Story 155, Episodes 693-695, Season 26 Episodes 12-14
Doctor: Seventh Doctor
Companions: Ace McShane
In the final classic story, we see the Master one last time in a tale whose philosophy seems a bit undeveloped.
The Review
The Doctor mulls over the situation
What I enjoy the most about Survival‘s beginning is how mundane it is, the Doctor and Ace traipsing around lower-class Perivale, the Doctor on the hunt for black cats. I don’t know how he does it but Sylvester McCoy portrays a man who knows far more than he lets on, but seems often uncertain in the moment. The theme ‘survival’ is about survival of the fittest, exemplified by a sergeant who runs a self-defense class and is always going off about ‘kill or be killed’ and all that. Ace and the Doctor are sent to a planet of the cheetah people, but it really is a temporary home for I guess the ‘cheetah force’, a powerful thing that turns people into cheetahs who are all about hunting when hungry. Ace nearly is turned into one, and as she’s transforming can now hear Kara, who reverts back to a human when she dies. The cheetah virus is…well, toxicity? Aggression? I’m not quite sure.
The Master in the thrall of the cheetah
In order to give personification to this force, the Master is here. Honestly, I’m not quite sure why, and his scheme is simply to escape the cheetah planet where he is trapped and then, take of the world with hoodlums? The Doctor and Master do have a climatic duel but the Doctor is sent back to Earth because…he rejects being an animal? Don’t get me wrong, Survival is still a fine story, and I enjoyed seeing Ace’s troublemaker friends from Perivale. While The Curse of Fenric seemed to be so definitely about facing evil incarnate, ‘the hunt’ and ‘cheetah force’ seem frustratingly out of reach. It functions better than most other stories as an ending to the classic series with finally taking on the Master again, but Survival is no classic.
Survival‘s name is incredibly apt, as Doctor Who would indeed go on to survive, though radically changed. I’m not sure there’s a meta message beyond that, but it does conclude an impressive amount of character work for Ace.
8.5/10 Somewhere out there, there’s danger, injustice, and tea getting cold.
Story 154, Episodes 689-692, Season 26 Episodes 8-11
Doctor: Seventh Doctor
Companions: Ace McShane
The story of Ace and the Seventh Doctor comes to a dramatic climax in one of the most stunning, ambitious, stories of the classic series.
The Review
Ace discovers the chess board
There’s a growing horror that builds throughout The Curse of Fenric that is unlike almost any other classic series. I think the best comparison is The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, except this takes place in a quintessential location: a small British village during World War II. When it arrives, there’s no particular reason for the Doctor to be here. Soon though, the plot unfurls: ancient Viking inscriptions, a British commander so desperate to defeat the Nazis he’ll become one, a scientist obsessed with the Ultima Machine, a revolutionary new computer. Somehow, the inscriptions hold power and sway over the Commander Millington. All the while, two girls turn into vampires, and soon out of the ocean walk disfigured people that look like barnacles are attached to them. Suddenly, the Ultima machine starts spitting out lists and lists of names, and then ‘Ingigia’ before with the flash of lightning and vampires at the gates, evil is unleashed. Fenric is here. The horrifying score throughout the story builds the sense of menace, and few Doctors have captured the underlying anger and rage better than McCoy.
You must have faith
Often, the best stories often having something spiritual to them. This isn’t about God or religion, but it’s about that crucial quality of faith. We all want to have faith in something or someone. For the Russian soldiers they truly believe in the cause of the Soviet Union (interesting politics for 1989 here), but the preacher lost his when his sainted Britain started bombing the Germans too. For Ace, her faith was in the Doctor, completely, until the cruel moment where the Doctor shreds it completely in front of Fenric, on the verge of destroying the planet. Ace loses her faith, allowing the last vampire to destroy Fenric rather than doom his future Earth. The final piece is that Ace met her mother as a baby, the woman she hates and despises. She asks the Doctor how it could be, but finally has the confidence in herself to swim in the sea. The Doctor had to break her faith in him but gave her something greater, confidence in herself. Fenric is presented as simply evil, the Doctor saying that’s not even it’s real name, it’s in a sense the devil. Faith is the only thing that can defeat the devil, but the only faith we can be sure in is our own strength and courage.
Curse of Fenric is an all-time classic, a top 5 classic story without a doubt, a triumphant work that showed, yes, Doctor Who still has its ability to challenge and inspire.
10/10 There are a few confusing elements, but it really doesn’t matter in the drama and the horror.
Story 153, Episodes 686-688, Season 26 Episodes 5-7
Doctor: Seventh Doctor
Companions: Ace McShane
The Doctor tries to get Ace to conquer her fears in a story that scarcely makes any sense.
The Review
Within the house in Perivale
I’d heard before watching this story that Ghost Light famously was incomprehensible. I am glad to say that is absolutely the case. Really, I can kind of see what they were going for here, but this is the rare classic story where I think we really could’ve used another episode. The Doctor takes Ace to an old house in Perivale 100 years before she saw something there that seriously frightened her. The Doctor is curious about a malevolent presence she sensed there, but in a deeper way wants Ace to fight her fear. That plot thread doesn’t quite get realized because the whole thing is just kind of a mess. It’s a story about evolution, albeit in the most bizarre way possible, starting by featuring a reverend who finds Darwin’s theory absolutely absurd, and gets de-evolved into an ape because of it. There are so many tiny plot threads its hard to keep track of them all, such as that our main villain Josiah is occupying the house after displacing and brainwashing the previous resident.
Ace feeling used by the Doctor
Light, the glowing guy, is the leader of some survey expedition of Earth. There’s also Control, a weird woman whose purpose I don’t quite understand. Several people like the Neanderthal Nimrod were preserved for millennia before being reawakened by Josiah, an intergalactic collector. Somehow he has ‘evolved’ into a Victorian gentlemen, the time’s apex predator, and wants to assassinate Queen Victoria herself. Light is upset that life keeps evolving making his survey of it incomplete, there’s some parallel with him and the captured moths Josiah has, but it isn’t completely borne out. Really, the story is just incredibly confusing, overstuffed, and unclear. It’s a shame because I am just loving everything Sylvester McCoy is doing, it is such a fresh take on the Doctor, unimposing but extremely cerebral and a fiery edge to him. If only I knew what was going on.
Ghost Light is about evolution being good, and how we’re all evolving and changing, and then a whole bunch of Victorian gobbledygook thrown in there.
7.5/10 I can’t give it a much higher score if I don’t know what’s going on, can I?
Story 152, Episodes 682-685, Season 26 Episodes 1-4
Doctor: Seventh Doctor
Companions: The Brigadier, Ace McShane
Doctor Who meets Arthurian Legend as UNIT makes a very welcome appearance in a story that never lets up on the fun.
The Review
Ancelyn and Brigadier Bambera
It has been a long time since we’ve gotten a proper UNIT story out of Doctor Who, and it delivers. Delightfully, UNIT actually has cultural diversity benefiting it being an arm of the United Nations, and we meet the current Brigadier: Winifred Bambera played quite successfully by Angela Bruce. The Brigadier feels better here than Mawdryn Undead, which makes sense as that part was originally for Ian. We see him married in retirement, but the moment he catches wind of the Doctor he has to go back to being a soldier. For his final appearance in the show proper, it’s a great farewell, as the Brigadier stares down the Destroyer (an evil blue demon who doesn’t actually do much destroying), he says he is likely not Earth’s best champion but he’ll try his best. The two Brigadiers are both respectful of one another, and it’s also fun to see women in UNIT! Ace also makes a friend in Shou Yuing, one of the few Asian women in the classic series.
Morgaine and Mordred menacing…Merlin?
In classic Doctor Who fashion, the villains are Morgaine and Mordred of legend, who are of course inter dimensional warriors tracking down the spaceship of Arthur stuck under an English lake. Even more delightfully, everyone immediately pegs the Doctor as Merlin, and it’s confirmed he will be Merlin in his future. The Doctor now has a brown coat which I love and is now one of my favorite Doctor outfits. It’s a fun little inversion to last season where the Doctor seemed to have a secret past we didn’t know about, here it’s a secret future leaving the Doctor confused. Morgaine plans to fire a nuke, but the Doctor talks her down by explaining how dishonorable that would be and she relents. Now, Battlefield can feel a bit sloppy at points, and the true nature of the Arthurians isn’t revealed, nor their fate (they just get locked up by UNIT forever?). Still, it’s a blast, and who can hate Ace emerging from a lake wielding Excalibur?
Battlefield gives us a classic UNIT romp that is pleasantly diverse, and puts the Seventh Doctor in more unusual positions. I only wish the Destroyer did some more, you know, destroying.
Reviewing Doctor Who from Start to Finish 