User Reviews

Review of all 4 episodes:

Arthurian legend meets scifi meets military action meets mystery in this adventure from writer Ben Aaronovitch. This is very enjoyable and well written. It also has some dark edge to the Doctor's personality and some mystery about him possibly being the Merlin of legend. Best of all it brings the wonderful Brigadier back and he gets a really excellent appearance showing him at his brilliant best.

We get a story with different factions of aliens who had been knocking about in the times of King Arthur causing some of the myths and legends we know. It is interesting and action packed. Jean Marsh is superb as Morgaine and we get a fantastic monster in the form of 'the Destroyer' who has terrific animatronic features and make up. That high standard of creature shows how much can be achieved and it is a pity that other stories did not manage such great effects/make-up.

The downsides are that, as with most stories in the previous few seasons, there is some cheesiness to be seen with some overacting from some - NOT all - the support characters, some cheesy music and some action scenes that struggle to be convincing enough. I think the direction from Michael Kerrigan could definitely have been better at bringing less over the top moments but he is only following the formula set out by producer John Nathan Turner.

Despite these relatively minor complaints it is clear script editor Andrew Cartmel is starting to wield some good influence on the series along with writer Ben Aaronovitch by introducing an atmosphere of mystery and darkness. This story is also far better than almost all the stories of the previous 4 series (with the exception of Remembrance of the Daleks) in every department. It is fun, has a good story, has some decent dialogue and a wonderful appearance by old favourite the Brigadier. As well as the brilliant performance of film star Jean Marsh (who formerly played Sara Kingdom in The Dalek Master-Plan) there are a few nicely performed and written guest characters, local busybody Peter Warmsly and the couple who run the hotel. Sophie Aldred is enjoyable as ever as Ace.

Sylvester McCoy puts in a great performance showing edge and darkness but also warmth and compassion. This season would prove to lift his Doctor to another level after his underwhelming first season and mixed second season.

My ratings: art 1 - 7.5/10, Part 2 - 8/10, Part 3 - 7/10, Part 4 - 8.5/10. Overall - 7.75/10.

(Note: A Review Of All Four Episodes)

I was rather intrigued when I first learned of Battlefield. Featuring my favorite Doctor Sylvester McCoy, the return of UNIT and tying into Arthurian legend (which I'm rather intrigued in) it was going to be an interesting story to view. While Battlefield turned out not to be a classic along the lines of say The Curse of Fenric or Ghost Light, Battlefield stills proves to be an exciting and ever watchable Doctor Who story.

At the heart of it all is Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred as the seventh Doctor and Ace. Both show off their remarkable chemistry that made them one of the most successful TARDIS crews of the original series. McCoy in particular gets some fine acting moments such as the "there will be no battle here!" section of part three and the nuclear weapons speech in part four. Aldred also gives a nice performance as Ace though the character does come across as being downright immature at times. That said there are plenty of good things to say about Aldred's performance especially in the special edition's scenes with Brigadie Lethbridge-Stewart. As always the delight for watching a story from the McCoy era lies in the splendid work of its leading cast.

The story also features another one of the great things of the McCoy era: a fine supporting cast. Nicholas Courtney makes a welcomed return as UNIT's former commander Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart even if there are moments where he is pushing credibility at one or two moments. That said Courtney gets the best lines of the story including part four's classic "I just do the best I can!" plus some fine moments with McCoy's Doctor. Also of special mention is Jean Marsh who gives a well-stated and even believable performance as the Arthurian villainess Morgaine, the result being one of the single best performances of the McCoy era. There's also a nice performance from Angela Bruce as the new Brigadier in charge of UNIT, Winnifred Bambera, which makes it a shame that the show didn't get to go on much past this story and we never got to see more of the character. There's also nice performances from James Ellis, Marcus Gilbert, Robert Jezek and Angela Davis amongst others. That said there are some rather mixed performances from Christopher Bowen as an over-the-top (and out of place) version of Mordred and Ling Tai as the immature Shou Young. All said though it is as good a supporting cast as any to be found in the McCoy era.

The story has some nice production values as well. The sets and costumes are nicely done considering the low-budget the show was forced to work within. Thi is especially true of the Knights armor which, while not the sort of futuristic thing originally envisioned, stands up well today because it isn't futuristic. There's also the Destoryer in parts three and four who in a short space of time leaves a huge impression. Te Detroyer is a brilliantly realized creation as not only a fantastic monster but as a personification of Oppenheimer's "destoryer of worlds" as he described nuclear weapons which gives the story a nice piece of symmetry as well. That said the production values aren't perfect.

Battlefield suffers from two very distinct problems in the forms of its special effects and music. While special effects in the original Doctor Who series have a;ways been a mixed affair anyway here they are sadly lacking at times such as he Knights guns that do little more then shoot sparks or the sad looking exterior effects related to the Destroyer towards the end of the story. There's also the mater of the score by Keff McCulloch which works for the most part but is at times seeming out of place at times then too loud and too brash at others, especially in the action sequences. Thankfully the special edition on the recent DVD release helps to solve some of those problems.

One of the more successful elements of Battlefield is the script by Ben Aaronovitch. Doctor Who has time and again proved itself capable of adopting mythologies for its own purposes the Battlefield is no exception. The story makes fine use of the Arthurian legend with its use of its heroes and villains, giving the story an anchor in on the long lasting and best known mythologies of the Western world. Even more interesting from the Arthurian standpoint is that the Doctor is identified as being as Merlin which not only makes for a nice plot device but adds a nice bit of mystery back to the Doctor. There's also a nice return to some of the elements of the series own mythology including the return of UNIT and its original commander Lethbridge-Stewart, the Doctor's old car Bessie and the morality about war and diplomacy that ran throughout the original UNIT stories of the 1970's. The latter is particularly evident in the Doctor's speech on nuclear weapons (written in fact by script editor Andrew Cartmel) towards the story's conclusion. While the story has some structural issues (such as a slow moving first episode and the Lethbridge-Stewart taking half the story before really making an impact on events) the script is a good one and it stands up well.

So where does Battlefield stand? Well while it has its issues it is still an enjoyable and ever watchable piece of Doctor Who. While it might not be a classic story along the lines of say Genesis of the Daleks or later McCoy stories like Ghost Light or The Curse of Fenric, as an adventure story is a fine one. What more can you really ask for?

This episode is notable for the final time the Tardis interior is shown. It is obvious with the lighting used that the roundels were a temporary set. The classic roundels set used earlier in the 1980s had been destroyed.

The Doctor and Ace land near Lake Vortigern in England in the near future. There is a reference to the King. They get a lift from archeologist Peter Warmsly who is excavating an old battlefield nearby.

Also UNIT soldiers led by Brigadier Winifred Bambera are escorting a nuclear convoy and make a sighting of knights in armour. There is a call out for retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.

At the Gore Crow hotel The Doctor meets a knight called Ancelyn. He addresses the Doctor as 'Merlin' and knows that he has a travel machine.

One ominous group of knights are led by Mordred who has a beef with Ancelyn. The Doctor deduces that the knights have arrived from another dimension like a parallel earth.

The final series of Classic Who opens with a delve into the Arthurian legend. It marks the return of Jean Marsh to Who as the character of Morgana. The big pull was the return of Nicholas Courtney.

The story itself benefits from location shooting. There is even a helicopter transporting Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. It just seems ages to get there.

Once again the story is let down by the actual production. Some of the acting is uneven and so are the special effects.

The first part of Battlefield is a real attempt to combine Arthurian legends, science fiction and action, and for me this opening episode is a mess. It's very heavy handed, and lacks the terrific subtlety shown in the remainder of this series.

It's so over the top, it's kitsch, everything is so over the top, I didn't care for references to The Doctor being Merlin, I know they had made efforts to add mystery to The Doctor's true being, but this wasn't the right path.

The fight scenes look silly, the scene between The Brig and Doris really does miss the mark.

June Bland, who had previously appeared in Earthshock does at least add some quality as Elizabeth, she's measured, and doesn't feel the need to be going full throttle.

A mug's eyeful 5/10.

Review of the Complete Story:

I remember watching BATTLEFIELD when I was eight years old, and it was a story that really inspired me - I even wrote a tale about myself and others trapped in a glass tank filling rapidly with water. Nowadays I'm older and wiser and my eye is more critical, so it was with some hesitation that I revisited the adventure. After all, the previous Colin Baker outing (VENGEANCE ON VAROS) had left me a little cold.

And, sad to say, this is a story that just doesn't hold up that well these days. The sum of the parts is much less greater than the individual elements, and despite the Arthurian mythology and the soldier stuff it all comes across as a bit silly. The direction doesn't help - this was pitched as a big, exciting, action-packed adventure but what we get are lots of knights doing some embarrassingly slow stage-fighting and many pointless explosions.

It's not all bad, and there are certainly reasons for the fans to seek it out. The return of Nicholas Courtney (for the last time) is an obvious one, but Angela Bruce's new Brigadier is also good value. Jean Marsh is the 'proper' actress thrown into the mix, and there's even a role for ARMY OF DARKNESS actor Marcus Gilbert. CARRY ON fans may get a kick out of seeing Angela Douglas as the Brig's wife.

I'm still a fan of Sylvester McCoy - I think his mysterious character suited the Doctor very well - and Sophie Aldred is one of the better of the '80s companions. And it's certainly a fast-paced outing, much of it filmed in an old woods near my home (it was fun seeing the locations I've explored). But in other places it's truly cringe-worthy, like the scene with the cross-cutting between Ace going "bang!" and a grenade exploding; what were they thinking?!

"Battlefield" is the first serial in the doomed 26th season of "Doctor Who", which was to prove the last season of the programme's original run. And, like a lot of "Doctor Who" serials, the plot doesn't make a lot of sense. The Seventh Doctor and Ace find themselves battling various characters from the Arthurian legends. Now you might think that a bunch of warriors from the Dark Ages, armed only with Dark Ages technology, would not worry a Time Lord unduly, but in this version of history the evil sorceress Morgaine, her son Mordred and their followers are beings from another dimension with awesome powers at their disposal. Morgaine's motive for coming to twentieth-century England is to recover the sword Excalibur, currently hanging over the fireplace in the local pub, but she also threatens to unleash a being known as the Destroyer of Worlds on Planet Earth. With a title like that it is pretty obvious what his party trick is, but it is never explained why either he or Morgaine want to destroy the Earth or what they hope to gain by doing so. Wouldn't it be a lot easier just to take Excalibur and leave? But then, if she did that, there wouldn't be much of a story.

I won't set out the rest of the plot, because it doesn't make much sense. I will freely admit that Sylvester McCoy was not my favourite incarnation of the Doctor, but he did suffer under the disadvantage of having to cope with some awful scripts, and while "Battlefield" is not quite the worst from this period- "The Curse of Fenric" from later in the same season would take some beating- it is nevertheless pretty bad. About the only thing I liked about this serial is that it brought back, for his final appearance in the series, one of my favourite characters, Nicholas Courtney's Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart of UNIT, a frequent feature of the programme in the late sixties and seventies. He is a by-the-book army officer who can seem like a narrow-minded stickler for discipline, but nevertheless possesses considerable reserves of courage and decency. Here he is called out of retirement to assist the Doctor and Brigadier Winifred Bambera, his successor as commander of UNIT.

The termination of the series at the end of this season meant that this was the only appearance of Angela Bruce's Brigadier Bambera. (A pity. She had the potential to become an interesting character). There is little about the serial as a whole, however, to convince me that the BBC1 were altogether wrong in their decision not to commission a twenty-seventh season. 4/10.