Country of origin United Kingdom No. of episodes 14 | No. of stories 4 Original network BBC One | |
Starring Sylvester McCoy
Sophie Aldred Original release 5 October 1988 (1988-10-05) – 4 January 1989 (1989-01-04) | ||
The twenty-fifth season of British science fiction television series Doctor Who began on 5 October 1988 with the serial Remembrance of the Daleks, and ended with The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.
Contents
Main cast
Recurring stars
Terry Molloy makes his final appearance as Davros, the Dalek creator (now acting as the Dalek Emperor) in Remembrance of the Daleks.
Guest Stars
John Leeson who previously regularly voiced the robot companion K9 from 1977-1978 and 1980-1981, appears as one of the Dalek voices in Remembrance of the Daleks.
David Banks makes his final of four appearances in the series in Silver Nemesis as a Cyber-leader.
Serials
This season was moved to Wednesday.
Season 25 saw the start of a move to explore the Doctor's past; script editor Andrew Cartmel had felt that as more of the character's own history, together with the history of the Time Lords, had been revealed, some of the mystery about the Doctor had been lost. As a consequence he, together with writers Ben Aaronovitch and Marc Platt, began developing the seeds of a new backstory, which would be hinted at throughout the season, that suggested the Doctor to be more powerful than most people were aware of. This concept eventually came to be known as the "Cartmel Masterplan".
Broadcast
The entire season was broadcast from 5 October 1988 to 4 January 1989. Season twenty-five was originally supposed to have been broadcast in production order, with The Greatest Show in the Galaxy second. However, the expected start of the season on 7 September was delayed to 5 October because of BBC coverage of the Seoul Summer Olympics. Nathan-Turner still wanted to lead off the year with Remembrance of the Daleks and have episode one of the twenty-fifth anniversary story, Silver Nemesis, broadcast on 23 November – the actual date of Doctor Who's 25th anniversary. This left only three weeks in between the two serials. Consequently, the original season finale, The Happiness Patrol, was exchanged with The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.
DVD Release
All serials of season 25 were released individually in between 2001 and 2012.