I actually like this a lot. It has flaws, as you point out, but I can forgive them due to the imagination and originality on show - not something that had been seen in the programme for a while.
Richard Briers does seem to miss the point of the Chief Caretaker: an obsessive, petty bureaucrat who likes making life miserable for people but who only becomes a psychopath at the end, but Briers just plays him as a pantomime villain.
I think I argued in my last Changing Style of Doctor Who essay that season twenty-four has real tonal problems, uncertain of how to balance the adult and childish elements, although I would disagree that the problems of "poor acting, low production values, and an uneasiness about how broad its humour needed to be" were endemic across Cartmel's time; I think there is a definite learning curve, although you do get the occasional late period setback like Battlefield (reasonable script, problematic excecution).
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Richard Briers does seem to miss the point of the Chief Caretaker: an obsessive, petty bureaucrat who likes making life miserable for people but who only becomes a psychopath at the end, but Briers just plays him as a pantomime villain.
I think I argued in my last Changing Style of Doctor Who essay that season twenty-four has real tonal problems, uncertain of how to balance the adult and childish elements, although I would disagree that the problems of "poor acting, low production values, and an uneasiness about how broad its humour needed to be" were endemic across Cartmel's time; I think there is a definite learning curve, although you do get the occasional late period setback like Battlefield (reasonable script, problematic excecution).