March 16, 2025

Doctor In Distress


 
In March 1985 Doctor Who was paused. As the previous post makes clear this was initially intended as a cancellation but because the BBC has never been the most robust decision maker and also due to a tabloid led outcry (partly orchestrated secretly by the series' production office) the halt became a hiatus. Doctor Who would be back, said Bill Cotton, the King of the BBC, but not for eighteen months. We may smile now that this gap caused such consternation; in 2025 two years is the average gap between seasons of many major fantasy shows. In 1985 however, at least as far as fans were concerned, it was simply too long to wait and they wanted to do something about it.

Thus a plan was hatched to make a high profile song to highlight an issue which, as far the wider public was concerned, had already been sorted. The people to whom this task fell were Ian Levine and Fiachra Tench. Levine had a track record as a DJ and producer of HI NRG records that were popular in clubs and were also starting to infiltrate the charts.  As the name suggests HI NRG music is supposed to be powerful, up tempo and pulsing with intense vocals. Ian Levine’s own superb production of the song `High Energy` by Evelyn Thomas the previous year is a textbox example of the musical genre. `Doctor In Distress` is not.



March 14, 2025

Season 7 Collection: Extras

 

The Collection season seven doesn’t have as many new extras as others only because the DVDs of individual stories were replete with additional features. Even the usual shelf space saving isn’t possible as the width of the box is more or less the same as that of the four individual dvds together but there should always be ample room for one of the cornerstone seasons of Doctor Who. It’s no exaggeration to say that season seven saved the series at a moment when its future was in doubt. Yet it’s also a unique quartet of stories as season 8 onwards boiled the show down to primary colours so remains an outlier in the series’ style. 

I reviewed these four stories in detail on this blog five years ago, to read those reviews go to January- May 2020 posts in the Archive.