Brief Summary
This video reviews Season 26 of Classic Doctor Who, highlighting its strengths and individual stories. It covers the four stories of the season: Battlefield, Ghost Light, The Curse of Fenric, and Survival, and discusses planned ideas for Season 27 before the show's cancellation.
- Season 26 is considered a high point in Classic Doctor Who.
- The season's stories blend elements of science fiction, history, and horror.
- The cancellation of the show prevented further development of the Seventh Doctor's era.
Introduction
The video introduces Season 26 of Classic Doctor Who as the end of the road for the classic series, but also as one of the best seasons since the era of Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe. It suggests that if the show had continued with Season 27, it could have marked the beginning of a new golden age for Doctor Who.
Battlefield
The first story of Season 26, "Battlefield," involves alternate reality techno-knight battles set in the near future. Jean Marsh, who played Sarah Kingdom in 1965, portrays the villain Morgane Lefay, who comes from an alternative reality with Mordred and his evil knights to seek King Arthur, who is in suspended animation in a spaceship at the bottom of a lake. The Doctor is portrayed as Merlin in this story. This story marks the last television appearance of the Brigadier in Doctor Who. Ace develops a lesbian subtext with the knight Anselin. Morgane is presented as an honorable villain.
Ghost Light
"Ghost Light" is described as the most confusing story in Classic Who, set in Victorian England. The Doctor brings Ace to a mansion that terrified her in her past, hoping to confront her fears. The story involves Josiah Smith, who is obsessed with evolution and wants to murder Queen Victoria, a clergyman who hates evolution and begins to devolve, and an alien life cataloger named Light who can't handle evolution. Light is there to catalog all life on Earth, but every time he finishes, life is changed and evolved.
The Curse of Fenric
"The Curse of Fenric" is considered the seventh Doctor's masterpiece and is connected to many stories since Ace was introduced. Set during World War II at a British naval base near a Viking crypt, the story involves Fenric, an old enemy of the Doctor, who can possess the wolves of Fenric, descendants of the Vikings. There is an army of hemivores, vampires originally from the future, living off the coast. Alan Turing is working on a code-breaking machine to defeat the Nazis. The Doctor manipulates everyone, even making Ace believe he would let her die to win.
Survival
"Survival" is set in modern-day working-class London, in Ace's home of Perry Vale, where people have gone missing. The people are being taken by a kitling to the planet of the Cheetah people, a planet of were-cheetahs who live to hunt and kill. The Master has been infected with the planet and is slowly becoming one of them. Ace develops a lesbian subtext heavy friendship with a one-story character. The Doctor wins by pacifism, refusing to fight.
Cancellation and Season 27 Plans
The video discusses the cancellation of Doctor Who and the plans for Season 27. Ace would have left in a Gallifrey story and gone to the Time Lord Academy. The new companion would have been a high-class thief and safe cracker. McCoy would have regenerated into Richard Griffiths. Some of the early ideas for Season 27 were eventually turned into audio adventures by Big Finish.
