Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

Cartmel is talking at my local library in a couple weeks. About comics.

Yeah I'd be keen for this, would give me a good excuse to catch up with some of the classics I've never seen.

come on, no one's voting for the next three.

this is exactly why you separate them! but which title do you give them?

ok, I think I'm going to give this a go, but maybe put the deadline for ballots quite a way in the future to try and get as many as possible? (but please, no one feel obligated to vote just because they've expressed an interest on this thread, I don't want it to seem like I'm pressuring people)

I was thinking asking people to vote for between 1 and 20 stories each, with their first place story getting 20 points, second placed story getting 19 etc, and no unweighted ballots.

does this all seem to make sense? I've never run a poll before so please tell me if I have made any rookie errors

If you count 'An Unearthly Child' and the following three episodes about cavemen as two different stories, count 'Trial of a Timelord' as four separate stories and include 'Shada' that leaves you with 160 stories in total, I think? are there any others where there is a dispute about how to count them?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doctor_Who_serials

Are you doing Nu Who as well? The story boundaries can be a bit hazier there - eg is Utopia distinct from sound of drums/last of the time lords?

I was thinking of just doing the 1963-89 series, idk how people feel about that?

I'm cool with that, was just wondering really. Might be fairer as they're such different beasts.

I've seen hardly any Nu-Who, so I'd prefer just the 1963-89 series, thanks.

yeah, prefer classic-only, and a la music polls with best album votes, might be fun to do best doctor.

I was thinking of favourite doctor, favourite companion and worst story as optional side polls?

Best villain?

^^^

hahaha, worst story would be very fun

probably worth doing in 2016 while we've got a year or so of no new Who to discuss

Doctor Who original series (1963-89) ballot poll voting thread

but maybe put the deadline for ballots quite a way in the future to try and get as many as possible?

oh well

I put a provisional closing date for ballots of 24th November 2015 on the other thread, but if people would rather extend this to next year that's fine by me! idk when would be best- the ilm end of year polling stuff takes place throughout jan and feb I think (?), so maybe put the closing date for ballots some time after that? but I'm ok to do it whenever is best for people in general, really

(nb people are are fine to send their ballots to me now if they want to, and I'll hold on to them until the closing date)

I've watched all of the nu series, mostly over the last two years. Now I'm looking for what to watch in the classic series.

I started watching the classic series chronologically and that wasn't a good idea. I got to The Sensorites -- what a boring one. The premise is OK but then the last three episodes could have been done in the third act of a nu who episode.

Is this a generally good list? http://rkuykendall.com/articles/classic-who-recommendations/ It looks like some are recommended for continuity instead of quality. The Daleks had some great moments but also some whole episodes where not much happens. It also had the Doctor defeating Daleks with rugs.

bumping for abanana, and pointing to me & aldo's posts here: Dr Who: the return!

well, xpost

nah, that's a dumb list with a silly methodology. check out the recommended Hartnells and then check back for recommended Troughtons imo. Jumping around from Doctor to Doctor is a fine way to do it, but since you've started chronologically it could be really fun to keep coming forward but only touching high points!

(for people in the uk, they are showing old series on the horror channel on freeview at about 3 in the afternoon, 2 a day, weekdays, repeated in the evening. they probably have 20 different series spanning all the original doctors.)

this isn't all of them but...

http://www.horrorchannel.co.uk/shows.php?letter=D&subgenre=sci-fi

To continue the previous conversation:

Yes, The Daleks does drag a little (the Thals are exceptionally stupid and the plot is explained several times) but the bits it gets right (The Doctor's emptying of the fluid link, the sheer alienness of the city) are among the highlights of the entire venture.

The Rescue is really quite poor - the plot is incoherent, Vicki is quite ridiculous and behaves in a different way to in all her other stories and Sandy might be the worst effect in the whole Hartnell era. Yes, even the Fungoid.

The Romans is straight up great and probably has the best Ian/Barbara scenes of any story. There, I said it.

I like The Gunfighters a lot too, it has an undeserved reputation.

across threads, then, abanana's Hartnell suggestions are, in order - starting with the next three serials from where you're up to!):

The Reign Of Terror (maybe - missing episodes have been animated on DVD)
Planet Of Giants
The Dalek Invasion Of Earth

The Romans

[The Web Planet, if you want to see possibly the oddest Who TV story ever]

as much of The Space Museum as you enjoy

The Time Meddler

The Ark

The Gunfighters

and for historical / continuity interest, at least, The Tenth Planet. The final episode has been animated for DVD, there was an offical reconstruction on the VHS which you can find on internets, and there are possibly-better fan recons as well.

Yeah, I set my TiVo to record 'all Doctor Who' figuring it'd pick up the new series and occasional rebroadcasts, and then Horror got the contract and now I have 230+ episodes waiting for me to work my way through (my old-Who knowledge is very spotty).

I've found it interesting that a lot of the old stuff (The Daleks / Seeds of Death are the two I was thinking of) works as basically radio plays, things I don't have to be watching the screen for (or paying that much attention to - frequently if there's something 'subtle' happening onscreen you can tell because they've stopped the dialogue) and as noted not fast paced either, but when I hit The Daemons, it is so stuffed with texture I had to give it my full attention.

don't start with hartnell.

seriously this is probably the #1 mistake people make when trying to get into old who, saying "oh well i'll just start at the beginning". the first episode is pretty good, but unless you are well acclimated to the glacial pace of sixties television you will die of boredom before finishing series 1. am actually amazed that you got as far as "the sensorites".

best thing to do is just skip around at random. try the best episodes from each doctor (off the top of my head, i'd go with the time meddler, enemy of the world, carnival of monsters, the ark in space, city of death, caves of androzani, vengeance on varos, and curse of fenric, but there are plenty of paths you can take.)

the other thing is that you don't have to watch an entire story in one go, and particularly with the b&w episodes, are probably best advised not to. if you just want to watch "day of armageddon", the second episode of the mostly-missing story "the daleks' masterplan", go ahead and do it. the b&w era is not very tightly plotted and is mainly a rolling whatever-fest you can drop in and out of at any time.

xpost That's a good comparison, radio plays. That kind of pacing definitely helps when you're watching recons too. The move to more full episodes definitely happens with the change to colour - Spearhead From Space on Blu-ray could be a Hammer film.

best thing to do is just skip around at random. try the best episodes from each doctor

Yeah there really weren't any underlying 'season arcs' or anything back then, apart from very loose conceptual ones (haven't seen any of the Key to Time stories, but even their connection is pretty basic as I understand it).

The downside of that approach though is that eventually you get to my stage, where you've seen all the best, and the second best, and the ok, and you're left to slog through the dregs. Though I quite often find something that's supposedly terrible turns out to be great fun anyway.

aka "The Paradise Towers Effect"

Reign of Terror: not sure why this one was recommended. very slow going with lots of walking around and going in and out of prison cells. not very good as a history lesson either, with the mountain/montagnards never being mentioned. when barbara starts arguing that they weren't all bad, she seems to be a few years late.

Planet of Giants: a fun one. I love shows and comics where things are huge or tiny. I bet Silent Spring (1962) was an influence on the plot. still quite slow paced with lots of information getting repeated and a lack of motivation.

Dalek Invasion of Earth: Daleks Go Somewhere Cheap. the highlight is the chase scene in shitty, empty 1960s london. i didn't pay full attention to this one and i have no idea what the daleks were doing or why they had a pet monster or why they could be so easily defeated.

the really big disappointment for me about the doctor who historical episodes was realizing that they're all fairly shitty as history. because i really like the idea!

still quite slow paced

Verity Lambert thought it was so slow-paced that she ordered episodes 3 and 4 to be transferred to film and edited down into one ep.

the best episodes from each doctor (off the top of my head, i'd go with the time meddler, enemy of the world, carnival of monsters, the ark in space, city of death, caves of androzani

Apart from the principle of watching the best first only leaving you downwards to go, we already covered why jumping to The Time Meddler is bad on the other thread - it simply doesn't work anywhere near as well unless you know what "normal" Who is like beforehand (I always recommend watching at least An Unearthly Child (no Tribe Of Gum episodes), half of Serial B, and The Aztecs first. But the more Hartnell you know, the better it is. (And then you'll have gotten to see the best Hartnell TARDIS team, before you see this one.)

Same for Enemy Of The World, too - it's so great and different and even doing different things from episode to episode, that an impression of how standardised Who could be in the Lloyd era is good to have before you get here. Not as necessary as with Meddler though!

Carnival Of Monsters is obv good but if you're watching just one Pertwee, no reason not to start with Spearhead.

I generally recommend (as in other thread) skipping Robot and jumping to Ark In Space; but I think it's strongly worth saving City Of Death until you've seen more than four Who stories total.

Androzani is definitely better once you've seen how dull and blandly staged the Davison era can be. But if you're only ever going to watch one, that's the one.

the other thing is that you don't have to watch an entire story in one go, and particularly with the b&w episodes, are probably best advised not to. if you just want to watch "day of armageddon", the second episode of the mostly-missing story "the daleks' masterplan", go ahead and do it.

yeah, as in the other thread, watching orphan episodes from Troughton is actually a good way to go, outside of the few good, intact stories. will have a proper list to offer abanana when they get there!

also as a result of this I'm prescribing myself to finally watch The Rescue and The Romans (maybe after eps 1, 2 and 6 of Dalek Invasion), and then ep 1 of The Crusade, plus the novelisation.

yeah my list was not meant to be definitive, just a random list of "good ones", though there's no real story where you'll miss out by not having seen others to the degree that you will with, say, a typical season finale of the current series. i tend to stack the deck with the best stories because, honestly, old who needs a hard sell for most people. if they start watching the "typical" stories they'll rapidly conclude the show is kind of terrible (which, though i love the show, is a hard judgment to argue with) and give up entirely.

with troughton (my favorite old-school doctor) it's difficult to find a "standard" episode to start with! i'd argue that there aren't any formula stories in series 6 at all. though there were plenty in series 4 and 5, there are only two complete stories from before series 6, and the one that's not enemy of the world is kind of janky. it's true that web of fear is closer to "standard" and is nearly complete, but it starts in medias res with the conclusion of "enemy of the world", which clearly overran.

the other big problem with troughton is that both the complete pre-s6 stories have, uh, kind of racist elements to them (and the one that's nearly complete has some gratuitous anti-semitism). right now, who fans seem pretty willing to overlook the racist elements of "enemy of the world", but a decade from now we might all be terribly embarrassed about it.

I'm Australian and I'll allow it

erm, as in "I'll allow the outrageous and insensitive portrayals of Australians throughout"

trying not to talk specifics of stories much while this is abanana's initial guide to old-Who though

with troughton (my favorite old-school doctor) it's difficult to find a "standard" episode to start with! i'd argue that there aren't any formula stories in series 6 at all. though there were plenty in series 4 and 5

to be fair, I did specifically name the producer of all of series 4 and 5-up-until-the-story-in-question, who was gone before series 6

"Michelle Gomez wants to be the first femal Doctor Who"

And you know what - it would work.

― Pete, Thursday, 27 April 2006 09:23 (9 years ago)

Hurrah, another wacky over-actor. She's essentially the female David Tennant.

― ailsa, Thursday, 27 April 2006 09:27 (9 years ago)

Indeed. What is it with their Scottish love for the Doctor?

― Pete, Thursday, 27 April 2006 10:24 (9 years ago)

Er, hello? It's Doctor Who, not Senior Staff Nurse Who.

― Michael Jones, Thursday, 27 April 2006 11:04 (9 years ago)

The Romans: another OK one. the ending is creepy, with the doctor giggling like a schoolgirl while rome burns.

The Web Planet: When Doctor Who was on the Space channel in Canada in the 90s, the first episode I watched was one of these... and it was also the last episode I watched. I'm happy to find out that it's an outlier. I can't follow what anyone is saying since I'm distracted by all the hand movements.

The Time Meddler: first episode has a great cliffhanger... and the explanation is meted out over the rest of the episodes quite slowly. one of the random things the doctor says is that he's around "50 years earlier" than the monk -- time for a comeback? the nu doctor and the monk would probably be friends.

I've wanted the Monk to come back for DECADES

He did come back within the year tbf

(Just yesterday I read the Davison-era DWM comic that has him come back again, it is v poor. There's a season of McGann audio adventures that have the Monk - played by Graeme Garden! - as a recurring character, which I enjoyed greatly.)

and the explanation is meted out over the rest of the episodes quite slowly.

This is called SUSPENSE and PACING, get with it. And don't even think about trying to blame it on Hartnell being absent on holidays for one entire ep.

Anyway the ep 3 cliffhanger is one of the biggest and most amazing in THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE SERIES, so.

yeah i don't mind it that much! just didn't expect it.

http://i.imgur.com/WxNM3nT.jpg

Urgent and key: are they reviewing Doctor Who porn, or reviewing Doctor Who by the way of fucking?

Every single thing about that screenshot makes me depressed.

And in the time it has taken me to type the above sentence, that woman's expression/hairclips have made me very angry.