We’ve finished Season 5 in the TV Club a couple of weeks ago! Cybermen, Yeti, Ice Warriors, bases under siege left and right… plus Jamie in a kilt running through all of it. It’s also one of those seasons where only a handful of episodes actually survive, which makes it all the more interesting to reflect on. What are your thoughts on this season?
Here are the links to the individual episode discussions:
I haven’t seen Wheel In Space yet (planning on watching it this afternoon), but I must say this season is surprisingly strong. I was hesitant going in as literally every story (bar one) is a base under siege, but they all happen to be really entertaining and for the most part, well paced.
When it comes to these base under siege stories, the best ones to me are The Web of Fear, as the atmosphere is amazing and the guest cast has great chemistry and Fury From the Deep which again, has a great atmosphere and some amazing action scenes. The rest is mostly good but some stories (particularly The Abominable Snowmen and The Ice Warriors) suffer from bad pacing several times during their run time.
Tomb of the Cybermen was interesting to me as this was one of the few cases where I think the atmosphere and tension was amazing, but the guest cast was weak enough to bring my opinions of it down a bit.
Finally, Enemy of the World is truly just as good as everyone says it is and they somehow managed to make a James Bond, globe trotting, doppelganger episode work even during these early days of the show. It’s definitely the best story in this season and deserves all the praise it gets. It also benefits from being the only story here that isn’t a base under siege, which gives viewers a nice little mid season break.
Overall, this season is obviously defined by it’s most used story type, but is also one of the most tense, atmospheric, and well written seasons the show has produced so far. It’s made me appreciate the Second Doctor a lot more after I was slightly apprehensive about his character during season 4 which is amazing. Jamie and Victoria are great companions and it was nice to see a companion farewell which was actually respectful of the characters autonomy and naturally written!
A strong-ish season, but interestingly the first so far which arguably doesn’t reinvent the wheel in some way. Season 5 really feels like it’s making a conscious effort to build off the template laid down in season 4, and give the show a more defined tone and identity than it had in the Hartnell era. Every serial, with the exception of The Enemy of the World, is continuing that slightly B-movie, monster movie feel of the later season 4 serials, and over the course of this run we see that format both perfected (in The Web of Fear) and start to become tired through overuse (in The Wheel in Space and, to a lesser extent, Fury from the Deep). There are several classics here, but after the freewheeling and experimental Hartnell years, it does feel a little rote, and I’m looking forward to the programme hopefully regaining a bit of that spirit in Troughton’s final season (at the very least, I’m excited to rewatch The Mind Robber).
Troughton himself is phenomenal throughout this season, and unless his performance takes an abrupt and shocking nosedive in his final stories, he’s probably going to cement himself in my top five or maybe even top three Doctors by the time he departs the role. Frazer Hines is also excellent, and it’s no mystery why he’s one of the programme’s most enduring companions. That leaves Deborah Watling’s Victoria Waterfield, a character who I have very mixed feelings about. Watling herself is fantastic whenever she’s onscreen, and Victoria feels like a much more deliberately conceived character than any companion since Steven or Sara Kingdom - I’m just not sure how well I think she fits into this era of the programme. I get the impression she’s intended as a sort of classic horror movie “damsel in distress” archetype, but that doesn’t make her a particularly compelling character to watch or root for, and I think it’s telling that when Zoe shows up in The Wheel in Space, she’s getting stuck into the action almost from the moment she’s introduced. Victoria would have made a perfect fit back in Hartnell’s time, when simple exploration and survival was the order of the day, but now the series has evolved into something in which evil is more actively confronted, a more passive companion doesn’t really cut the mustard.
In terms of rankings, there are some really great serials through the middle of this run, but those at the start and end are unfortunately the weakest:
Tomb of the Cybermen: 2.5 stars
The Abominable Snowmen (telesnaps + surviving episode): 4 stars
The Ice Warriors: 4.5 stars
The Enemy of the World: 4.5 stars
The Web of Fear: 5 stars
Fury from the Deep (telesnaps): 3 stars
The Wheel in Space (telesnaps + surviving episodes): 2 stars
Successful on the whole, but lacking some of the imagination of earlier seasons, and with some notably weaker stories sandwiching the great ones.
