JNT used to have a phrase which he trotted out every time someone said that Doctor Who wasn't as good as it used to be: "The memory cheats".
What they were referring to was the time before he became producer - and what he was referring to were the "rose-tinted spectacles" of Nostalgia.
The aptly titled Remembrance of the Daleks opened the series' 25th anniversary season in 1988.
Unlike the 20th Anniversary, JNT and Andrew Cartmel elected to go with new writers for this season - including the actual silver anniversary story itself - rather than look to an old hand like Terrance Dicks again.
Remembrance was given to Ben Aaronovitch to write, and he delivered a story which was much better suited for a birthday than the scrappy Cyberman tale.
It saw the return of the Daleks after a three year break and Davros was kept to the last few minutes - meaning that we finally got to see once again how good the Daleks could be on their own, if written for well. Davros was kept hidden in plain sight as the new Emperor. (It was supposed to be a nod to the big-domed model from the 1960's comic strips, but ended up looking more like a roll-on deodorant).
The main setting was Coal Hill School, around the time of An Unearthly Child. Mention was made of the Doctor who visited the funeral parlour having long white hair - i.e. the Hartnell incarnation.
We had previously seen a Dalek civil war in The Evil of the Daleks. Planet of the Daleks is also referenced, with a mention of Spiridon.
Group Captain Gilmore was a Brigadier surrogate, his Intrusion Counter Measures Group a proto-UNIT. There was even room for a reference to one of Doctor Who's forebears - the Quatermass serials.
Unfortunately, like most of the JNT stories which endeavoured to include a lot of fan-pleasing continuity, some things simply didn't add up.
What was supposed to be a junkyard was obviously a builders merchants on screen, and so looked nothing like the one from the very first episode, and the name on the gates was misspelt. On one hand we were supposed to believe that this was the winter of 1963, just after the Doctor had left with Ian and Barbara, but the weather was summery, with the sun streaming through the windows at 5:15pm. The children wore school uniform - when none had been evident in An Unearthly Child.
In The Daleks, everything pointed to the Doctor having his first ever encounter with the Daleks. (He may have heard about them whilst on Gallifrey, but it's clear he hasn't actually met them before and is ignorant of their history, or even where their planet is).
But in Remembrance we're asked to believe that he knows everything about them, to the extent that he has even planned a trap for them and their creator. We're also expected to believe that he left Gallifrey with a whole load of Time Lord super-weapons, which jars with everything that has gone before.
Cartmel had basically attempted a version of the Timeless Child thirty-odd years early - rewriting the Doctor's entire history to make him something other than a mere Time Lord. Luckily this amounted only to a few cryptic comments and hints, some of which didn't even survive the final edit.
Unlike the Timeless Child episodes, the writing on Remembrance is strong enough to carry these inconsistencies, and the fans were able to grit their teeth and accept them, and the story is often the top rated McCoy adventure (top three certainly).
JNT's argument about cheating memories tended to fall apart when you looked at his stories which relied more heavily on continuity than others.
Mawdryn Undead went against all of the accepted dating of the UNIT stories - the near future setting intended by the producers though rarely realised on screen thanks to decimalisation and car registration plates.
Warriors of the Deep saw the Silurians and Sea Devils return, with specific references to their previous stories - except that these made no sense in relation to those stories. No Silurian had ever been named. There was never any mention of a Triad. The Doctor had never clapped eyes on a Silurian battlecruiser - or a Myrka. Neither race looked like they did before - especially the Silurians, who now seemed to have electronic third eyes that flashed in time with their speech, instead of organic ones with multiple powers. The problem is compounded by the Doctor specifically stating how many times he has met them before - so you can't insert any unseen adventures to explain any of this away.
Attack of the Cybermen is the biggest offender. It goes out of its way to try to cram in as many Cyberman references as possible, but makes an absolute hash of things. The biggest gripe for fans was the uninspiring realisation of the Tombs of Telos, and the fact that the Cybermen were the wrong kind. Whilst having the same actor play the Cyber-Controller again was a nice idea in principle, it failed on screen as he had obviously put on some weight since 1967.
If you are going to go for continuity, you have to get it right - or fail at your peril. It's no wonder the stories which were aimed at pleasing fans the most have always tended to be the least liked when it comes to end of season or anniversary polls.
JNT was wrong. The memory never cheated. Fans just remembered the old stories, thanks to the Target books or because they had seen them on broadcast, or in images in Doctor Who Weekly / Monthly, and simply recognised when something just didn't look, or sound, or feel quite right.
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