(Note: I don’t quite know what category this fits in. If it counts as TV or should stay in General?)
What are everyone’s thoughts on Season 6B? Is it necessary? Is it worth it for the Expanded Universe stories that have been placed within its bounds? I’m curious as to what you all think.
I used to be a big promoter of this ‘season’ and even wrote a fan fiction story set there. (It was called The Lizard Apes and wasn’t very good).
I haven’t actually read the books set there by Terrance Dicks but was a bit disappointed when Big Finish seemed to start dismissing the gap - only to then reintroduce it again with the Beyond the War Games set.
It’s all got a bit confused as to whether it’s a thing in the expanded universe or not.
I’m really enjoying what Big Finish are doing with it. It’s a creative, if unnecessary, solution to a continuity error, and a nice and interesting way of taking a 60-year old character and developing them past their canonical endpoint, taking them to new places as a character that you couldn’t go before
Interestingly (annoyingly), all of this can easily be brushed aside and replaced with the whole “bigenerated timeline” thing
I’m not sure what I think of the concept. There are TV Comic stories that are clearly set after the War Games (TV Comic 916-936), so I suppose the concept actually stems from there. I understand from various sources, and I may be wrong, that the main concept as we know it appeared in the 1980s as a way to explain what seemed to be continuity errors related to The Two Doctors primarily, and to a lesser extent The Five Doctors, that stemmed from Troughton being able to control the TARDIS and working for the Time Lords in The Two Doctors. From there, Terrence Dicks wrote a couple novels set in this “Season”, there have been a scattering of other stories set there, and then Big Finish set their current run of Second Doctor Adventures here.
I haven’t listened to the new Second Doctor stuff. I have them, but haven’t listened to them yet. I also haven’t read the Terrence Dicks novels as, living in the USA, older Doctor Who novels are hard to get a hold of in general. I don’t think the continuity error with the TV show is as glaring as it seems in order to warrant the creation of Season 6B. In fact, Big Finish did a decent job fixing the hole with the Early Adventures story The Black Hole, which featured the Meddling Monk. That really only leaves the TV Comic stories as absolutely needing the existance of Season 6B as I don’t see any way of retconning those (short of just throwing them out entirely).
With all the new members joining us, what are your thoughts on Season 6B?
I’m in two minds about it. On one hand, it’s a really fun status quo that has a lot of potential for interesting stories, and is still pretty underexplored. On the other hand, The War Games is one of the best regeneration stories ever, and its emotional ending loses its power when it turns out to be a fakeout - the Doctor doesn’t actually regenerate and Jamie gets to travel with him again, and then what was supposed to happen actually happened. It’s one of those Schrödinger’s canon situations, where I either acknowledge it or ignore it depending on whether it makes whatever story I’m going through better or worse.
I think it’s great and allows for more storytelling with the Second Doctor that is fun to see. Though I’m of the mind that they could go further and just allow new companions and situations with him. I always want new companions for every Doctor, anyway.
I don’t think the bigeneration figures into this or needs to be the explanation for an older-looking Second Doctor.
I know there’s been a sentiment over time that it cheapens the ending of The War Games, which I can understand, but I think the season 6B concept works really well if you can play into the tragedy of the situation, the Doctor forced to do all of these missions for the Time Lords, knowing trying to defeat them would be futile, holding out because freedom is so near, only to have his memory wiped and repeating the process all over again.
Doctor Who is riddled with continuity inconsistencies. But in a show with Time Travel, that actually makes sense to me.
Every trip creates unforseeable ripples, so there’s no reasonable expectation that things you knew as historical fact would remain the same unchanged historical fact.
Which gives me an out for any slip-up I’d like to excuse.
All that to say, in some timelines, the Doctor regenerated straightaway, in others he went to work for the Time Lords. And whichever timeline you’re working in, if you’ve got a good story to tell, I’ll watch/read/listen to it.
Maybe that answers the question, maybe it doesn’t.