Martin Belam on Doctor Who.

TV Martin Belam's written a really quite remarkable, rangy essay about Doctor Who covering a range of topics, but one thing which caught my eye was this:

"But the thing that most struck me about watching “School Reunion” again was how old-fashioned it already looked. I’m not knocking the production, I love the script and I’ve enjoyed 94.5% of all “New Who” episodes immensely. But having watched The Bells of Saint John six days earlier, it felt sooooooooo slow. And it looked like television from the last decade.

Which, of course, it is. [...]

It made me think about the equivalent gap in the series back from when I’d first seen Elisabeth Sladen in her role. In January 1968, seven years prior to Tom Baker taking on the Wirrn on Space Station Nerva, Patrick Troughton was in the middle of an adventure titled “The Enemy Of The World”.

Well goodness. Of course it is. Seven years since School Reunion was broadcast, the difference between half way through Pat and the beginning of Tom.  But, thanks to dvd, streaming and all that nonsense, it still feels very present, whereas in 1975, the Troughton era felt like a distant memory.