YMMV / Doctor Who S22 E2 "Vengeance on Varos"

• Critical Dissonance: The serial received mixed reviews from critics, most of whom took issue with its extreme violence, but among fans it's widely considered one of the best stories from the otherwise divisive Sixth Doctor era.
• "Common Knowledge": For what it's worth, the Doctor does not actually push the guards into the acid bath: he startles one into falling into it, who pulls the other in after struggling. However, the Doctor does fight with the second guard before he's pulled in, and it certainly seems like he would have been fine HAD he pushed either of them.
• Crosses the Line Twice: "Forgive me if I don't join you." Darker and Edgier though The '80s were, a lot of Moral Guardians thought this line was even a bit much for the Doctor, who usually is the last person to condone these sorts of things. But you gotta admit, it was pretty darn cool to hear him say that.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Sil. Probably the reason he was brought back for the next season.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In his book About Time, Tat Wood said that if you want to know what the 80s were like, "imagine a world where this could be followed by Jim'll Fix It". Funny then, not so much now after the posthumous sexual abuse claims about Jimmy Savile.
• Mis-blamed: Sil and the Mentors aren't responsible for the Varosians' predilection for violent media or their militaristic government: they're just there for the minerals. The Varosians ended up the way they did because their world started out as a prison colony (though this isn't as clear as it should be.) It is true, however, that the Mentors are interfering in the Varos government's attempts to fix things, since they make a greater profit with the status quo.
• Retroactive Recognition: The Governor is played by Martin Jarvis. Funnily enough, he wasn't the first Alfred to appear on the show.
• Sacred Cow: The Sixth Doctor era is pretty divisive among fans, to say the least, but the general consensus is that this is one of Colin Baker's two best serials, along with "Revelation of the Daleks".
• Signature Scene:
  • The cliffhanger of the first episode, with the Sixth Doctor supposedly dead and the villains turning off the camera.
  • The scene where the guards die in an acid bath and The Doctor's flippant attitude, even making a Bond One-Liner, is the most remembered part of the serial.
• Values Resonance:
  • Despite being made in The '80s, the story could almost be a parody on certain forms of modern reality TV, seeing as Varosian society (with televised Bread and Circuses entertainment and viewers voting if people live or die) almost seems to resemble The Hunger Games, Big Brother or The X Factor meets Nineteen Eighty-Four. This gets Lampshaded in the ''Tales from the TARDIS" edit of this story, with Peri commenting that 21st Century Earth is uncomfortably like Varos, while the Doctor notes that Sil wouldn't be out of place.
  • In some ways the story resembles a proto-Black Mirror.
  • The criticism of referendum, showing how impractical it is, with the people choosing long-term poor decisions for short-term benefits, or just voting for a decision out of a personal dislike for the leader, along with subordinates to the ruler backed by corrupt capitalists pushing this to help bring down the ruler could be seen as this in the wake of Brexit.

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