Who's That Terrible Woman?

It's not often that Doctor Who fandom presents a united front on anything, but it seems to make an exception when it comes to the 30th Anniversary charity piece "Dimensions in Time".

The sheer magnitude of the bile and venom that was (and still is in some quarters) hurled towards this innocuous little gem is genuinely puzzling to me.

Which is a shame, because I rather like it.

Failing to satisfy virtually nobody and alienate virtually everybody takes a bit of doing, but "Dimensions" manages with an almost flawless grace. Being neither the springboard for the recommissioning of a new series, nor the doomed-to-fail special "The Dark Dimension" that many hoped for, it also committed a much greater sin in the eyes of many; namely being co-written by John Nathan-Turner. (A man who at that stage of his career was well used to satisfying virtually nobody and alienating virtually everybody).

But what probably gets overlooked the most is the sheer verve and fun of the thing, both perfectly apt and fitting in the circumstances. Any who criticise the seemingly random and muddled mess are missing two rather salient points.

Firstly, lots of people in silly clothes, shouting and running around to an obtrusive clattering synthesizer sountrack is archetypal late 1980's Doctor Who and hardly anything out of the ordinary. (The fact that none of it appears to make any kind of sense also places it firmly in Cartmel-land).

And secondly, exactly how much different is "Dimensions in Time" from the much-loved 20th Anniversary bash, "The Five Doctors"?

In my view, not very much. But with one important difference...

The 20th Anniversary occured when the show was very much alive and kicking, and formed part of the (cough) continuous overall narrative. (And was rammed down our collective fanboy throats by the well-oiled JN-T hype machine).

And this is probably the ultimate tragedy to befall "Dimensions in Time"; that there was no audience that actually wanted to see it.

Fans wanted a new series, and especially a new series that was "gritty and realistic", not fun and frothy. (Yes, just like the New Adventures! Go figure). Joe Public would probably have preferred something that they half-remembered as Doctor Who-ish, and which didn't get in the way of "Noel's House Party". And because the programme was almost five years deceased, there were no excited 11-year-old regular viewers who could grow up with memories of the jaw-dropping audacity of the damn thing.

So who killed "Dimensions in Time"?

Erm, on the whole... we did.

Oops.