Tom Baker's sixth season is largely jokey shit, a real turnaround from the Hinchcliffe/Holmes horror stuff of his first three or so seasons. Douglas Adams was script editor on Doctor Who for this year (and was simultaneously developing his radio version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at the same time I do believe). The two GOOD stories out of this season were City of Death (the one with the John Cleese cameo) which was co-written by Adams and Shada, which was never properly finished due to... I think a strike at the BBC at the time. There's a nifty Paul McGann version of Shada available on CD from Big Finish though, and Adams cannibalized some characters, chunks, and concepts from it for the novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - particularly Professor Chronotis and his time travelling room.
To be fair, though, it's a mixed blessing. Baker is great as the Doctor and the scripts being more silly mostly worked, but the Hinchcliffe era is undeniably fucking awesome.
Yah. I hate this controversy.
Tom Baker + any sort of script = amazing.
People forget that one of the lesser seasons of Tom Baker actually kick butt when compared to some of the seasons done with the later Doctors. Plus, he WAS at the top of his game (popularity-wise and ratings-wise) during this season.
Ya. I agree with Rovin. How can you forget the classic Creature from the Pit episode? That one was not a Douglas Adams script (although he edited it) and it was priceless :)
Plus, this season doesn't seem so bad when you look at that Pertwee episode when that guy got eaten by the Master's plastic chair...at least this season had actual monsters.
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