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The sixth Doctor Who was Colin Baker.
He portrayed a very complex character, brash and blustering, colourful
and arrogant. This was made apparent even down to his pantomime style
costume. Underneath it all he was the same Doctor as before, but
somehow it never came out very often. A general decline in the quality
of the scripts meant that the Doctor's morality was never made very
apparent, and coupled with increased levels of violence in the show
as a whole, you'd be forgiven for thinking you were watching something
else entirely. All this coincided with the programme increasingly
relying on its own history to feed its stories - so the scripts became
heavily continuity-laden, resurrecting old monsters for the sake of
it, and losing any freshness and general wide appeal that the show
might once have possessed. At its worst, it seemed like bad fan
fiction - though there were some passable stories, mostly those that
didn't try to be gritty, hard-nosed and realistic. None of this was the
actor's fault, of course - and reportedly Baker would have liked to soften
the character over time. (He's since gone on to great success playing a
modified version of the sixth Doctor in audio plays.) It didn't help
that a decision was made during Colin Baker's time to move the show
back from a Spring to an Autumn schedule, resulting in an seventeen
month gap between seasons. This didn't allow the public to get to know
Baker's character. In the second season, his personality had mellowed
somewhat, and the show was somewhat improved stylistically - but
ratings were now in decline. The BBC obviously weren't happy with the
way the programme was going. Who was responsible for the loss of
direction? Undoubtedly the production team was growing tired - the
same producer, John Nathan-Turner, had been in charge since Tom
Baker's last year, the longest time any one person had held the post.
In fact, it's said that he had been hoping to leave for some time, but
had been kept in the post by the BBC refusing to give him any other
project to move onto. You might almost believe that the BBC didn't
want any fresh blood to bring new impetus to Doctor Who, in
case it brought the programme new popularity. But that would make it
sound like there was a top-level conspiracy inside the BBC to scupper
Doctor Who, and I'm not that paranoid. Nevertheless, in an
incredible move, rather than firing the producer (who was responsible
for the creative direction of the show after all), the BBC rather
unceremoniously dismissed Colin Baker from the lead part. Considering
what happened next, it might well have been best if the BBC could just
have cancelled the series outright.
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