The Seventh Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
The cosmic trickster with the cheeky grin and the wise eyes, the Seventh Doctor with his claims to be 'much more than just another Time Lord' contained some of the first traces of NuWho's 'lonely god'. Initially written off as clownish by critics, Sylvester McCoy brought heavyweight acting muscle to the role which proved important as the writing team began to explore the Doctor as arch-manipulator and an adversary of the ancient gods of the Old Times. He started off playing spoons and ended up as 'the Dark Doctor'.
And he had an Ace up his sleeve.
Battlefield
Now, overall this is probably not the best Seventh Doctor episode; that would be Curse of Fenric or Remembrance of the Daleks. Battlefield, however, is the one I find the most fun, not least because... well, because of this:
As the last of the first three audio Doctors, the Seventh also has a good catalogue, including superb runs with Tracey Childes as Elizabeth Klein - both in her original incarnation as a Nazi scientist, and as a UNIT scientific adviser in UNIT Dominion and Persuasion/Starlight Robbery and Daleks Among Us - and the genuinely epic Black and White TARDIS saga. There are very few real clunkers, although Love and War - an adaptation of a Doctor Who novel - sits very uncomfrotably with the characterisation in the other stories. Also worth mentioning is the emotional grind of character development which Ace goes through across the course of the run.
The Eighth Doctor - Paul McGann
Despite a lacklustre outing in the American TV movie, I always loved Paul McGann as the Doctor. He was fun, he was lively, he combined the serious with the light in the way that the Doctor should, and since his audio debut in Storm Warning, he has received some of the best of Big Finish. He has also gone through the wringer, losing pretty much every companion he's had tragically - Charley Pollard, Lucie Miller, Gemma and Samson - with Mary Shelley only escaping because she has to go and write Frankenstein.
Edit: Speaking of which, new favourite 'TV' appearance with the bounce-inducing Night of the Doctor showing his regeneration from the emotionally scarred post-Dark Eyes wanderer into the disowned War Doctor.
Caerdroia
Right towards the end of a series of stories sent in an anti-time universe without the TARDIS, Caerdroia is another one that is my favourite because it is so much fun, from the three versions of the Eighth Doctor to the torturous bureaucrat insisting that an inquiry be 'referred to the real or rhetorical questions department for a ruling before any action can be taken'.
Also of note are To the Death, which is a gut-wrenchingly tragic tale, Doctor Who does the Apprentice in Situation Vacant and Shakespearean barnstormer The Time of the Daleks. The current Dark Eyes miniseries has also opened very strongly.
The cosmic trickster with the cheeky grin and the wise eyes, the Seventh Doctor with his claims to be 'much more than just another Time Lord' contained some of the first traces of NuWho's 'lonely god'. Initially written off as clownish by critics, Sylvester McCoy brought heavyweight acting muscle to the role which proved important as the writing team began to explore the Doctor as arch-manipulator and an adversary of the ancient gods of the Old Times. He started off playing spoons and ended up as 'the Dark Doctor'.
And he had an Ace up his sleeve.
Battlefield
Now, overall this is probably not the best Seventh Doctor episode; that would be Curse of Fenric or Remembrance of the Daleks. Battlefield, however, is the one I find the most fun, not least because... well, because of this:
As the last of the first three audio Doctors, the Seventh also has a good catalogue, including superb runs with Tracey Childes as Elizabeth Klein - both in her original incarnation as a Nazi scientist, and as a UNIT scientific adviser in UNIT Dominion and Persuasion/Starlight Robbery and Daleks Among Us - and the genuinely epic Black and White TARDIS saga. There are very few real clunkers, although Love and War - an adaptation of a Doctor Who novel - sits very uncomfrotably with the characterisation in the other stories. Also worth mentioning is the emotional grind of character development which Ace goes through across the course of the run.
The Eighth Doctor - Paul McGann
Despite a lacklustre outing in the American TV movie, I always loved Paul McGann as the Doctor. He was fun, he was lively, he combined the serious with the light in the way that the Doctor should, and since his audio debut in Storm Warning, he has received some of the best of Big Finish. He has also gone through the wringer, losing pretty much every companion he's had tragically - Charley Pollard, Lucie Miller, Gemma and Samson - with Mary Shelley only escaping because she has to go and write Frankenstein.
Edit: Speaking of which, new favourite 'TV' appearance with the bounce-inducing Night of the Doctor showing his regeneration from the emotionally scarred post-Dark Eyes wanderer into the disowned War Doctor.
Caerdroia
Right towards the end of a series of stories sent in an anti-time universe without the TARDIS, Caerdroia is another one that is my favourite because it is so much fun, from the three versions of the Eighth Doctor to the torturous bureaucrat insisting that an inquiry be 'referred to the real or rhetorical questions department for a ruling before any action can be taken'.
Also of note are To the Death, which is a gut-wrenchingly tragic tale, Doctor Who does the Apprentice in Situation Vacant and Shakespearean barnstormer The Time of the Daleks. The current Dark Eyes miniseries has also opened very strongly.
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