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Really? I think the final 1989 year of Who was the best it'd ever been since the golden era in the '70s. They finally had some new blood in their writing & production team who demonstrated more than sufficient creative talent.

Admittedly, the first two years of Sylvester's era weren't as good as the third but the problem with the first was that the scripts were written before the writers knew what sort of Doctor they were writing for so just continued to write for a comical Doctor.

Sylv wanted to play the character straight & explore his dark & mysterious nature & in the last year when he was allowed to do that the show actually matured a bit. And he HATED the question mark jumper & umbrella handle as he felt that made him look like a Batman villain. We can thank good old JNT for that!

It was unfortunate the show got cancelled when it - just when it was picking up again...

Back on our old mate JNT you know he wanted to change the external appearance of the TARDIS from a police box into something else? Why? Because he felt that kids in the '80s wouldn't be familiar with police boxes. Well, I'll be! Dr Who didn't start until the '60s & didn't even become popular until the '70s so I think it'd be safe to say that none of the kids that ever followed the show were very familirar with police boxes. Especially kids who don't even live in the UK & live in countries that never even had police boxes. To anyone who has (or hasn't seen the show) the familiar blue box is a TARDIS & that fact that it is recognised as a TARDIS rather than a police box was the whole point! It was supposed to be a juxtaposition of a relic so that even the people on Earth would look at it & say, "What is this strange blue box for" or "What is a police public call box anyway?" I think there were a lot of factors of Dr Who that seemed to escape JNT's imagination completely at times...

Actually, only Season 24, Syl's first year, featured a comical 7th Doctor. By the show's 25th anniversary, Andrew Cartmel had come in (I think it was Cartmel) and wanted the darker Doctor. "Remembrance" and "Silver Nemesis" were two of the four shows in Season 25. The brown, rather than cream, jacket featured in Season 26 helped make the new Doctor a bit darker, though. The 1996 novel "Lungbarrow" (showing the Doctor's true, previously untold origins) was originally the concept of the Season 25/26 editors, and would have become one of the episodes had the original series not been cancelled.

What was worse was that frigging "Coronation Street" was placed on ITV opposite "Doctor Who" during Syl's reign. By the way, Syl's my favourite Doctor. Did you know that, in the 40th Anniversary Doctor Who Magazine, JNT was voted both the best and worst influence on Doctor Who. JNT was also gay as all hell - I mean, Hawaiian shirts and shorts in Britain!

I know by the last season of the original run their hearts were mostly in the right place but by that time I don't think they had the talent in most departments (including the leads) to back it up. I'm sorry to say that by that stage I had ceased caring; then again, I thought the most exciting thing about 'The Caves of Androzani' was Peri's cleavage, so what would I know?

I have always been opinionated and I can remember me and a friend sending a letter to the 'Doctor Who fan club of Australia' at about the end of Colin Baker's first season wondering what had happened to "all the good episodes". Let me just say that I did not get the response I was after . Watching the episodes back I must say that I was largely wrong about Colin Baker but right about the series as a whole.

You can say that the series had a long heyday from about 1970 – 77 with the largest peak being Tom Bakers first season. Although I think Peter Davison was a bit bland I think a little bit of new life was brought to the program after Baker’s era began to go stale, though that is hardly how I saw it at the time. I think the break and the subsequent ‘Trial of a Timelord’ season marked the real beginning of a slow and inevitable end to the original run of the show; although some could argue that ‘Baker C’s’ first season was the first nail in the coffin or perhaps even when Turlough was left with nothing to do after he gave up on trying to kill the Doctor.

Sorry if this sounds like preaching but I just thought I would share a few of my thoughts on the show and perhaps hear back on what you guys think.

Try giving some of the Sylv McCoy ones a go again & see what you think. "Ghost Light" in his third year is one of the finest Who stories ever made & that's not just my opinion as it's also widely critically acclaimed to be. Definitely watch that!

In his second year I can recommend trying, "Remembrance of The Daleks", "Silver Nemesis" & "The Greatest Show in The Galaxy".

I can recommend anything in his third year because, as I said before, this was the best year of Who since the 70s "golden era". "Battlefield", "Ghost Light", "The Curse of Fenric" & "Survival" are all superb titles. The show really grew up in that finally year & got its legs back so it was unfortunate that the axe was already coming down.

Anyway, try some of these as I'd be curious to see what you think.

I thought Battlefield was considered awful by Whovians?

Oh dear, it's all gone terribly nerd hasn't it?

EDIT: Doh! Wrong Who thread.

Really? From what I recall it was okay.

That's like "The Stones of Blood" in the key to time saga, which was panned critically but voted by the Dr Who Society as the best for that time.

Although, of the four stories in the last season, Battlefield would be the least memorable - apart from Brigadier Winifred Bambera's over-usage of the word "Shame!" as an obvious replacement for "Shit!". That was annoying! Apparently it couples well with a book somewhere in which the Doctor is in fact Merlin (or something like that)...

Anyway, on my original question on this post as to why Aunty is skipping all the dalek stories, although I can't be certain about this, I believe it has something to do with all that hoo-hah regarding the ongoing TV rights negotiations between the BBC and the Terry Nation estate.

It's all really silly because I thought they resolved all this when they finally got the rights to use daleks in the new series.

Yes, Terry did write the first dalek stories & did create the basis of the whole dalek mythology but he did not "create" the daleks as it were. His original script "The Daleks" gave very little description on what the pepper pots actually were to look like. I think all they had in the script was something with an arm & an eye-stalk. It was the BBC design department that "created" the daleks yet Terry became ferociously possessive of them. They were stopped from being used for public appearances & promotions, no member of the public was ever allowed to look inside one, he had to approve of every script before it was produced, blah, blah, blah...

Everyone has a right to protect their art but, come on, what about the fans? Are we not even going to be allowed to see the old episodes until another negotiation settlement is reached? The BBC creative studio designed them & they're not jumping up & down about it.

Imagine if Rob Holmes & his estate carried on like this. Bang would go the rest of the regular Who monsters as well...

Apparently Aunty also skipped Pat Troughton's 10-part swan song the "The War Games" which would've shown new viewers why Pat suddenly became Jon Pertwee. That was a cracking good story too. One wonders how many others have been skipped...

Yeah, thanks SKaVeN; some things do grow on me and Ghost Light and Survival are two stories that I have not given enough attention to in the past.

Perhaps, for the most part, later-day 'Who' was probably just not my 'cup of tea'. My main problem is that after the relief of getting rid of Mel I found that I did not really take a shine to 'Ace' and it went from pantimime to deadly-earnest in one fell-swoop without giving us time to breath.

If anything, perhaps the stories in the final season were a tad 'too' complex and serious. With the limits of a BBC television budget and a Doctor/Companion team that (although they arguably may have had the best chemistry for a Doctor & companion duo since the 70s heyday) many think had quite limited individual talent it all came across as being far too 'forced' for my tastes.

However, I'll pay particular attention to the stories I mentioned and see how I go. I am looking forward to how Doctor Number 10 goes though.

By the way, how did you know that I was referring to the Sontarans?

I didn't...

I thought the whole issue with Terry Natin's estate and the telecast of the dalek storylines was sorted out. Obviously not. Maybe that was to do with the new round. If anyone wants more info on the new series, visit http://www.unithq.co.uk

Okay, a bunch of people hit a small ball over a net & the person that misses it the least amount of times gets to hold a trophy up at the end...

Right! Now that we've sorted that out, can we please have Dr Who back on, Aunty?