Meme from
Five least favourite stories:
Restricting it to those I have seen or listened to recently, which I actually think are disastrous rather than merely unimpressive:
- Battlefield (oddly enough I saw Ben Aaronovitch in Forbidden Planet in London on Friday)
- The Mutants
- The Space Pirates
- The Idiot’s Lantern
- The Twin Dilemma (Actually I haven’t seen this since its first broadcast but it was so awful then that it sticks in the mind)
Five favourite stories:
Very difficult to restrict this to five. Ask me again in a few weeks and I may have a different view.
- Genesis of the Daleks!
- The Deadly Assassin!
- The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances!
- School Reunion
- The Daleks’ Master Plan
Five least favourite female companions:
This was pretty easy to choose. There are any number who were just average, or a little below or above, but these are the ones I find especially awful or disappointing.
- Jo (blonde and screams)
- Victoria (brunette and screams)
- Mel (have never actually seen any of her episodes, and no desire to)
- Ace (nice concept, but not really delivered)
- Katarina (essentially a one-line character)
Five favourite female companions:
Again fairly easy; but ask me again in a few months, I have a feeling that Evelyn Smythe may get in there.
- Sarah Jane Smith – the one I grew up with
- Martha Jones – is getting off to a good start
- Zoe – cor!
- Romana – a real match for the Doctor
- Susan – with whom it all starts
Five least favourite male companions:
This and the next category are very difficult to choose from since there only are, what, a dozen male companions, so almost all of them ought to be put in one list or the other if you’re doing the meme properly.
- Kamelion (need one say more?)
- Mike Yates (may reflect my lack of knowledge of mid-Three stories)
- Turlough (never saw the point)
- Ben (chirpy Cockney cliché and man of limited action)
- Adam if he counts; Adric if not.
Five favourite male companions:
- The Brigadier (even in his silliest most Blimp-ish moments, adds a certain gravitas)
- Mickey (actually got a proper plot arc, much more than Rose)
- Ian (does the man of action bit and essentially is the first viewpoint character)
- Steven (gets pushed around, but pushes back)
- Harry (comic relief, but one I watched way back)
Five favourite villains:
I think this includes also monsters, and possibly non-humans generally; the Draconians and the Aridians, as humanoid races with intersting stories behind them, just failed to make the cut.
- Davros (at least the Davros – the greatest villain in the greatest story)
- The Master in all five (or six) versions
- The Daleks
- Scaroth, last of the Jagaroth
- Mr Finch, AKA Brother Lazarus
Five favourite Doctors:
Easy.
- Four (the one I grew up with, and surely the best)
- Nine (superb re-establishment of the character)
- One (superb establishment of the character)
- Ten
- Two
The Albigensian crusade was a combination of a military operation and the earliest developed version of the inquisition – or perhaps rather inquisitions, as they tended to operate as local ecclesiastical initiatives, and could therefore look to secular rulers as an attempt to appropriate their judicial powers. Where the Spanish Inquisition “improved” on the original model was precisely that the degree of influence that Ferdinand and Isabella got over the Spanish church (with papal agreement, because of the continuing perceived Muslim threat) meant that Spanish monarchs could generally treat it as part of the state rather than as a threat to it.
And the main reason that either no organised inquisitions or only weaker versions (such as the Roman Inquisition) developed in other Catholic countries is probably that other rulers didn’t have that degree of control over their local ecclesiastical affairs (even in the Papal States, where papal elections were always subject to an interplay of external political pressures and the more powerful local families).