I Will Cure You, Two

Last time, I was trying to "fix" the Fifth Doctor, who had been shaped very much as a response to the flippant comedy of Season Seventeen, when, thanks to the ITV strike, Doctor Who was watched by millions. The response was three seasons of pedestrian stories, flatly directed, with stilted dialogue and tinny music.Adventures in which the Doctor was rarely the protagonist but instead spent far too much time locked up and groaning "I should have realised..."
Then it got worse. The bland Cricketer was replaced by the bombastic Actor-Manager. The Colin Baker Years are a real low point in the series, thanks to a misjudged central performance, needless violence and a maddening obsession with series continuity. The Doctor's attack on pneumatic Peri is such a mistake that it takes nearly two years for the series to recover.

My favourite non-televisual adventures for the Sixth Doctor are, on audio: the hugely underrated Ish, the phenomenal Gilbert and Sullivan pastiche Doctor Who and the Pirates and The Doomwood Curse (with Charley Pollard, surely the fruitiest pairing in Who-story)

In print, I'd choose The Quantum Archangel, (Continuity Porn Nonpareil) Uncle Terrance's Players and the retro-computer thriller Blue Box. These are the works that inspired my thinking in this post.

The accepted wisdom is that over a decade's-worth of audio adventures has given the Sixth Doctor a chance to reveal all the dimensions of this regeneration. But I'd argue that the cuddly, avuncular Time Lord on Big Finish's audio plays, with his yeahs and okays is virtually a different character- although he must be doing something right because he's neck-and-neck with my favourite, the Eighth Doctor, in my Elgin audio collection (Doctor Five is a poor fourth place). So how to fix Sixie?

Well, why not start with the costume? It's supposed to say "alien" or at worst "deranged alien". The brief was "Bad Taste" and it succeeds hugely, taking the traditional Victorian/Edwardian silhouette of the Doctor and distorting it through the lens of Showman/Humbug. It's possible to analyse the costume and ascribe it to an adolesecent Time Lord, shouting " Look at me!".

 Steve Ditko's Odd Man (1979) "One of us will have to go home and change.."

 The late 80s Ultimate Adventure stage show version, astonishingly, was even worse...

On MySpace a couple of years ago, I called Number Six the" Live Aid Doctor": big hair, tartan, rehashing his Greatest Hits.The quintessential 80s Doctor. But, what Colin Baker actually had in mind was something like this:

Aaaand...relax.

See? that's better already. Of course, any suggestion of sober black was nixed because of the Master's ensemble. When the webcast adventure Real Time was in production back in 2002, the patchwork jacket was dismissed as  too busy and  too complex for animation. This blue outfit replaced it and can sometimes be seen on the covers of some subsequent BF releases. The Real Time Sixie even has his own action figure.

It's a definite improvement. But look at this custom-made doll and tell me you don't love it:

Now that the wardrobe's sorted, let's look at companions. Big Finish rehabilitated the verbose and theatrical Mel but neither she nor the victimised Peri have as much chemistry, or are as effective a foil, as the Doctor's most loyal chum, Jamie McCrimmon:

Plucky-if-dim Jamie works terribly well with Sixie in The Two Doctors, despite very little dialogue. As an old hand at the time-travelling game, the playful sparring (and genuine friendship) between Butch Gallifrey and the Bagpipe Kid would be entertaining to watch. Certainly, BF recognised the chemistry when they comissioned the Jamie Trilogy in 2010.

Perhaps Jamie could be involved in the French scheme of 1759 to foment a new Jacobite uprising? If he were a teenager at Culloden, he'd only be in his early thirties...
As for the monsters, the mantra of the 80s was Greed is Good and the two best villains to emerge from the Sixth Doctor's era are the repellent corporate raider Sil and the mercenary Glitz.

"Haven't you got a rrrring you could rrrrub?!"

However, it would be exciting to pit Sixie and Jamie against the most memorable monsters of the Moffat Era:

One of the most damaging creations of the Doctor's long history is the Valeyard. The character is the ultimate expression of the cynicism of the series in the mid-80s and the corruption of the Doctor, in that he must ultimately become a villain in a future regeneration and his own arch-enemy.

 "One of us will have to go home and change..."

 Wisely, the Valeyard has rarely appeared, or been mentioned anywhere again, except in the bleak, sadistic BBC novel Matrix and the BF audio, He Jests at Scars.. Let's just pretend that final scene in Trial of Time Lord was cut, shall we?
 Speaking of paradoxes, I'd like to see an encounter between the Sixth Doctor and this enigmatic archaeologist:

"Spoilers? Spoilers?! SPOILERS?!!"

Returning to print once more, I'd like a definitive answer to the question "Whatever happened to Grant Markham?" last heard of in 1996:

 A sequel to the very first Doctor Who Weekly strip seems in order; maybe The Iron Empire?:

And how could I forget?!

All hail the Big talking Bird!

The Legal Bit: all images are presumed copyright of their respective owners; in this case, the BBC, Panini, Big Finish, Virgin, Marvel and DC Comics.