This is the post for discussing Season 19 (Peter Davison Season 1) and all the stories set within and around this season. How does this season work? Do all the stories shoehorned in help, hurt or not effect how you view the TV season.
TV Stories: Castrovalva, Four to Doomsday, Kinda, The Visitation, Black Orchid, Earthshock and Time-Flight.
Season 19 is one of my favourite runs of Doctor Who going. Some say the TARDIS is too crowded but I love this team and I see it as a dysfunctional family, the Doctor filling a somewhat parental role as he’s always trying to wrangle Tegan, Nyssa and Adric together.
You get a lot of variety with the team, two of the companions aren’t even human! Yet the companions all have the loss of family - and in Adric and Nyssa’s case, their homes - connecting them and that’s something I wish the show tapped into more, but I appreciate that there are at least references throughout. Really some of my favourite the show has had!
Castrovalva is also one of the best Doctor introductions and would be my goto suggestion for a new fan if it weren’t for the story following directly on from Logopolis. Kinda is another favourite that I also don’t feel quite right recommending because one of the companions is written out of it! Earthshock is great but wouldn’t have the same impact to somebody who’s just been introduced to Adric, but The Visitation would make a great entry point!
The elephants in the room are Black Orchid and Time-Flight for me though. Black Orchid at least works taken as more of a hangout story for the team and Time-Flight isn’t quite as bad as people say but any goodwill is sapped by Kalid.
Overall a joyous run with one of the best TARDIS teams though!
This year’s run of The Fifth Doctor Adventures over at Big Finish is set during Season 19 too! I’ve been very excited about that, more stories with the full group makes me happy and especially now that the Fifth Doctor audios are kinda in a golden age imo?
Really enjoyed The Dream Team on the whole so I’m very excited for The Great Beyond, the cover art for it is stunning and it makes me so glad I started getting the CDs with the switch to box sets.
Either earlier this year or late last year, I thought I’d try to go through the Fifth Doctor era in (as best as I could) an in-universe chronological order (with TV, audios and novels). I got through Four to Doomsday, and for Cold Fusion, I listened to the Big Finish adaptation because I couldn’t get a hold of the novel. Psychodrome is a very interesting story that gives the TARDIS crew the bonding that the show never gave them but they desparately needed. Part of me wants to get back into that, but I’ve so much else I want to consume too.
The Forty saga from Big Finish complicates the order a bit. There’s a bit of jumping around. From the Doctor’s perspective all three stories take place directly after Four to Doomsday, but he’s being sent through his whole timeline, with the events of:
But this is only from the perspective of the cast, and the last story is a little more complicated for reasons hard to explain without giving plot elements away, and it’s absolutely a story I could not recommend going into blind more.
So really, it’s up to you where you include them in this marathon if at all.
Oh, I’ve listened to Forty. Yeah, placement is wierd on those.
Recently found this glorious spreadsheet in the quest to compile my own (rapidly growing) dr who spreadsheet to keep track of everything I listen/read/watch etc. which helps place pretty much all of Five’s stories in roughly chronological order, with some added stats as a bonus. As a spreadsheet and data nerd, I’m in love.
Also thought it’d help with trying to see where/how the expanded stories fit in around the TV episodes.
Peri having a higher percentage than Adric is throwing me. Get that boy in more expanded media stories asap.
IKR!! I may be extremely biased (latched onto Adric as an 8yo and never recovered) but he rly should be in more stories!!
Also like. Part of what made Five’s sacrifice in Caves of Androzani so impactful was that they barely knew each other and yet he gave her that one vial without hesitation, leading to regeneration.
But on the flip side, Peri travelling longer with 5 helps make it more understandable why she stayed with 6, in spite of his attempt to kill her and general abrasiveness. He’s no longer a guy she barely knows. He’s her friend who she doesn’t want to abandon. So I suppose it’s an even trade off.
Yeah fair point! Plus IRL it’s mainly that Nicola Bryant has been with Big Finish doing audios longer than Matthew Waterhouse, who also lived in the US for a while.
So The Great Beyond huh
So are next year’s. That said, I wouldn’t mind a new Fifth Doctor companion or more solo Turlough.
