Revisionist Doctor Who fans still insist that the Sylvester McCoy era (1987-89) of the ‘classic series’ represented some sort of extraordinary uptick in the show’s creative fortunes. The truth is that the dying show never recovered the ground lost by its infamous ‘hiatus’ (that saw the planned 23rd season postponed and entirely restructured), and any temporary improvement in quality is almost entirely accidental and not the result of some grand ‘masterplan’ created to kick the show back into TV’s first division.
Sylvester McCoy’s first and third seasons – already available as part of The Collection Blu-ray series – are still largely unwatchable. His first season is a catastrophic collection of broad, camp, overlit pantomime romps and his third is torpedoed by haphazard scripts from new writers unfamiliar with the structure of coherent TV storytelling and then rendered incomprehensible by poor editing. Season 25, McCoy’s second season, arrives on Blu-ray at last and is a blessed relief from those that preceded and succeeded it. The stories here generally work as stories; McCoy’s performance has settled into something far less manic, and he’s well-matched to his boisterous new companion Ace (Sophie Aldred). It’s understandable that, despite still-low viewing figures and audience appreciation reactions, fans felt that here there were still signs of life in Doctor Who’s battered body and, if nothing else, this impressive new set serves as a decent final hurrah for a show long since abandoned by the BBC who had wanted rid of it for several years.
There are a couple of genuinely great Doctor Who stories here, though. Season opener Remembrance of the Daleks is not only the best Dalek story since 1975’s Genesis of the Daleks. it’s a great piece of late ’80s TV. It crackles with the enthusiasm and brio of a team that really believes it has the capacity to turn the show around. McCoy is on good form in a serial that effortlessly recaptures the show’s 1970s UNIT glory days and the four episodes, breezily directed by Andrew Morgan, are full of impressive action scenes and special FX set pieces that bely the show’s notoriously small budget. The season finale (the show had been reduced to just 14 episodes by now), The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, is probably the last quality serial of the classic run and sees the Doctor and Ace arrive on the quarry-like surface of the planet Segonoax where they attend the infamous Psychic Circus. Making good use of traditionally creepy circus imagery and filled with weird and wonderful supporting actors (and a fine villain in Ian Reddington’s Chief Clown) ‘The Greatest Show in the Galaxy’ also finds time to gently parody Doctor Who fans and their limpet-like devotion to a show that they believe is long past its best but they can’t bring themselves to let go of. The Happiness Patrol, the second story, is a witty and wordy political parable featuring the bizarre and notorious Kandy Man in his Kandy Kitchen, and a sluggish pace largely lets it down, some hammy acting and stuffy, claustrophobic, studio-based production. The 25th-anniversary three-parter Silver Nemesis audaciously tells the exact same story as Remembrance but adds Cybermen and a few clunky would-be Nazis chasing after a powerful and deadly artefact to the mix.
As ever, the Season 25 set is supported by a slew of enticing new supporting material. Toby Hadoke’s tasteful documentary Looking for Dursley is easily the high point here, a sensitive exploration of the life and times of talented young actor Dursley McLinden (who starred in Remembrance as an impossibly macho soldier) who passed away in 1995, a victim of the AIDS crisis. The documentary avoids mawkishness and offers up endless reminiscences from friends and colleagues (including a typically ebullient Russell T Davies) across a career cut tragically short. Matthew Sweet conducts three hour-long interviews with alumni of the period; Sophie Aldred is back again, largely ruminating on her return to the show in 2022’s The Power of the Doctor, former director Chris Clough (now an acclaimed producer whose most recent success was ITV’s acclaimed Mr Bates versus The Post Office earlier in the year) discusses his career on shows like Brookside, The Bill, and, of course, Doctor Who and McCoy-era script editor Andrew Cartmel continues to bang his drum proclaiming that this era marked a new golden age for Doctor and that it was firing on all cylinders when it left the screen in 1989. The Behind the Sofa features return for each story and remain watch-once affairs. Sophie Aldred (again) catches up with her Happiness Patrol co-star Lesley Dunlop, and there are lots of new BBC archive treasures dredged up alongside the extra material previously available on previous DVD releases of these stories.
Each of the four stories also benefits from an abundance of previously-unseen deleted scenes woven back into the episodes, sympathetically updated special effects (The Happiness Patrol is massively opened up by new CGI shots that establish the story’s location as a planet and not just cramped sets in Television Centre) and both ‘Remembrance’ and ‘Silver Nemesis’ are enlivened/improved by little touches bound to be appreciated best by long-term fans. There’s plenty more, too, and some might even be tempted to endure the Escape Room feature and the hours of unused studio and location footage, which remind us that if the BBC had little time for or interest in the show, the people bringing it to the screen were determined to do their very best in horribly straightened circumstances.
Season 25 isn’t Doctor Who at its best – those days had long gone by now – but this set certainly serves as a terrific testament to troubled times in the show’s history. The Blu-Ray transfer is as sparkling as it can be for 36-year-old episodes largely shot on video or OB, and, as ever, it’s heartening to see the inventiveness of the new special features and the absolute dedication of the team who compile these sets to present even the weakest eras of the show in the best possible light.
DOCTOR WHO THE COLLECTION – SEASON 25 is available now on Blu-ray
