Rate "Battlefield"

I've just had the dubious pleasure of rewatching this story on DVD.

it wasn't as bad as i remembered- which isn't saying a lot. like "paradise towers" i thought that there was probably a decent story there somewhere. but it looks very cheap- crappy explosions and guys in suits of armour flying about...woeful acting from ancelyn, shu yuing and mordered. and sadly aldred(BOOM!( and mccoy are both pretty awful here- in fact it's probably the worst performance by a doctor that i've seen.

jean marsh is good though, and it's always nice to see the brig. there is actually some good direction from the much maligned michael kerrigan- but no, not for me.

anyone else get this from santa?

I got it for Christmas from one of my sisters. I watched the special edition first as I had read it was quite an improvement and then watched the episodes with commentary. I thought it an average story really - certainly there are worse ones. Yes, I thought McCoy was distinctly substandard in this and Aldred seemed a bit variable - good at times but occasionally iffy. Jean Marsh was great and Ancelyn and Mordred seemed OK to me (apart from that laugh!) I can cope with the cheap looking sets, they don't bother me. The extras are pretty good but what I really enjoyed was the commentary. Some people over on DWF have been really down on Cartmel and Aaronovitch but i found them interesting and informative. The other three all chipped in with good stuff as well.

Anyway, I can say I found the whole thing worth watching.

No, I didn't get it from Santa and, no I won't be buying it. Battlefield is symptomatic of why the BBC cancelled Doctor Who. Yes there are some nice ideas & yes there are a few good performances. But on the whole it's a mess, with a poor script, weak direction and some bad acting.

I can only reiterate what I've said many times. Season 26 (together with 24) is Who at its worst. Sad days indeed.

I'm having trouble with the poll - I'd like to rate the substandard-and-although-the-movie-version-is-an-improvement-it's-not-that-much-of-an-improvement 'Battlefield' as a '2', but Escape to Victory is mistakenly attached to that number, rather than the 5 it so clearly is...

Anyway, 'Battlefield' - Pertwee out of ten.

The Co=Ordinator wrote:

I can only reiterate what I've said many times. Season 26 (together with 24) is Who at its worst. Sad days indeed.

But paradoxically a series at the top of its game, imaginatively speaking. Lots of rough edges abound but there was in place a suitable template for the non-existent future.

The Co=Ordinator wrote:No, I didn't get it from Santa and, no I won't be buying it. Battlefield is symptomatic of why the BBC cancelled Doctor Who. Yes there are some nice ideas & yes there are a few good performances. But on the whole it's a mess, with a poor script, weak direction and some bad acting.

I can only reiterate what I've said many times. Season 26 (together with 24) is Who at its worst. Sad days indeed.

I did get it - but not from Santa - and I haven't felt the overwhelming urge to actually get around to watching it yet. Which I suspect speaks volumes...

delgadofan wrote:But paradoxically a series at the top of its game, imaginatively speaking. Lots of rough edges abound but there was in place a suitable template for the non-existent future.

Agreed to an extent. While my views on McCoy have mellowed over the years, and I do broadly agree with your view that it was imaginatively hitting the right spot more often than it was missing - I still can't find it within myself to forgive the fatally flawed execution of those ideas. It just seems to me that while the ideas were in place; the creative inspiration and foresight needed to realise them was almost entirely absent. Perhaps more so than at any other time in the series long history, this was the point where they needed a fresh sense of practical perspective and decisively strong creative force at the head of the production chain.

They had neither: which left them attempting to sail an already fatally holed ship as if it was a just out of dock luxury liner.

Sid Seadevil wrote:Agreed to an extent. While my views on McCoy have mellowed over the years, and I do broadly agree with your view that it was imaginatively hitting the right spot more often than it was missing - I still can't find it within myself to forgive the fatally flawed execution of those ideas. It just seems to me that while the ideas were in place; the creative inspiration and foresight needed to realise them was almost entirely absent. Perhaps more so than at any other time in the series long history, this was the point where they needed a fresh sense of practical perspective and decisively strong creative force at the head of the production chain.

They had neither: which left them attempting to sail an already fatally holed ship as if it was a just out of dock luxury liner.

I agree with you on this. It's a really great idea for a story, but the plotting, the performances, th dialogue and the technical execution just aren't quite there - it's like all the relevant people knocked off early on each stage and simply said "That'll do". If the show had been at the height of its powers at the time, this wouldn't have mattered one jot (and, indeed, I could name a dozen-or-so equally half-hearted stories, from more successful eras of the show, that didn't harm the ratings at all), but, given that the public perception of the show at the time was of being cheap and badly acted, it seems like a remarkably cavalier attitude to have taken.

And don't get me started on certainelements that must have taken up a disproportionate amount of the time and budget, like the Destroyer, half the helicopter scenes, and that completely throwaway alien coin in Part One - if they'd abandoned them at script stages, perhaps they might have spent more time and money on more necessary stuff like the Knights, which then wouldn't have looked so bloody stupid.

A real shame. Just scrapes a 3.

Doc Filth wrote:

I agree with you on this. It's a really great idea for a story, but the plotting, the performances, th dialogue and the technical execution just aren't quite there - it's like all the relevant people knocked off early on each stage and simply said "That'll do". If the show had been at the height of its powers at the time, this wouldn't have mattered one jot (and, indeed, I could name a dozen-or-so equally half-hearted stories, from more successful eras of the show, that didn't harm the ratings at all), but, given that the public perception of the show at the time was of being cheap and badly acted, it seems like a remarkably cavalier attitude to have taken.

With hindsight, it now seems clear that at this stages in the shows history JNT and his merry bunch of elves had accidentally stumbled upon the perfect formula for transforming a potential silk purse into a genuine sow's ear on an alarmlingly consistent basis. And they employed that technique to its utmost. The entire production ethos had by that time become so sufficed with a creative laziness and slap-dash inattention to even glaringly obvious details, that such basic things as actually doing their respect jobs as they were meant to be done never actually occurred to them.

This was especially true of the two core positions of power - Producer and Script Editor. The rot tricked down to infect all other departments directly from there.

Doc Filth wrote:And don't get me started on certainelements that must have taken up a disproportionate amount of the time and budget, like the Destroyer, half the helicopter scenes, and that completely throwaway alien coin in Part One - if they'd abandoned them at script stages, perhaps they might have spent more time and money on more necessary stuff like the Knights, which then wouldn't have looked so bloody stupid.

A real shame. Just scrapes a 3.

Agreed on all points. - Except the 3. That's just verging on a point too generous for my.

I actually quite like Battlefield and a majority of season 26.
I agree that the idea could have been realized better, but the show was surely on a rising tide from the horror of season 24...makes me wonder what would have happened if the BBC allowed JNT to leave as he wanted...

TOMSPY77 wrote:I actually quite like Battlefield and a majority of season 26.
I agree that the idea could have been realized better, but the show was surely on a rising tide from the horror of season 24...makes me wonder what would have happened if the BBC allowed JNT to leave as he wanted...

The show probably would have been cancelled the moment JNT had cleared his desk. It was a poisoned chalice by that time - basically professional suicide for anybody who was foolhardy enough to have taken the post.

Sid Seadevil wrote:

TOMSPY77 wrote:I actually quite like Battlefield and a majority of season 26.
I agree that the idea could have been realized better, but the show was surely on a rising tide from the horror of season 24...makes me wonder what would have happened if the BBC allowed JNT to leave as he wanted...

The show probably would have been cancelled the moment JNT had cleared his desk. It was a poisoned chalice by that time - basically professional suicide for anybody who was foolhardy enough to have taken the post.

Point taken, but I still think the show started to get better at the end, this story along with the slightly confusing on first viewing Ghost Light and the (My opinion) excellent Curse of Fenric showed that there was life in the show, it was just being forced to die with poor scheduling and bad management...I always was never quite sure what to think about Cartmel's plans for season 27, they could have gone either way, either pure excellence if executed properly or complete horror if run into the ground by bad production and realization.

I bet none of you first saw Battlefield when you were an impressionable five year and wondered whether the young girl (who, at the time I was convinced was a young girl) would be alright to present Bitsa.

I'm just in the middle of watching the extras for this story. They're actually a damned sight better than watching the story itself!

And how the hell is Jean Marsh managing to so successfully defy the ageing process?

Sid Seadevil wrote:And how the hell is Jean Marsh managing to so successfully defy the ageing process?

The same way you do, Sid. A portrait in the attic.

Anyway. Battlefield.

Ben Aaronovitch gives the Brig his Best. Line. Ever.
Should have been written for RTD to fix, should have been a Doctor Lite story centered on the Once And Future Brigadier and never mind all ze knees-bent running about business.

Dave Webb wrote:The same way you do, Sid. A portrait in the attic.

A polaroid, actually - I couldn't afford a portrait.

Dave Webb wrote:Anyway. Battlefield.

Ben Aaronovitch gives the Brig his Best. Line. Ever.
Should have been written for RTD to fix, should have been a Doctor Lite story centered on the Once And Future Brigadier and never mind all ze knees-bent running about business.

Agreed. I could, and would, happily jettison the rest in favour of this. And it's a well acknowledged fact that I'm not the biggest admirer of either the Brig or U-NIT itself.

Its not bad however its not as good as a 70s UNIT story. On the negative side its plot is confused and disjointed and the Destroyer (which looked great) is rather wasted. On the plus side, its a good old fashioned UNIT story and the Rutland Water setting is superb.

We watched this as a family last weekend, and we loved it. The kids had seen it before, 4 years ago, but none of them remembered it much - possibly not the best sign but they were very young, so... anyway - this time round we all thought it was great. Now - yes, that was mainly because of the Brig - but the story still gripped us, and we never had aproblem suspending our disbelief.