Doctor Who: Remastered | Season 9 Overview

The ninth season of Doctor Who: Remastered, which was now the fourth since the show’s revival in early 2021, premiered on Paramount+ and BBC iPlayer on 25 August 2022, with episodes airing weekly on BBC Two from 27 August.

While following the same basic template as the last few seasons, that of 13x45 minute cutdowns of early Doctor Who, with CGI enhancements and remastered video and audio, the season also differed (somewhat controversially) with how it handled The Key to Time.

The previous season of Doctor Who: Remastered had covered Robot to The Hand of Fear, so naturally, this season began with The Deadly Assassin. Like with The Three Doctors, The Deadly Assassin featured new CGI exteriors of Gallifrey, based upon the design used primarily in Panopticon.

The fourth episode, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, offered a conundrum for Michael Brown (the showrunner of Remastered). For numerous reasons, mainly involving (but not limited to) the original serial’s use of “yellowface” make-up for the character of Li H'sen Chang (as played by white actor, John Bennett), it would be difficult for Paramount to justify releasing a “new” TV release using such a depiction, without intense criticism. Brown did consider dropping The Talons of Weng-Chiang altogether, but its status as a fan-favourite, and a highlight of the era, also made things difficult. During this period, Brown met with Doctor Who’s former Producer, Philip Hinchcliffe, to discuss his thoughts about how to tackle it. Hinchcliffe suggested that instead of dropping the serial altogether, perhaps the story could be rephrased with the entire character of Li H'sen Chang being removed altogether. After all, Chang isn’t really in the final two episodes of the story, and the main villain overall becomes Magnus Greel. Additionally, one of the highlights of the story, for fans, was often cited as the characters of Jago and Litefoot, and they don’t actually meet until the final two episodes, so if the story was re-edited to be, mainly, the final two episodes, then a Li H’sen Chang-less episode was entirely possible, with a much higher quantity of Jago and Litefoot, too. The final edited episode did manage to achieve this, with the first 10-15 minutes, or so, pulling footage from Parts 1-4 and the rest from Parts 5-6. The episode did still carry a warning, however, as many “chinese” extras appear, and are depicted in a racist manner, but the most blatantly racist presence, in the story, had been removed entirely, with Chang’s only mention being his poster on the wall next to the TARDIS.

The rest of the season was pretty plain sailing until Episode 10, when, controversially, Doctor Who: Remastered, changed things about, quite a bit. Episode 10, 11, 12 and 13 were titled “The Key to Time” and then “Part One” to “Part Four”, with the entirety of Season 16 edited into just four parts, making up the back half of the season. However, not only did these four episodes incorporate the 26 episodes from Season 16, but also the 6 episodes of The Invasion of Time. Yes, Episode 9 had been Underworld (which, by the way, had a lot of new CGI), and then Episode 10 was straight into this Invasion of Time/Key to Time hybrid edit.

It was the most expensive sequence that Doctor Who: Remastered had produced

The editing was quite clever, with the opening scene of the White Guardian meeting the Doctor, editing together with the opening scene, from The Invasion of Time, of Leela waiting for the Doctor (as he met someone mysterious) in the TARDIS. After that, the action cut to Gallifrey, and there’s a lot of Invasion of Time stuff, before the Doctor and Leela get split up and then the Doctor goes back into the TARDIS and meets Romana, and they go off and The Ribos Operation and The Pirate Planet takes place. Meanwhile, all the stuff with Leela and the Outsiders with Rodan happens, intercut with all of that. Episode 11 then does the same, with The Stones of Blood and The Androids of Tara (with the Doctor and Romana) while the Leela plot continues on Gallifrey. Episode 12 then features all of The Power of Kroll, and all but the final scenes of The Armageddon Factor, while the Gallifrey plot with the Vardans gets into a position where it can come to an ending, as soon as the Doctor arrives back, which happens at the very end of the episode, as he quickly sorts out the Vardans, leaving Episode 12 cliff hanging with the Sontarans arriving. Episode 13 does the final two parts of The Invasion of Time, taking a brief detour, at the end to wrap up The Key to Time plot, with the final scenes of The Armageddon Factor featuring. An entirely new sequence (again, controversially) was produced to end the episode, using body doubles and CGI, which saw the Key to Time itself, draining Romana’s lifeforce, and killing her, causing her to regenerate (with the modern effect) and become Romana II, as played by Lalla Ward. While both Lalla Ward and Mary Tamm were achieved using deepfake technology, and Tamm’s voice was synthesised during this short scene, Ward did reprise her role by providing new Romana’s first line in ADR. The regeneration scene was scripted by Jane Espenson and directed by Graeme Harper. It was the most expensive sequence that Doctor Who: Remastered had produced, in its 9 season history, and had an extremely mixed reaction from the fandom. The entire Key to Time four-parter looked incredibly expensive, with a lot of the stuff of Leela outside on Gallifrey featuring CGI and set extensions to make Gallifrey look like it did in Season 41-43 and Panopticon. The “Remastered” portion of this serial was extensive.

It was announced, following the broadcast of Episode 13 on BBC Two, that the series would be returning for a tenth season in Spring 2023, and cover Destiny of the Daleks to Logopolis, rounding out the Fourth Doctor era.