Time And The Rani
Jul. 11th, 2012 11:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloIn for a penny...
I thought I'd take a look at McCoy's first outing in the role, mainly to see if it's as ghastly as legend suggests. Well, it depends what you're expecting. Serious SF it ain't. The newly regenerated Doctor is having trouble with his memory, Kate O'Mara has invented a giant brain and wants trhe Doctor to work on it. To fool him into helping her she puts on a ginger wig and pretends to be Bonnie Langford. Meanwhile the real Bonnie Langford is running round an abandoned quarry being chased by men in bat suits.
Colin Baker refused to show up for the transformation scene, so that's McCoy lying on the floor in a Colin Baker wig. Once he's up and running this Doctor is mostly tumbling and fumbling and mangling proverbs ("Every dogma will have its day.") Oh, and playing the spoons. There's a fair bit of Chaplin in the physical comedy. The hat is more Buster Keaton. Or is it Bud Flanagan? Before he signed up for this gig McCoy had worked with The Ken Campbell Roadshow and was noted for sticking nails up his nose and ferrets down his trousers. You get what you pay for. Later some gravitas was added, but you're not seeing it here.
Bonnie Langford had been a child star, specializing in sweet and sour. She was brilliant as the lisping, blackmailing Violet Elizabeth Bott in a TV version of the Just William stories. Then she grew up. Langford as Mel is still the little girl you love to hate. You don't identify with her. You don't fancy her. Also she screams a lot.
If I'd been Michael Grade I'd have been angling to get this show cancelled too. It's a waste of licence money. But I'm not Michael Grade and it's a quarter of a century later and I'm going, "Wait a minute, but this is fun!"
I thought I'd take a look at McCoy's first outing in the role, mainly to see if it's as ghastly as legend suggests. Well, it depends what you're expecting. Serious SF it ain't. The newly regenerated Doctor is having trouble with his memory, Kate O'Mara has invented a giant brain and wants trhe Doctor to work on it. To fool him into helping her she puts on a ginger wig and pretends to be Bonnie Langford. Meanwhile the real Bonnie Langford is running round an abandoned quarry being chased by men in bat suits.
Colin Baker refused to show up for the transformation scene, so that's McCoy lying on the floor in a Colin Baker wig. Once he's up and running this Doctor is mostly tumbling and fumbling and mangling proverbs ("Every dogma will have its day.") Oh, and playing the spoons. There's a fair bit of Chaplin in the physical comedy. The hat is more Buster Keaton. Or is it Bud Flanagan? Before he signed up for this gig McCoy had worked with The Ken Campbell Roadshow and was noted for sticking nails up his nose and ferrets down his trousers. You get what you pay for. Later some gravitas was added, but you're not seeing it here.
Bonnie Langford had been a child star, specializing in sweet and sour. She was brilliant as the lisping, blackmailing Violet Elizabeth Bott in a TV version of the Just William stories. Then she grew up. Langford as Mel is still the little girl you love to hate. You don't identify with her. You don't fancy her. Also she screams a lot.
If I'd been Michael Grade I'd have been angling to get this show cancelled too. It's a waste of licence money. But I'm not Michael Grade and it's a quarter of a century later and I'm going, "Wait a minute, but this is fun!"
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no subject
Date: 2012-07-12 09:43 am (UTC)In a documentary on one of my Doctor Who DVDs, script-editor-of-the-time Eric Saward says after producer Jon Nathan Turner stunt-cast Bonnie Langford he insisted on having her do a screen test, and he was pleased to find she could play against her child star persona well, provided the script was letting her. But then all the writers just pumped out Bonnie Langford child star stuff (and Saward couldn't find a way to script edit them, apparently).
My impression is that when Colin Baker arrived Doctor Who was already overloaded with internal politics, with a script editor and producer barely talking to each other, and it was surprising the production cogs kept turning as well as they did. It seems so unprofessional, compared to today's TV making where roomfuls of writers and producers sit around big tables endlessly polishing everything months in advance of filming.
Trial of a Time Lord (Colin Baker's last season) was that production team's attempt to finally get their crap together. It has some really interesting stuff, including Robert Holmes's last script and Peri's controversial departure, but it all falls apart at the end (because Holmes's death prompted an eruption of all the buried politics).
I can't remember much about early McCoy, but I think late McCoy is great. It was becoming a more mature 90s show just as it got cancelled.
I think the new show should bring Kate O'Mara back to be the Rani again.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-12 12:49 pm (UTC)Langford has bags of talent. I can well-believe she was ill-served by the writers. Again, she's burdened by a silly look.
McCoy is one of my favourite Doctors. He grew in the role. I have happy memories of watching him with my kids. They thought he was fab.
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Date: 2012-07-12 02:57 pm (UTC)I do think they were getting it right by the end of the McCoy era, with the psychological focus on Ace and McCoy's Doctor existing in the shadows a bit more.