Doctor Who The Leisure Hive The polarising positions of those pushing Season 18 (or JN-T/Bidmead) over Season 17 (Williams/Adams), or vice versa, have never really resonated with me. Probably because I rate them both. If push came to shove, I’d probably assert that the latter achieves what it’s aiming for more successfully than the former, stymied as the Fourth Doctor’s final year is by some unfortunate choices of companions and a lack of rapport between leads, but I have little time for the hand grenades at dawn lobbed about in About Time 4 . One of the big failings of the JN-T era, predicated as it was on appearances (or superficiality, if you prefer) rather than content, is that it couldn’t keep up the visual ambition that informed Season 18 (and which complemented the one season of his era where content was more than its equal); if you’re going to foreground gloss, you need to be able to support it with atmosphere, pace and style, especially when the stories aren’t