'The Day Of The Doctor' is coming soon, so we here at What Culture see no harm in the Time Lord revisiting great days from his past. Of course, he's going to be doing that himself soon, along with his present/future/god-knows what. But still, there are lessons to be learnt if you pour over the not-insubstantial annals of Who history, and these are lessons we can apply to the modern show. So join us in the TARDIS as we set out to cross timelines less a case of revolutionary 'out with the new, in with the old,' and more looking at past stories ( and indeed incarnations), and the lessons 'new Who' could learn from them. So with that in mind, we'll yell Geronimo and indeed ' oh, my giddy aunt!' in some cases, we're quite sure. As a great recorder-wielding universal philosopher once said- ' Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority', but bear with us as we attempt to reverse the polarity of the over-sentiment flow and hopefully bring What Culture's gift of death to the plain annoying bits of new 'Who.' Step in, don't touch the console and prepare for the ride of a lifetime.
10. There Were Less Confusing Story Arcs
The Pandorica/Silence/River Song are all well and good, but a good old simple adventure arc (think along the lines of the Fourth Doctor & Romana's quest for the Key To Time) wouldn't go amiss. There's a reason the Fourth Doctor's era is remembered so fondly, and this is one of them. Across all of Series 16 from 'The Ribos Operation' to ' The Armageddon Factor' there were different segments of a quest, helping provide a structure for excellent stories which boosted the ratings no end and helped Tom Baker put down a marker as the best Doctor of all time. Actually, come to think of it, even further back we had his ' horror' period, too. This was another high point featuring ' The Brain Of Morbius,' 'Pyramids Of Mars' and countless others, all of which presented good times for the Time Lord as we graduated from cowering behind the sofa to seriously considering never booking a holiday to Egypt in case Sutekh was waiting in his pyramid prison. For this writer, this fear functioned in pretty much the same way as exposure to 'The Daemons' forced me to never look at vicars in quite the same way again. But that's a story for another day. The Doctor moved on from thwarting the Master's dressing-up scheme even his post- regeneration debut ' Robot' was a great big rollicking adventure, and they're in short supply at the moment. Plus, of course, we had the Third Doctor's Earth- based adventures, but they just weren't as much fun, were they? So in short, less head-scratching, timey-wimey stuff, series-straddling stuff and more 'wow, look!' moments in self-contained adventures.