6. Doubling Down On The Bad Taste Only Makes Things Worse
Nope, having hammered some nails into the heart of the programme, JNT thought it best to fetch a few more and carry right on with the hammering. The question marks continued unabated - in fact, they even got worse with the Seventh Doctor's jumper being festooned with dozens of them and don't even look at his umbrella. The worst idea JNT came up with, though, has to be the Sixth Doctor's costume. This bad taste extravaganza put off hordes of viewers, as did the decision to have the Doctor attempt to strangle his assistant, Peri, in Colin Baker's opening story, The Twin Dilemma. As with all jumping the shark moments, the decline was slow and the axe did not fall right away. Season 22 was seen by viewers as a second chance for the Sixth Doctor, after the unbridled train wreck of the previous season's closing story (which was, unusually, Colin Baker's debut as the Doctor). For the span of this season, viewers gave the programme a chance, with ratings climbing a little for encounters with the Cybermen and the Daleks. But the insistence on having the Doctor being so brash and overbearing paid no dividends whatsoever and, due to murky goings on with licence fee negotiations, the Director-General of the BBC, Michael Grade, cancelled the programme in February 1985. Viewers might have been still on the fence about this new direction for the show, but Grade wasn't - he hated it. This cancellation was swiftly opposed with a huge media campaign, organised in no small part by JNT (a clever orchestration that fans should be grateful for). Backpedalling furiously, Grade claimed the programme was merely rested and would return after 18 months. Sure enough, the Sixth Doctor had one last hurrah on screen in 1986. But the public had tired of the clownishly technicolour Time Lord and Colin Baker's last season saw consistently low figures. He was fired and replaced with Sylvester McCoy - but the changeover to the Seventh Doctor never did fix the declining ratings and eventually after a long and painful to watch disintegration, the programme was truly axed. Just as it was getting good again, frustratingly. With the Sixth Doctor's costume and a whole host of other ill-judged decisions, JNT really did jump the shark. The gimmicks he introduced in an attempt to boost ratings had the opposite effect of causing the destruction of the show he loved so much. Is this lesson forgotten in the current age of Who? Peter Capaldi's Doctor does seem to have a large dose of Colin Baker's take on the character for better or worse. If Moffat learns from history, he'll sand off the rough edges of the Twelfth Doctor's acerbic nature pronto. Having reviewed five of the worst ratings drops suffered by the classic series, let's switch to quickly looking at five of the worst of the recent perceived misjudgments in the revived series. Critics claim these instances of nuking the fridge indicate the beginning of a new ski jump over a fishy friend. Naturally, it will only be possible to tell if these critics are correct after sufficient time has elapsed, but let's examine the worst of the fridge nuking that's gone on in Series 7 and 8 and see if they've got a point.