metalheadjay wrote:The problem with Turner was that he wanted to make a teen to adult show that was all style over substance. He really just sucked all of the fun out of "Doctor Who". Tom wanted it to be a family show that had both style and substance.
I sort of have a love/hate relationship with Tom's final season(18). I enjoy the harder science fiction themes and the tone is quite atmospheric but I so miss the fun, the humor, the more witty writing, story development, and Dudley Simpsons wonderful scores of Tom's previous seasons. I just thought Turner took the show way too far in one specific direction and disregarded too many of the aspects that made "Doctor Who" so excellent in the 70's. In most interviews, I've seen of writers(who worked on his stories) speaking about him. They seem to imply that he really didn't care about an intelligent, witty story that paid attention to narrative development and characterization. I guess this was indeed the case, because "Doctor Who" continued to get worse and worse as the years passed when he was producer. Sylvester McCoys last season wasn't too bad but by then it was too late.
I think had the show ended on Logopolis, the franchise would have done far better from there in a novels range continuation, especially since at that time sci-fi novelist Christopher Priest was interested in writing for the show. I think if JNT and Eric Saward had no control over the range, over what shopping list elements the story had to have in it, or over which writers he did and didn't want, it would have been far better. In prose form the stories would have had to be witty and coherent and populated by properly fleshed out characters. The writers would have had to try harder and thus produce better, more rewarding stories rather than what we got. And Season 18 would have given the novels range an impetus with the cliffhanger ending of Logopolis, and the new mythologies introduced in State of Decay and Warrior's Date that the novels could utilise well.
I generally have nothing against bypassing Doctors 5, 6 and 7 for alternate adventures or even a continuation into the new series. For example, last night I watched City of Death and followed it up with Rose, the pilot episode of the revived series which first aired in 2005. 
