Davison's 3rd season was designed (by the violence-loving fanatic Eric Saward) to show how hopeless Davison's Doctor was in a universe growing ever more dark, dangerous & brutal. So you had "Warriors of the Deep" in which EVERYBODY died... "Ressurection of the Daleks" in which not only everybody died, but quite a few of the cast were duplicates of people who died before it ever started; "Planet of Fire" where half the story is spent with one group trying to throw another group to their deaths (and for religious reasons, for goodness' sake), and finally, Robert Holmes' Viet Nam War allegory (that's how I see it), "The Caves of Androzani", in which not only everybody dies, but so does The Doctor-- and it takes him ALL 4 EPISODES to do so! Of these, only "Caves" has grown on me in the long run. Holmes remains the show's BEST writer in my eyes-- at least, from the first 26 seasons!

After all this non-stop hell, the season finale was designed as a "break"-- much more lightweight, and with a lot of humor. But the IDIOTS who ran the show in the US decided to "hold back" the last story, "The Twin Dilemma", until a year later. Completely threw the whole rythym the season ending and the NEXT season beginning off-kilter.

Unfortunately, and I now blame both producer John Nathan-Turner AND story editor Eric Saward for this, Colin Baker's 1st full season, while having a lot of interesting ideas, suffered from a lot of half-baked writing. "Attack of the Cybermen" once again turned into a pointless BLOODBATH in its 2nd half (Saward writing under a psudonym!). "Vengeance On Varos" was an allegory about "video nasties" and violence on television. "Mark of the Rain" was a bit more "fun", but after multiple viewings it suddenly hit me writers Pip & Jane Baker neglected to include an actual PLOT!!! And then there's "Timelash", my vote for the single WORST story in DOCTOR WHO history. Everything went wrong with this one-- the story, the dialogue, the production design, the costumes, the cast, the ACTING (Paul Darrow should have been kicked out of his union for his performance in this one).

Mixed in with these were 2 MASTERPIECES. Robert Holmes' "The Two Doctors" brought back Patrick Troughton's 2nd Doctor AND his sidekick Jamie MacCrimmon; The Sontorans; introduced some curious "continuity" problems involving Troughton's Doctor working for the Time Lords' C.I.A. (Holmes had stretched the realms of the show's history before); and they got Colin OUT of that STUPID jacket for a good portion of the story. Gotta love it for that alone!

Finally, Saward's "Revelation of the Daleks" was supposedly the Dalek story he "really wanted" to write all along, which turned out to be a complex, perverse black comedy (a take-off on the film THE LOVED ONE, as it happens). He once again introduced a "noble" mercenary in the form of Orsini (William Gaunt of THE CHAMPIONS), giving one the unmistakable impression he would have RATHER been writing a show about mercenaries than about a non-violent scientist hero. Once again, Saward NEEDLESSLY kills off countless interesting characters, and shockingly, by story's end, The Doctor himself did NOTHING at all to stop the baddies other than offer irritating quips.

Colin Baker had a TON of potential, but between JNT & Eric Saward (plus that AWFUL costume-- and a companion who could NEVER stop whining) his run seems aimed purely at die-hard fans of the show, and nobody else. The comic-strips (in DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE) at the time actually went in a completely different direction, with the focus on imagination, fantasy and humor. Oh yeah, and a talking penguin. (I wouldn't make up a thing like this...!)