To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the longest-running science-fiction show in the world, I’ll be taking weekly looks at some of my own personal favourite stories and arcs, from the old and new series, with a view to encapsulating the sublime, the clever and the fiendishly odd of the BBC’s Doctor Who.
Battlefield originally aired in 1989.
Pitiful. Can this world do no better than you as their champion?
Probably. I just do the best I can.
– the Destroyer gets to know the Brigadier
Battlefield gets a bit of a bum rap as the weakest story in the final season of the classic Doctor Who. This isn’t entirely fair. Battlefield is a well-produced and thoughtful piece of Doctor Who, it just happens to be inferior to The Curse of Fenric, Ghost Light and Survival; it’s hardly the most damning indictment possible. After all, Battlefield would arguably be treated as an unsung gem had it aired during Colin Baker’s time on the show.
In keeping with Ben Aaronovitch’s last season opener, Remembrance of the Daleks, Battlefield is preoccupied with the history of the show – of its legacy and the artifacts that it carries with it. Archeology is a key theme here, but juxtaposed against a near future setting and the clever conceit of the Doctor manipulating his own history. There’s a wealth of great material here, even if the production never quite lives up to the potential teased.
A beacon of light…
Filed under: Television | Tagged: Ace (Doctor Who), Auton, Battlefield, Ben Aaronovitch, Brigadier, Curse of Fenric, Dalek, doctor, DoctorWho, Happiness Patrol, jonpertwee, russell t. davies, second doctor, Seventh Doctor, Silurian (Doctor Who), Silver Nemesis, tardis, UNIT | Leave a comment »
the m0vie blog 