Colin Baker: wrong time, wrong place?

“I'm sorry but that's not fair. Red Dwarf is not the same as DW. Red Dwarf is a niche show. The highest it ever got was 8 million. Doctor Who used to average more than that for every episode including during the JNT era.
Thus good viewers for Red Dwarf season 7 probably wouldn't have been sufficient for DW. For a popular mainstream show it has to maintain a reasonably high viewership.”

I can’t say I agree that Red Dwarf was a niche show. I recall it as a series pretty much everyone knew about and had a wide appeal across the generations.

It might’ve been niche in its first two seasons, and it might’ve become niche since Series 6, but during the early to mid-90’s I distinctly remember it being a huge part of the zeitgeist, and franky I’d say it’s dated better and maintains a lot more substance than a lot of other lad’s comedy shows from that time.

Now I do recall that back in the late 90’s with Series 7 and 8, because it had been such a long hiatus, the BBC seemed aware that it might not immediately get the habitual ratings it used to, and so decided to have a repeat showing of each episode later in the week.

Obviously this wasn’t done for the Trial season, because the BBC wanted to promote the other shows Doctor Who had downsized for. But the huge tabloid scandal there’d been over the show’s cancellation should’ve ensured some surge of interest when it finally returned. That’s not something Red Dwarf really had on its side with Series 7 or 8.

The fact this didn’t happen, just suggests to me the rooster had come home to roost. People realized they weren’t behind the show and its hero like they used to be.

“Also an 18 month hiatus would dent any shows viewership. The star of the first season of Babylon 5 is often seen as a hero of the show because he was suffering from schizophrenia and they offered to put the show on hiatus for a few months until he got better. He said that if they did that it would really struggle to find an audience again so he persevered through the difficult times.”

But Doctor Who in the 80’s wasn’t early Babylon 5. It was a long-established show that everyone knew about. Yes a break in B5’s first season would’ve caused problems to viewership and interest because the show had barely established itself yet, and could ruin it all by standing the interested viewer up too early into the relationship.

Doctor Who was too familiar by that point to significantly pose the same problem.

However if you’re invoking the point that Colin Baker represented a new era, and like the first season’s star of B5 he needed time to ingratiate himself with the audience, then yes I agree the timing was unfortunate, but then so was the ‘plan’ to make his Doctor difficult at best for the audience to warm to.

The star of B5 stayed to not lose the audience’s good will. The creative decisions by JNT and Saward make it appear the show was determined to ruin viewer good will either way.

And I do firmly believe the low ratings of the Trial season are as testament to why that plan was a bad move, as to why the hiatus was a problem.

At the very least there’s a grey area between whether the problem was the time the show was off-air, or the time it was on-air and the Doctor was strangling Peri.

“Also its worth mentioning that the last story of Colin's first season Revelation of the Daleks is often regarded as one of the greatest DW stories ever made. It was even voted the 11th greatest in the 2003 40th anniversary poll.”

To fans like us, yes. To the general public I think they’d feel it was too off-beat, too reliant on the viewers’ knowledge of past Dalek stories, and too lacking in what they’d tuned in for: the Doctor and the Daleks.

But even as a highlight of Colin’s era, it’s an anomalous one for that era, and doesn’t quite represent the season as a whole. For them the bad stuff does. And yes admittedly that’s because the cancellation announcement happened around the time The Two Doctors’ final episode aired and Timelash was immediately next so those stood in the mind as why the show was losing people’s patience. But still Revelation would’ve seemed like a freak anomaly, rather than a return to glory (especially for those who remember the shocking gulf in quality from Caves to Twin Dilemma the year prior)

I must admit though, I do think if Doctor Who had ended there and then, then Revelation could’ve spawned one hell of an interesting New Adventures range.

“Sorry but that is not true. To start with Michael Grade said he hated the show as far back as the Baker era. There was an interview with him at that time where he said that if he were in charge of the BBC he would cancel it outright.”

I’ve no doubt he hated the show and wanted it gone even in its golden age. Whether he could’ve cancelled it back during Season 14 or 16 is another matter. I think at the time far too much was institutionally invested in having the show continue to fill that particular slot, and its staff of designers still kept in work to the schedule they were on, to risk complicating it like that.

The BBC in the 70’s knew the show got good ratings and was liked enough to justify taking more away from the budget in the knowledge people would still watch it out of nostalgic affection, and that it was a show they needed on, especially at the time because the BBC was suffering a financial crisis in the late 70’s. It needed all its old big guns.

If Grade was to cancel it then, he’d probably have faced a hell of a lot more blowback within the corporation. Maybe he’d have even known it beforehand and known not to be that stupid.

“The people who ran the BBC hated Sci Fi in general, hence why all Sci Fi on that channel vanished for 10 years. The makers of Red Dwarf were even advised by Paul Jackson to play it up as a comedy rather than Sci Fi as the heads of the BBC HATED Sci Fi.

Thus it was obvious that in contrast to the 60's and the 70's the heads of the Beeb wanted to finish it.”

But if they had ended it in the 70’s, it would’ve been a clear cut injustice.

Or maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe ending the show on Season 14, it’d be just like The Young Ones ending when it did. Immortalized as it was in a way that meant it was never really gone and we could be satisfied with what we had.

Maybe the worst thing about the 80’s and New Who as well was the feeling of the show being taken away a piece at a time.

The problem is Grade didn’t cancel it during Season 14. He cancelled it right during the mean-spirited excesses of the JNT/Saward period, and in that light was making a mean-spirited attack not on a beloved show, but an equally mean-spirited one. The case against the BBC then becomes their failure to see merit in stories like Warriors of the Deep and Twin Dilemma, at which point it’s all too easy to hand the winning argument over to Grade by default.

“At the end of the Hartnell and the Troughton era viewers dropped to 3 million for some episodes. For the 60's when there are only two channels and the shows in a good timeslot and being promoted. That's utterly pathetic!”

Whoah! Careful, you’re beginning to show a little Grade there.

I think the problem is partly that there wasn’t yet the fan lifestyle associated with the show back then that kept the flame as alive as in decades after. There was no DWM yet, the novelizations were in their infancy, and there was certainly no continuity index on the shelves.

Also at that point Dalekmania had ran its course, and the show and the BBC in general was behind the curve in terms of the turn to colour TV and the slickly edited, ITC shows, and stuff like The Prisoner.

This was something the BBC could remedy however, and indeed in 1970, they did, and the show’s ratings gradually returned to full health.

It wasn’t that easy in the mid-80’s, for reasons I’ll go into further down below.

“Similarly in the early 80's during Tom Bakers last season the shows viewers dropped to 4 million.”

Well I’ve always said Logopolis would’ve been the logical point to end it, and the ratings figures, coupled with Tom Baker handing in his notice are partly why it probably wouldn’t have seemed so controversial.

But, the BBC had already invested in a new producer to take the show ahead, and even went to the trouble of having Barry Letts drafted in as Exec producer. To go to all that trouble and then cancel the show in JNT’s first year would’ve been difficult to justify.

Add to that the fact that the BBC Saturday night viewing figures in 1980-81 were poor in general, and it becomes harder to justify penalising Doctor Who solely.

“No way can anybody say that in the mid 80's in Colin's first season where the viewers where over 7 million on average and there were more channels and it was the most popular British show abroad did it deserve cancellation compared to 3 million when there were only two channels.”

But by the same token, with that much riding on the show, that’s all the more reason it can’t afford to be spoiling that good will with something like Twin Dilemma.

The show had grown in popularity from that 3 million, yes. Grown exponentially.

But from 1979 to 1985 the show in Britain wasn’t growing, at all. There was a marked decrease in viewing figures. At their highest in Season 17 and 19, and then two million viewers disappear and they don’t come back.

In 1972, The Three Doctors did a lot to win back a huge chunk of the audience in droves. In 1983, The Five Doctors didn’t even do as well, ratings-wise as Time-Flight.

Yes it was doing well overseas where the franchise itself was a newly discovered treasure and something very refreshingly different to American TV, although I’d query whether this was on the strength of the Doctor Who, JNT and Saward were producing, or the older stuff.

But my belief is that the show wasn’t growing because it had become familiar wallpaper to the older crowd, but inaccessible and almost impenetrable at best to younger first-time viewers, and repellent at worst.

“It was a completely unprofessional decision.”

Yes it was, but so was a lot of the creative decisions made by JNT and Saward. So was going to a convention in the States when your script editor is trying to get your new Doctor’s unworkable debut script ready. So was blacklisting Peter Grimwade over a personal slight. So was driving away two of your script-editors. So was JNT slagging off his struggling, and much abused predecessor Graham Williams to an audience of fans. So was making Tegan and Adric’s characterisation so invidious. So was ending Twin Dilemma with an invidious up yours to the audience of “Whether you like it or not!” So was letting Ian Levine dictate how Warriors of the Deep and Attack of the Cybermen be written. So was ending Warriors of the Deep and Mindwarp and characterising the Doctor in both in such a way as to leave the audience feeling like the butt of a tasteless practical joke.

There’s plenty of recriminations of unprofessionalism to go round, and plenty of ways it could be argued that unprofessionalism led to the detriment of the show. Whether that be the show as it was seen, or the show is it existed. And I emphasise all this because I think what Grade did lets the production team off the hook far too much. And also because, a huge part of me just feels that the unpleasant, sordid circus the JNT era show had become in front of and behind the cameras, that wasn’t even about good triumphing over evil anymore, or good being good enough or good even triumphing over the basic competency test anymore, just needed to stop.

Also because JNT and Saward had severely crossed the line in violent content and the maladjusted way the Doctor was portrayed, Grade was able to dress his admittedly unprofessional decision up in maintaining some kind of wholesome TV standards.

Furthermore, he was brought in with the instruction to downsize the corporation. If it wasn’t someone of the contentious track record of Grade doing this, it could be argued they were just doing their job. But equally if the show wasn’t a has-been (and if JNT’s era hadn’t been wearing the proverbial bullseye on its back and front with the invidious onscreen moments in The Twin Dilemma) circumstances would’ve forced the corporation to recognise their mistake.

“Also your other point about before they thought the show was irreplaceable doesn't apply as ultimately if the Beeb REALLY cared about the show in the mid 80's (when again its viewers weren't even a problem) they could have replaced the entire production team and put more money into it and so on.”

I’m sorry but more money or budget wouldn’t have made Warriors of the Deep or Twin Dilemma remotely any more redeemable or fit for broadcast.

The show existed as long as it did because it was cheap to make. Spending more money on it would’ve defeated the point of continuing it at all.

And that’s the problem. The man left who could and would manage the show on a tight budget was JNT. At that point, no-one else would, or could be relied upon to do it. That’s what Johnathan Powell said.

The show had reached the point where it and its producer were almost inseparable now. He had become the show.

He’d changed how it was perceived, so that it was seen now as an exclusively fan-orientated continuity venture, and that the violent instability of Colin’s Doctor was just how introducing a new Doctor just has to be done now, when it never had to be that way before.

And that’s the central point. When the show was behind the times because it was in black and white, that was in time an amendable problem. But what the show had become under JNT and Saward (namely inaccessible, mean-spirited, cultish and plagued by dead wood) was now something that had reached the point of no return. The opposite of the scenario where the show was too long established and too useful for filling a TV slot, to be gotten rid of.

(continued....)

Paul McGann IS the War Doctor in my fic
http://dalekwars.blogspot.co.uk/

reply share

add reply

formatting help