YMMV / Doctor Who S26 E4 "Survival"

• Character Rerailment: Anthony Ainley finally got to play the Master the way he intended, eschewing over-the-top campiness in favour of low-key menace.
• Fanon: The blonde woman the Doctor encounters after being teleported away from the Cheetah Planet for the last time is often assumed by fans to be a younger Jackie Tyler, owed to her similar appearance, voice, and demeanour.
• Harsher in Hindsight: This serial named "Survival" turned out to be the final serial before the show was cancelled, and had to have a monologue added in post-production.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: The Doctor closes with a beautiful speech culminating with, "Come on, Ace. We've got work to do." At the time, it was unknown if the show would ever come back. Fast-forward sixteen years, and the Doctor is back on our screens, with the show as good as (many would say, better than) ever, and since then it's only gone from success to success. This also gives a new ringing meaning to the title "Survival." No matter what outside forces intervene, Doctor Who always finds a way to survive.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Ace picks up a copy of War by U2 and asks "Are they still going?", since they had been active for just over a decade at that point. While the line was intended as a jab at Rattle and Hum and the spectacular backlash it brought, U2 (much like Doctor Who) ended up going on for decades and haven't truly stopped.
  • The neighbour in the last episode who complains about 'flipping cat-fights' bears a remarkable, and entirely coincidental, resemblance to a young Jackie Tyler, to the extent where many fans both jokingly and seriously theorize that the two characters are one and the same.
  • Ace complains that Sunday is "the one day of the week you can't even get a decent television programme." In 2018, Doctor Who began airing on Sundays.
• Les Yay: The subtext between Ace and Karra is so shameless that when Rona Munro complained that her intended lesbian innuendo had been censored most viewers wondered what the hell could have been cut out that could possibly have been shown before the Watershed.
• Narm: Sylvester McCoy overcooks the ham, making a serious line sound very, very, very melodramatic as he battles on the Cheetah World:
  "IF WE FIGHT LIKE ANIMALS, WE'LL DIIIIIIEE LIKE ANIMALS!"
• Special Effects Failure:
  • The animatronic cat used for the Kitling in a couple of sequences is very, very poor. According to Andrew Cartmel, they hired a guy who had created a very good animatronic dog for the sitcom I Lovett, but then discovered that cats are inherently more difficult because of their smaller size.
  • The Chicken Game between the Doctor and Midge ends with the bikes colliding in an explosion... that was obviously added post-production, since not only are Midge and the Doctor not seen flying off, the bikes themselves are removed at the last second.
• Tear Dryer: Ace assumes the Doctor is dead and sits holding his hat. Then he casually takes it off her with a casual "Mine, I believe". They then head off to further adventures.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The gorgeously realized alien planet.

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