cassiphone: The Women of The Five Doctors

"There is an emotional core utterly missing from The Five Doctors, only evident in tiny moments here and there, while the larger ones are wasted. I still enjoy it as a story, I always will – it’s a grand adventure and one of those Doctor Who stories that is burned on to my ten-year-old psyche – but for a show that was working so hard to define the mythology of Doctor Who, it missed the mark when it comes to defining and redefining the role of women in the show. By acknowledging the cliches about girl companions and not doing enough to counteract them or even comment on them (we needed more pineapple cocktail moments to balance out the tea-making!) it only serves to cement those cliches as being essential to the show’s history, rather than one of the least interesting aspects of it."