He basically says he likes CITY OF DEATH, THE ARK IN SPACE ("Baker already in charge of role and focussed and good"), THE TALONS OF WENG CHIANG ("An absurdist comedy. Not meant to be taken seriously, a full on comedy. Hoorah for the funny rat!")
Some people haven't forgotten THAT interview yet though where he said.....
A: Peter Davison is a better actor than all the other ones. That’s the simple reason why it works better. There’s no complicated reason why Peter Davison carried on working and all the others disappeared into a retirement home.
Now, some old actor like Tom Baker would come to a shuddering halt in the middle of the set and stare at the camera, because he can’t bear the idea that someone else is in the show. But Peter Davison is such a good actor, he manages to panic on the screen for a good two minutes, which has you sitting on the edge of your seat because you’re thinking ‘God, this must be really bad’. He’s got the most awful lines to say, but he’s doing it brilliantly. My memory of Doctor Who is based on bad television that I enjoyed at the time.
A: How could a good hack think that the BBC could make a giant rat? If he’d come to my house, when I was fourteen, and said ‘Can BBC Special Effects do a giant rat?’, I’d have said no. I’d rather see them do something limited than something crap. What I resented was going to school two days later, and my friends knew I watched this show, and they’d say ‘Did you see the giant rat?’, and I’d have to say I thought there was dramatic integrity elsewhere.
Fair enough and people do change their views over time, but....
Oh, he just gets on my nerves!
There is a pompous, opinion as fact, quality to all of his interviews that makes me want to watch a Terrance Dicks, Barry Letts or even a JNT interview instead.
I think this goes back to the creatives being opinionated fans. Robert Shearman, Gary Russell, Clayton Hickman and other modern creatives' interviews often grate on me in the same way in how they interpret stories and present their viewpoint almost as gospel.
And I can't see any of them being brutally honest about their own product as Barry Letts was about the Gelguards. "Quite the stupidest monsters we ever did!"
Or JNT: "Okay, so.... I got it wrong, I got it wrong. It didn't work."
No. They are too busy informing us that the entire cast and crew sobbed at their latest beautiful script at a read through.