bionicbob said:
As someone who did not grow up on Who and is still slowly rediscovering the classic series, I was wondering if someone would enlighten me more with their opinion on the history of the show. The different producer eras, the strengths and weakness of each, etc? Why the great divide over JNT?
JNT is commonly associated with the perceived deterioration of the classic series back in the day. This was at a time where the fandom had balooned and JNT was one of the first to properly interact with them...sometimes taking time out of production meetings to give interviews to fanzines and such, much to the irritation of his inner circle, led at the time by Eric Saward, his script editor. The two had a stormy relationship that just continued to spiral downwards.
JNT's era could at times be a pantomime, but it could also be fairly edgy...one story in his run has a higher death count than the first Terminator movie!
JNT would sometimes go on chat shows and announce that fans had "cheating memories"...aka they lived in a nostalgia bubble and constantly savaged the show for not being the era they grew up in...despite the fact the same problems they were bringing up probably existed back then too, but they would not admit it because of their sentiment to the eras they were raised on.
It was a series of circumstances..ageing series, entitled fanbase, biased BBC, behind-the-scenes tension, all of which contributed to the show not meeting certain expectations. No matter how creative it got, the show was in a position where it couldn't please anyone, and thus had to be cut loose to free up the schedules. The show could'nt keep up with all of the american sci-fi shows at the time either because the BBC had a stranglehold on the budgets. Period drama was all that could make the show look good by the end in that department.
And then JNT bowed out with "Dimensions in Time", the worst charity special ever, which did'nt help matters.
That said, I grew up with JNT's run, so I can never hate it...the man had his demons, his struggles, and through it all, fought a downhill battle to keep the show alive as long as he could, he made mistakes, and he also triumphed...but for all that effort, the conceited fanbase continues to conspire against him