Doctor Who review: Battlefield is a fun opening for the Classic Series’s final season

With its recent release on Blu-Ray in North America, we look back on Doctor Who’s final season of its classic era, starting with its opening story Battlefield.

For Season 25, Ben Aaronovitch wrote the explosive opening story Remembrance of the Daleks. Not only was it his first script for Doctor Who, but it was also arguably one of the best Dalek stories ever made. It mixed a highly entertaining story with interesting themes – particularly the dangers of racism and nationalism – and even little hints of the show’s mythology. As far as debut stories go, it’s an extremely strong and confident one.

Battlefield is extremely different from his first. A story featuring Arthurian mythology crashing into the modern world, it isn’t quite as complex as Remembrance. In fact, it might be the weakest story of Doctor Who‘s final season.

However, that’s not to say that it’s bad. Far from it. While it doesn’t come across as mature as the stories that follow it, there’s definitely a lot of fun to be had from Battlefield. In fact, in some ways, it’s a pretty effective way of kicking off the season.

Mordred and Morgaine

For very different reasons, the villains definitely stand out in Battlefield. Christopher Bowen is incredibly hammy as Mordred. Sometimes, I don’t particularly enjoy hammy villains, but Bowen has so much fun with the part that it’s kind of hard not to smile. Mordred doesn’t come across as a particularly complex character, so in this case, it feels like Bowen is simply acting out what’s on the page.

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is Mordred’s mother: Morgaine. A powerful sorceress, Morgaine comes across as an incredibly complex and interesting villain, one who’s absolutely ruthless but still has a strong sense of honor.

A character like that needs a great actress, and that’s exactly what we get with Jean Marsh playing the role. Not only had Marsh played several roles in Doctor Who before – including First Doctor companion Sara Kingdom. But she’d already had experience playing similar roles in fantasy movies, such as Mombi in Return to Oz or Queen Bavmorda in Willow.

When it comes to playing powerful evil characters, she’s one of the best, and Battlefield demonstrates why. As mentioned, the character of Morgaine has a degree of complexity – while she has no problem taking another’s life and turning them to ash, she also has a great deal of respect for her enemies too. She’s an interesting villain, and Marsh’s performance helps to add to that complexity by striking the right balance between playing up the evil and knowing when to ground the character.

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UNIT and the Brigadier

What also leaps out about this story is the long-overdue return of UNIT and the Brigadier. The former hadn’t been featured in Doctor Who since The Android Invasion in 1975, and even Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart hadn’t been seen since The Five Doctors back in 1983. So in 1989, this was a pretty major story.

Two things are clear about both of these major returns. Firstly, it’s easy to see that Battlefield was meant to establish a new beginning for UNIT. New era, new team, and even a new Brigadier: Winifred Bambera, Lethbridge-Stewart’s successor. Naturally, she doesn’t share Lethbridge-Stewart’s trust of the Doctor, at least initially, although it’s easy to imagine that this would have developed over time. That is if this season hadn’t been the last of the Classic Series.

The other clear element is what this story was setting up: the death of Lethbridge-Stewart. Everything is built up to this in terms of the story – particularly the Brigadier coming out of retirement to do “one last job” and his wife Doris worrying about his safety. But in the end, it’s clear that Aaronovitch – unsurprisingly – couldn’t go through with it. And honestly, you can’t really blame him for chickening out of killing off such a major character.

Especially when you’ve got a story that’s so much fun. I don’t think Battlefield will ever be thought of as a classic, but with old friends, epic battles of knights and soldiers and a lot of explosions, it’s certainly entertaining. Honestly, it’s not a bad way of kicking off the season with a bang.

Are you a fan of Battlefield? Do you enjoy its mix of knights and sorcery with the Doctor Who universe? Would you have liked to have seen more of the new UNIT team it introduces? Let us know in the comments below.