Season 26

Season 26 of Doctor Who ran 6 September 1989 and 6 December 1989. It starred Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor and Sophie Aldred as Ace. Season 26 was also the final season in the original run of the TV show. The season opened with Battlefield and concluded with Survival.

Overview
The season consisted of four stories and fourteen twenty-five-minute episodes. It was the final season of the "classic" series; the BBC announced in 1990 that it would not be producing a 27th season. However, Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred reprised their roles as the Doctor and Ace respectively for a special episode of Search Out Science entitled Search Out Space, which aired that year. A one-off Children in Need special, Dimensions in Time, appeared in 1993, after which a television film, co-produced by an American network, followed in 1996. The series finally returned in 2005. However, the BBC chose to restart the season numbering with Series 1. Season 26 featured the return of Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier and the last televised appearance of Anthony Ainley as. Unusually for a Doctor Who season, aside from some scenes in Survival, all the stories took place on Earth. Apart from Battlefield, the stories followed a loose, as Ace came to terms with her past. As for the Doctor, he had become darker in personality, treating others as pawns in the battle between good and evil while dressing in dark clothes to match his personality change.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
 * Ace - Sophie Aldred

Recurring

 * - Anthony Ainley

Guest

 * Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - Nicholas Courtney
 * Winifred Bambera - Angela Bruce
 * Doris Lethbridge-Stewart - Angela Douglas
 * Morgaine - Jean Marsh
 * Ancelyn - Marcus Gilbert
 * Josiah Samuel Smith - Ian Hogg
 * Lady Pritchard - Sylvia Syms
 * Redvers Fenn-Cooper - Michael Cochrane
 * Dr. Judson - Dinsdale Landen
 * Kathleen Dudman - Cory Pulman
 * Rev Wainwright - Nicholas Parsons
 * Paterson - Julian Holloway
 * Karra - Lisa Bowerman
 * Midge - William Barton

VHS

 * Battlefield (single episode version) (1998)
 * Ghost Light (1994)
 * The Curse of Fenric (single episode version) (1991)
 * Survival (1995)

DVD
All serials of season 26 were released individually between 2003 and 2009.

Novels

 * Battlefield
 * Ghost Light
 * The Curse of Fenric
 * Survival

Behind the scenes

 * The producers had already outlined basic plots for the next season of Doctor Who when the programme's cancellation hit. In that season, it was proposed that Ace should leave, and a new companion should join. Also planned was that the entire season should do more to explore the darker side of the Doctor. While the scripts never saw a TV screen (and in some cases did not exist beyond a rough outline), they were eventually completed and produced as full-cast audio plays in Big Finish Productions' collection The Lost Stories.
 * This is the last series not to feature the Daleks.