Interlude - Stop the Party

I look back to 1985 now, and it's very hazy because I was only 7 years old, but it seems like a good time. Doctor Who was having a good time, and I've heard it said (with not a little irony) that the future had never looked brighter than at this point. Fans were happy (hard though it is to believe now), the series was achieving respectable ratings, and with the 20th Anniversary just past, the profile of the show was at a high. The portrait of those times from old photos and contemporary footage certainly seems like a rosy one - exhibitions, competitions on Saturday Superstore, a thriving monthly magazine... DWM eagerly looked forward to every new season of stories, and how lucky we were to have such a great Doctor Who.

Because it was great. Again, it was difficult to believe a short while afterwards, but Colin Baker was taken to our hearts after "The Twin Dilemma". Well, he would be wouldn't he? Given just one story in which the team had made the bold move of elaborating on the Doctor's post-regenerative confusion (a novel notion that would have taken more than a bet-hedging gamble to condemn), we were still sure that Doctor Who was both brilliant and invincible. Everyone loved Doctor Who in 1985, and it must have been beyond the nightmares of most grown-up fans that they might actually take it off. Those of us that were young didn't even think of it. We just loved Doctor Who.

And then, things changed. I don't want to lumber into the reasons why, but certainly over the course of Season 22, a decision was reached which would alter things forever. Someone was about to call time on the party. But, like the out-of-their-faces revellers that just keep on head banging after the music has been switched off, nobody seems to have behaved as if Doctor Who were anything other than facing a jolly future until a long time afterwards. Perhaps they all thought they could take on the BBC and win? The recklessness with which the fans entered battle with the very people that made and controlled the thing they were protecting certainly suggests this. But nobody seemed to think they might lose. Look at the smiling faces in the photos from the "Doctor in Distress" recording sessions. These people are whiling away a finite hiatus, and next year they'll be back making Doctor Who again. Just like before.

It seems obvious now that things would never be the same again. Looking at the abandoned Season 23, it plots only more partying; expensive location filming, good-time monsters returning and an apathy with regards stories that would have been as wretched as "Timelash". That said, it's a great pity that "The Nightmare Fair" was never made. You can just picture them promoting it on "Saturday Superstore" can't you? Blackpool was almost Season 22's natural home, a very British fairground ride for kids, so it was quite fitting we were going to get a story there. Instead, the fairground we meet in "Trial" is of the much more sinister kind.

The fourteen episode season must have been what allowed it all to finally sink in; a harsh sign that Doctor Who was no longer the darling of the Beeb. There would be no more luxurious location shoots or Anniversary specials, in fact very soon there would be no more Colin Baker. Doctor Who is legendary for its penny-pinching, but it's only really after Season 22 that you can hear the belt being drawn in. It also seems oddly fitting that shortly after we lost our nationally adored Doctor Who, its new Doctor had to go too. He was a brash, exciting Doctor for a flamboyant, egocentric Doctor Who. He wouldn't have suited a comedy-orientated 14 part show and a graveyard slot opposite "Coronation Street". Can you honestly see him skulking about Terra Alpha or darkly manipulating the Cybermen with ancient weapons? However much it didn't deserve to work, Sylv was a great Time's Champion, or would have been had the axe not fallen again. But that's another story.

Just about the only constant in Doctor Who's long history is change, but events of 1985 just about trump the lot. This time it wasn't a producer, or an actor that waved the series farewell... it was all the things we took for granted would NEVER change. Time, money, faith. They could have edited out the end of "Revelation of the Daleks" completely. Instead, someone chose to leave "Blackpool" on the very tip of the Doctors tongue, before he's cut off mid-word, never to get there. I like to think they did it symbolically, perhaps in the knowledge that this Doctor's day in the sun would forever be hanging unfinished.