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Ye Gods, the John Nathan-Turner era of "Dr. Who" was ass-bleedingly bad...

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
I mean, Berman and Braga probably worship him for the ability to kill a classic long-running science fiction show.

Old "Dr. Who" is on RetroTV. As a kid I missed most of the Colin Baker stories and all the Sylvester McCoy ones. As a kid I actually enjoyed the Peter Davison stories. But as a grown up, the Davison stories start bad and get worse. By the time Colin Baker was in, the stories were not good, but they at least kind of held together and made sense--although the production decisions were abysmal. The Doctor dresses like a clown? Why? I mean, looking back, Davison's costume wasn't good, but geez, Colin Baker's was horrible. And by the time McCoy became the Doctor, they at least kind of fixed the costume, but the stories are just fucking terrible. Painful. Unwatchable. "Paradise Towers" was on last time I watched. This week it was "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy." The stories make no sense. Things just happen. The acting is terrible. And by the end of the classic run even when they set up a decent premise--say "The Curse of Fenrig" or "Battlefield"--they create an interesting (if flawed) story in the first 2 acts and then just throw it all out the window to pull something completely unrelated out of their ass for the finale.

I'm watching it because I haven't seen these episodes as much as the Tom Baker* and earlier stories, but god-DAMN, it's awful unwatchable garbage. Watching it is masochistic torture. They've got 3 different rotations: 2 hours Saturday nights, which is probably just about to go back to the 1963 Hartnell episodes if it hasn't already, 2 hours Sunday nights that is on McCoy, and an hour a night Monday through Friday that is on Hartnell. Last time I popped in was "The Keys of Marinus." And while that's certainly a flawed story, it at least kind of holds together and is far stronger than anything from the 2nd half of the 1980s.

*My cutoff for good classic "Who" is basically the arrival of K-9. Loved him as a kid, but now... Apart from "Image of the Fendahl," "State of Decay," and a few others, the show starts getting cornier and cornier--and becoming more and more "The Tom Baker Show."
 
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