Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

Exquisite. Simply... exquisite.

Tico - The BRANE OF MORBIUS should only be attempted after a couple of cans of RELAXANT in my opinion cos it is very silly. Also you will be annoyed by the rubbish assistant who falls over a lot. The priestesses are brilliant. But yes I am up for DOCTOR ACTION.

Secret flame! Secret fire!

Also the invention of real actual computers was catastrophic for Dr Who cos they insist on using them and seeing Z80 graphics on futuristic screens is more horrible than any rubber monster. Castrovalva has a particularly poor eg of this.

It is vvv amusing in Castrovalva when they are reading up on ZERO CO-ORDINATES on what looks like a primitive Teletext reader. I do not like the assistants there cos one of them IIRC tried to SHUN K-9. Bah humbug.

K-9 did a STERLING job in the Sun Makers.

X = reason why someone (who generally does not like Genre of which X is example) started to like Genre

Typical nerd response:

X = RUBBISH!!!

I hate nerds.

This leads us to a question I asked Mrs Tico Tico last night - why exactly was Beryl Reid famous again?

What I am trying to say is that for some people (including HSA) the rubber suits and stupid aliens were a turn-off, which distracted him from being able to appreciate the clever plots and interesting concepts which made Dr. Who so fantastic. Castrovalva had no rubbish monsters, but it did have an amazing concept.

So you get all these nerds going "My appreciation of Dr. Who is superior because I can look past the rubbish rubber monsters" (or even "I *like* the rubbish rubber monsters") which totally disregards the point that it is the concept and plots and writing which makes Dr. Who a cut above the usual rubber monster sci fi rubbish.

Mostly because he could do the thing that still sets great Dr. Who stories apart: a fairly stable system which suddenly has a relentless resourceful force of chaos rampaging through it.

I am a nerd, but I wasn't trying to pull a move of 'oh no that's not part of the canon' or 'oh no that's not obscure enough' - Castrovalva is highly regarded among Dr Who fans I've discovered, but that regard baffles me a bit.

spplutter, I am glad in the US Doctor Who never caught on w/ the fanboy community WHAT??

I have not been to that many conventions, but at the ones I've been to, the Doctor Who presence was miniscule compared to Star Trek, Star Wars, anime, etc.

Did anyone* see the Cruise of the Gods one off drama on telly this past Christmas. A bit sappy, but funny stuff and well observed, obviously from 1st hand experience.

* these people did http://www.delgados.co.uk/dailydiary_1201.htm

if you watch carefully at the end, when Morbius falls off the cliff his claw falls off, revealing the act-or's hand underneath.

As for Dr Who, I liked it as a kid and stopped watching soon after Tom Baker left, and have hardly looked back since. I watched the one off filmed special and thought it was utterly misjudged, same as everyone else.

This is the best one sentence description of Dr. Who ever.

I heart Dr. Who. But growing up I generally preferred UK SF TV (Dr. Who, and all the Gerry Anderson shows) to the tedious American ones.

It is utterly hilarious - if you've ever seen the Rowley Birkin QC drunk character from the Fast Show, then that's what it was like. Dear old Tom rambling away with stories that had bugger all to do with the episodes he was supposed to talk about (eg: "ah! Well, now, I don't recall a thing about this story, but I do know there was a delightful barmaid at the lovely little pub nearby. Smashing").

Towards the shows end he got all maudlin when he went over the fact that apart from a couple of guest spots on things, he's never really been succesful since. It was all rather sad.

Great viewing if you can find it, I wish I could remember the name of the thing.

Actually it *did* look rather ph33rs0m3 cos from the blurb on the back they seem to be taking over the world by controlling MANNEQUINS THE WORLD OVER. Arrrgh!

Why did I not steal this video? It is because I am a FULE. Also I forgot my shopping bags. Groo.

However, I've never seen it, except for the made-for-TV movie.

If I were to start, -where- should I start, and is it on DVD?

ignore the 2 doctors and the varos one

oh no! they are PUSHING THEIR WAY THRU BRACKEN!! oh NOOOOO!!

if i wasn't sitting down already i wd need to

I can't remember how the lowly superstar window dresser managed to make her come to life though. Wasn't she a cursed princess or something?

Tico I would love to borrow the episode. I sense it is something that should be watched under AMBIENT LIGHTING and clutching teddy bear/blanket/bottle of GIN, yes?

a great Dr Who thread would be S/D Minor Characters In 3rd Doctor Stories Who Exist Only To Get Killed At the Beginning.

Search: Pigbin Josh (eh, is he the one from Spearhead From Space? or is he from Claws Of Axos?)

also it was based on the legend of pigpygmalion

yes, it is total classic. I love the bit where he looks at his ex-wife on the screen and says "Oh, that's Lalla! I remember... we became very close".

apparently the catchphrase in Tom Baker's autobiography is "we had the most terrible fun... and then I never saw them again".

Right... a *long post* here I feel; but I know the show well, so why not contribute?

In terms of Doctors:
Classic: Hartnell, Troughton, Tom Baker (manic, brooding, charming... his Doctor has perhaps generally been my favourite)

Dud: Pertwee (though not exclusively; his first season is a corker, and he's pretty good in it, but too often is rather staid in many later stories), Colin Baker (due perhaps to waning scripting, he was ill-served; he gave his all, but some things were ill-conceived. I generally like the way he tried to play the part).

Mixed: Davison (years and years since i've seen most of his stories... it's possibly his underplayed quality that meant I wasn't so taken with him; maybe not i'd appreciate it more. He certainly seems to along with Troughton have had the best post-DW career; "At Home with the Braithwaites", of which I only caught a few episodes of last year's series, sees him give a deliciously comic performance! I want to see "A Very Peculiar Practice" too...), McCoy (the 1987 season is weak all-round and his performance seems a little amateurish. Yet, he's never less than likeable, and gradually improved. By the final 1989 season, he had honed a very effective melancholia into the character. He was a wistful, wise, loveable uncle sort of figure, yet with possible darker leanings... it's only a shame that as an actor McCoy could never do angry very well).

Stories:
Search: the whole of Seasons 7 and 26; being only four stories apiece, these maybe have an advantage in terms of consistency. First is Pertwee at his early grounded best - all moral shades of grey in the writing, effective location work and sense of threats/mystery. Great monsters in the Autons and great plot in "Inferno". "Ambassadors of Death" is an all-o'er-the-place romp of some genius: very padded but entertainingly so. One of the more psychedelic and Bondian of Who stories, but with a morality play core to it. S26: barring possibly the straight adventure of "Battlefield" (which is entertaining at least, but not really good), the other 3 stories maintain a very high standard indeed. Use of historical settings was well overdue, considering the BBC's expertise at that. With fantastical and macabre elements brought into those settings. "Ghost Light" haunted me as a child, as did "Curse of Fenric"; both of which are dense, complex tales. "Survival" brought a suprising and wistful air of social (and magic) realism to the show. What a shame it had to be its finale at that time: just as the programme was getting *good* again!
Seasons 14 and 16 are close to as good as well... S16 maybe let down by weaker final 2 stories. The first four are a grand run though.
Random Search-worthy stories: "Seeds of Doom" (wonderfully tense first 2 eps. and then an enthrallingly barmy extended-"Avengers" style saga...), "Talons of Weng-Chiang" (all sorts of Victoriana combined in a sumptuous whole... archetypally wonderful DW, though few matched its level of hit to the miss), as some have said: "Castrovalva" (possibly with some dullish moments, but i like that leisurely progress it has; nice atmosphere, all quirky early-80s paraphanelia and Paddy Kingsland synth work... as people have said, a fantastic central narrative idea). "The Time Meddler" (barmy, winning Hartnell historical set in 1066 with a Monk who wants to assassinate William the Conqueror!), "The Mind Robber" (like the previous, this was in the fine BBC2 1992 repeat run of stories. Wonderfully surrealist hi-jinks; a world of fiction that constantly baffles even the Doctor!), "The War Games" (a massive 10 episodes long, this is a wonderfully epic tale; one of the key stories of the whole show. Last Troughton, and he gives a superb performance - his impersonation of a WW1 British Inspector of Prisons is a priceless, magical scene!), "An Unearthly Child (the very first episode of the whole show is genius; 'nuff said'), "City of Death" (the show's very best use of humour, and that's saying something; married to a fine plot, and Parisian locations, this is unutterably charming stuff... maybe my very favourite story of all. Tom B. and Lalla make a great pair), "The Androids of Tara" (from the 'Key To Time' S16, this blissfully ignores the umbrella theme and just gets down to telling a smashing swashbuckling story. Beautiful location work, T. Baker at his funniest... Mary Tamm actually rather good), "Warriors' Gate" (from that very odd final T. Baker season of which I have mixed feelings; this is avant garde Dr Who. Vaguely influenced by Jean Cocteau, with some effective sci-fi, it's beautifully directed and an effectively complex tale), "Black Orchid" (jolly old 1920s country house murder yarn, which beautifully has the Doctor just turn up and star in a cricket match! Davison great in this; a story in which T. Baker's Doctor would have been too dominating a figure... I need to see this again), "The Green Death" (for that key and rare emotional scene alluded to by someone on here... it really adds an unresolved depth to Pertwee's all too often autopilot portrayal. And a reasonable story as well), "Robot" (watch Tom Baker forming the portrayal as he goes along almost... his performance has the flavour of improvisational inspiration about it; wonderfully interesting for this reason), "Robots of Death" (one of the most scary certainly, and Leela in all her glory...! Great companion), "Horror of Fang Rock" (probably the best Leela story, this again shows DW playing its horror card precisely and beautifully. A lot of depth to this story in the writing and acting). And I could go on... ;-)
Too many Hartnell and particularly Troughton episodes were destroyed and have not been found... probably the most promising of the 'lost stories' are "Evil of the Daleks", "Power of the Daleks" (first Troughton, so poetically alluded to above by Mark S.), "The Massacre", "Fury from the Deep" (genuinely quite scary to listen to on audio, with brilliant sound and music; a very bleak, out-of-control atmosphere, doom-laden crises by the sea... has a great dazed cliffhanger where a possessed lady wife of one character walks off into the mist-laden sea... a surviving clip of this 'malevolent Laurel and Hardy' pair - purporting to be maintenance men - who exhale a gas that chokes this woman, is a macabre scene indeed), "Web of Fear" (the Yeti in London one; the extant opener is a corking episode; the rest according to audio seems a fine exercise in action, paranoia and tension).

Destroy: Haven't the heart (or frankly the time!) to go too far here... the show has clear faults; but I really think they should be overlooked in favour of its redoubtable strengths, but here goes...
"The Web Planet" (absolutely incomprehensible, if bizarre early Hartnell... it may have been the appalling UK Gold quality of sound/picture, but it was like a snowstorm with unexplained madness going on and mumbled words... all sorts of weird ants and bee-men. This might actually be genius if tidied up for DVD, but I sadly doubt it!), "The Sensorites" (sums up the worse side of early DW; incredibly slow-moving and literal sci-fi. Even the regulars seem lethargic), "Time-Flight" (woeful end to a generally good first Davison season; the money had ran out, and what we have is... a shoddy, shoddy effort all round), "Time and the Rani" (cringe-worthy first McCoy story; embarrassing really), "Attack of the Cybermen" (the most appallingly past-continuity-of-the-show-reliant story of all the later years; a gaudy adventure that lacks any control of tone, like quite a few Colin Baker stories), "The Twin Dilemma" (with suitable changes to production and writing, this could have worked... there are fine and brave moments, but on the whole it is fatally inept. Colin Baker doesn't quite pull it off... but as I say, it has its moments), "Silver Nemesis" (pointless, cut-up of all sorts of novelty elements), "Resurrection of the Daleks" (too much macho posturing, not enough humour or humanity; the case with a fair bit of mid-1980s Who), "Colony in Space" (there are many really quite dull Pertwees; this is one of them ;-)), "Revenge of the Cybermen" (possibly my least favourite Tom Baker; it has a few hilarious moments of Baker madness, yet is deadly dull otherwise and wastes the Cybermen for goodness' sake!) and the McGann TV Movie (just not Dr Who in so many core elements; McGann is good, but his costume is too pastiche Edwardiana, and it all just seems so streamlined and lacking genuine ideas and intelligence. An over-reliance on 'quirky one-liners' as well, no subtlety; all is too much of a bland action story... too many past allusions, too many pointless changes to the Doctor's character - 'half-human' etc. Not enough charm and wonder.).
I think the thing about the Colin Baker and Jon Pertwee eras is that there aren't really that many awful stories, yet there are comparitively far too few triumphs.

Overall, well, as people can probably tell, I love it... genuinely wonderful TV for the 'intelligent 12 year old', though clearly its appeal extends to those much younger and older than that. :-) In the words of Viv Stanshall, it's 'English as tuppence, changing yet changless as canal-water'...

This ruled