The Bishop on Doctor Who: 'Vengeance on Varos'

It was June 2007, and the Bishop had lately wondered whether he had been perhaps a touch unfair in not being 100% totally thrilled with the first half of the third season of the new era of Doctor Who. Then he watched 'Vengeance on Varos', and realised that he had.

The TARDIS runs out of power, stranding the Doctor and Peri inside for what seems like a week, most of which for some reason appears on screen—in scene after scene crafted solely to show Philip Martin can't write dialogue. Finding a small amount of spare back-up energy in an old broom cupboard, the dynamic duo head to Varos, there to refresh their supply of the extremely rare TARDIS-powering element zeiton-7. It transpires that the Varons are selling their extremely rare zeiton-7 extremely cheaply to a nasty, exploitative galactic mining company; which suggests that when Martin heads back to school to study scriptwriting, he should also brush up on the law of supply and demand.

Various hi-jinks follow, in an attempt to make some sort of allegorical point about the modern obsession with violent, badly made TV—wherein the Who production team don't so much throw stones in their glass house, as bring in a dozen sopranos to test its resonant frequency.

Much has been made of how poor old Colin Baker was doing his best with some of the worst scripts and production in Doctor Who history. The Bishop agrees with the second part. In C. Baker, we finally had a lead every bit as rubbish as the supporting actors around him - which is not to say those minor players were going to make his achievement easy. All they had to do was act wooden and hammy, and they couldn't even get that right. Lines are bawled as though the boom mic is in another room, and the entire 90 minutes features more missed cues than a pool hall playing host to a kleptomaniacs' convention.

Strangely popular with Who fans despite its intergalactic awfulness, much has also been made by them of the predictive power of 'Vengeance on Varos'; but what, exactly, did it predict? That people will watch any old crap you stick on TV? John Nathan-Turner and co only had to wait another four stories to find out.