Doctor Who review: Season 26 – A season of promise and limitations

What made Doctor Who’s final story so strong, and what were its limitations?

Image Courtesy BBC Studios, BritBox

We look back on the final season of Doctor Who’s original run. What made it so fresh and original, and what were its limitations?

Recently, I’ve rewatched the whole of Doctor Who‘s final classic season on Blu-Ray. I’ll be writing a review on the box set itself soon. But while I’m still making my way through its vast collection of special features both new and old, I thought it was worth reviewing the season on its own terms. How strong was Season 26 overall?

It’s ironic that the BBC did decide to end Doctor Who at this point (or, as they preferred to describe it at the time, “rested”). The series had admittedly struggled at particular points during the 80s. But during the final two seasons, it was gaining its drive and passion back with a vengeance. Season 25 gave us a couple of underrated stories, including Remembrance of the Daleks and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, while The Happiness Patrol is a massively underrated slice of satire.

The following season was perhaps even stronger in its approach. This is partially because of the overall quality of the stories told, but even more importantly, the production team made a clear decision on who to focus on. Season 25 gave us hints of the Doctor’s past, but Season 26 was much keener on exploring his companion Ace. While the season begins with the rather light and fun opening story Battlefield, the rest of Season 26 explores Ace in far greater depth than previously seen with companions.

Stories like Ghost Light explored Ace in ways that had never been done with a companion before.

Image Courtesy BBC Studios, BritBox

Ace’s story

The intense focus on Ace begins with Ghost Light, which not only reveals a dark secret that she’s been keeping, but also sees her confront one of her greatest fears. The Curse of Fenric goes even further and explores the very origins of her story, while also showing her start to mature from a teenage girl into a young woman. The final story, Survival, sees her return home and introduces us to some of her old friends.

All of this really highlights that, at the time, Doctor Who really was moving in the right direction. There had been a lot of companions in Doctor Who over the years, many of which had been truly great and iconic. But until this point, none of them had been explored in as quite as much depth as Ace had been. It was a real turning point for the series and showed how much script editor Andrew Cartmel and his team of writers were really pushing things in a fresh direction.

So why did the BBC cancel it?

Limits

As promising as Season 26 was, it was hard not to spot its limits in terms of storytelling. One of them was the budget. As much as the series had often looked cheap in the past, it usually didn’t look too bad when compared to other shows of the same period. But by the time of the late 80s, the US was dominating TV sci-fi, and Doctor Who was becoming easily overshadowed.

This was especially true of Star Trek: The Next Generation. If you watched and compared an episode of each show from the same year, it wouldn’t be too hard to see which one had considerably higher production values.

This was through no fault of the production team, of course. Rather, it was an ongoing issue from BBC management regarding a complete lack of faith in one of their longest-running programs. The same people at the BBC complaining that the show looked far too cheap were often the same people that could increase its funding.

With the exception of Survival, all the stories of Season 26 required heavy editing to work on broadcast.

Image Courtesy BBC Studios, BritBox

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Big stories, limited time

However, there was another key problem the show had: story length. With the exception of Survival, every story this season had to be cut down considerably on broadcast. Both Battlefield and The Curse of Fenric have been given both extended episodes on VHS and special editions on DVD. Even Ghost Light now features a workprint on the Blu-Ray.

Seeing these extended versions on Blu-Ray highlights a huge issue with Season 26: editing. Far too much had to be taken out in order to fit the 25-minute running time. This is especially true of The Curse of Fenric, which features so many major plot points and gives us an extremely compressed story as a result. Personally, I prefer the special edition, but the broadcast version needed to tell a good story on its own terms for the viewers to enjoy at the time, and I’m not sure that it achieved that.

So overall, Doctor Who‘s final season of its original run wasn’t without its flaws. But at the same time, it still feels like a massive step in the right direction. Towards Russell T Davies’s era, in fact, which would also focus heavily on the companion while also featuring a strong budget and more relaxed storytelling. It’s a bitter irony that, just as Doctor Who was starting to feel fresher and bolder than it had been in years, the BBC decided to end it.

What are your thoughts on Doctor Who‘s final season? What did you enjoy about it? What didn’t you enjoy? Do you think it should have continued? Or do you think it was the right time for the series to rest? Let us know in the comments below.