Captain Quirk

We are halfway through Planet of Evil in our occasional Tom Baker chronological rewatch and... well, we're certainly enjoying it, but is this the most Star Trek-like episode ever? An isolated planet quite literally on the final frontier, a scientist there who's behaving a little oddly, a Federation, sorry Morestran, starship turning up to investigate, a jungle created in the studio and an alien menace made of pure energy to save money.

The Hinchcliffe era is often lauded as a high point - if not THE high point - of Doctor Who, but approximately halfway in I'm not sure if it really deserves that sort of immunity from criticism. What it has, in spades, is a sort of grim and gritty hyper-seriousness. The situations are deadly, the bodies keep piling up, and while the Fourth Doctor has a clownish streak there's never the slightest hint of him not being in desperate earnest about the predicaments he finds himself in. (How that would all change under Hinchcliffe's successor...)

The charming, bumbling Harry Sullivan has now been removed from the TARDIS lineup, and it's interesting how much harder-edged that immediately makes the show. That this era's Doctor is a big fan of humanity as a species is a matter of record - see the famous eulogy from Ark in Space - but in Season 13 it's starting to become obvious he no longer cares much about humans as individuals. I criticized the most recent episode of Sarah Jane Adventures, The Gift, for Sarah's xenophobia and throwaway callousness towards the Blathereen, but watching Planet of Evil it's easy to see where she got it from. The Doctor professes to be actively tempted to hop into the TARDIS and leave the entire Morestran crew to die, if it wasn't for the small matter of the entire universe being endangered.

We'll see more evidence that this most alien of Doctors feels little empathy for individual humans as the season goes on. He does seem to be fiercely protective of Sarah, of course, where he mostly just verbally abused Harry for being an idiot. I wonder how much of the early dynamic of the new series arose from RTD's love for this era (apparently the man's favorite ever story is Ark in Space). The Ninth Doctor's unswerving devotion to Rose ("I could save the world but lose you!") while constantly belittling "Mickey the idiot" is very Season 12. Of course, Sarah's exit at the end of The Hand of Fear is the proof of the pudding when it comes to the Fourth Doctor's alienness. Of course she matters to him, but he's not of her world, don't try to understand or second-guess his feelings, one day out of the blue he's just going to show her the door.

Anyway, back to grimness and grit: a lot of old school fans want and need that out of their Who. That and plenty of spaceships, aliens and scientific pseudobabble. "Real sci-fi" has a checklist of such approved elements, and takes them all VERY SERIOUSLY INDEED. (I imagine that devotees of the Hinchcliffe era were big fans of the recent Battlestar Galactica reboot too.) The enemies of "real sci-fi" are magical realism, metaphor, satire and silliness - hello the Sylvester McCoy era!

I've always felt that I disliked Eric Saward's mid-80s vision of Who above all others, but I suddenly find it easier to sympathize with him now that I realize that, in many ways, he was just trying to recreate Hinchcliffe Who. Lots of violence and death, heavy reliance on popular old foes to kick the era off, a clownish Doctor (in a literal clownsuit this time), and a certain humorlessness to the approach. You can imagine him being absolutely baffled about how, ten years later, this tack would lead the show not to critical adulation this time, but cancellation.

Myself, I like my Who as quirky and metaphorical as possible, and I'm glad that Russell T Davies kept those factors high in the new mix. Planet of Evil is all very well, but if I wanted a bunch of aggressive, unlikeable characters (the Doctor included) posturing for dominance, spouting clunky, po-faced dialogue and then being killed by a sentient outline, I might as well go watch 60s Trek. Hinchcliffe Who is so straight-down-the-line and serious, but is it actually that much fun? My personal jury's still out on that one, but I guess we have many of the recognized classics to come. Let's see if they can win me over...