So, to recap, we have a pioneering female producer being replaced with a male producer whose first decision is to sack the female lead for being too uppity. Knowing that, it's really hard to watch this story, in which the matriarchal society of the Drahvin is painted as uncritically and completely evil, without wanting to drink heavily and read feminist literary theory. (To be fair, though, I want to do those things most of the time.)
Back in January, I read and thoroughly enjoyed the second volume of this series of books based on Sandifer's excellent blogThe Ark and The Celestial Toymaker. It's all rather fascinating.
As before I found areas of agreement and disagreement, and some points of irritation. I found his description of the end of Susan's and Dodo's character arcs, as if they had just run out of things to do and therefore had to be written out, rather too deterministic; the show was always perfectly capable of keeping characters around well after their sell-by date. I'm also not aware of any other evidence that Vicki was originally intended to be killed off in The Daleks' Master Plan. But I cheered for his positive interpretation of The Gunfighters. I think it's also a very strong point that the changeover of producers – twice – in Season Three is one of the biggest changes of production style in the history of the programme, though spread out to happen gradually over several stories.
In any case, these books will be as vital a part of the thinking Who fan's library as Wood and Miles' About Time series, to which Sandifer repeatedly pays due homage.
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