Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

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.

The Rescue -- a good one that tells a complete story in an hour. I don't think it's a reach to consider this one being about rape -- it's very focused on Vicki's emotions at being stuck with an evil man.

The Daleks' Master Plan -- a disaster. The bad guy, Mavic Chen, is a Ming the Merciless copy, and everything else also feels like a sci-fi serial from a previous decade. Way too long, with the basic gist getting repeated in every episode. It takes a detour into a terrible Christmas special halfway through. The monk comes back but his personality has been replaced with one identical to Chen's.

I skipped ahead to Spearhead from Space -- and color! Liz is a great companion and the Brigadier is a promising character. Seems more like a bunch of ideas mashed together than a cohesive story, but the pacing is much better.

Then I watched the first Tom Baker season. This is a very solid season with a very entertaining doctor. The low point is having the feminist companion getting shit on by everyone, including the doctor, so she can be characterized through her responses. Weakest serial is "Robot" which starts off silly (reminds me of the Kirk vs. computer episode of Star Trek) and is just dumb by the end.

The first Pertwee season (sadly the only one with Liz) is great. The rest of the serials are maybe overlong but also consistently engaging, and go to some fairly dark places.

If you'd said you were going to jump ahead, I would have advised skipping Robot; it's not actually part of Tom's first production season, and likewise Terror Of The Zygons was held over from his first year to the next, and functions as the end of that consecutive run of stories.

oh wait I did anyway! and nobody recommended you watch a shambolic multi-author 13-part serial where most of the eps are missing, you mentalist.

(Robot was made by the Letts/Dicks team, who were totally burnt out by the start of that season, let alone the end; Ark In Space to Zygons is the first season made by Hinchcliffe/Holmes.)

I watched Master Plan because the monk was in it, and because I heard the Christmas episode was weird. I should have just watched the monk's parts.

it's not actually part of Tom's first production season

No, they shot the entire four-parter* at the end of Pertwee's final season. The Hinchcliffe/Holmes team didn't start shooting (on The Sontaran Experiment, because location shooting always preceded studio work bitd) for about four months afterwards.

* a couple of scenes of Sarah and the Robot were reshot one afternoon later.

Pearl Mackie is the new companion http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-36111598

No doubt with a jacket with "Ace" on the back

Maybe she will actually be from the 1980s and struggles to deal with the future or something

Apart from anything else, you appear to have an odd idea of what characterises the '80s?

Mackie said her new character "Bill" was "wicked", describing her as "cool, strong, sharp, a little bit vulnerable with a bit of geekiness thrown in".

Doesn't remind you of Ace?

Could describe any Who companion since Ace. Clara was the only "geeky" one but only in the sense that she had a geeky job.

white male denied companion status YET AGAIN why do i pay my licence fee ffs

seems good. can't believe we're still eight or nine months out from a new episode. hopefully the 2017 series starts in the spring rather than the fall.

Does a good job with some dodgy lines. Interesting face. Got the handsome-but-odd Matt Smith thing down.

There's a Who poll being counted down here, from 380 ballots: http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-eruditorum-press-doctor-who-poll-results-the-bad-stuff/

Stories, both televised and non-. The sections aren't collected yet, but you can find them on the main page.

oh shit I heard about this and forgot to vote

based on that poll i've been watching the mccoy serials. was there some reason why around half of his serials have scenes in a dirt pit?

"my favorite kind of jazz: straight blowing"

one of my friends was talking about some animated reconstruction of "power of the daleks" they're showing as ppv in us theaters. anybody heard anything about this? i love troughton.

was there some reason why around half of his serials have scenes in a dirt pit?

quarry rental is the cheapest option for alien planet sets

anyone watch Class? reviews aren't promising.

which colour Doctor doesn't have half his serials with scenes in quarries?

yes, lots of people have heard about the animated reconstruction of Power Of The Daleks. Have you heard about the animated reconstruction of The Invasion? Or the animated reconstruction of The Reign Of Terror? Or the animated reconstruction of The Moonbase? Or the animated reconstruction of The Tenth Planet? Or the animated reconstruction of The Ice Warriors?

Class is basically Torchwood At School, except not actively terrible. It's not very good, but then also I am not the audience.

Actually McCoy probably has a better run than most re quarries, due to the OB / studio split on the third production block.

S24: haven't seen Time And The Rani since 1987 and am unlikely to change that, but iirc it has plenty of quarry, but it's also not REALLY the beginning of the McCoy era yet (an interview with Cartmel this year saw him wishing he'd had the confidence to hold his name back). Paradise Towers is all studio except for swimming pool, Delta has real actual countryside, Dragonfire is studio. Dirt pit 1/4, 0/3 if you don't count Baker / Baker / JNT.

S25: Remembrance's locations are all Shoreditch. Greatest Show: quarry planet actually used to show economic depression as reason for setting up psychic circus, as opposed to it being the only cheap place to point a camera within a drive from TC, like every other quarry planet since 1971. Happiness Patrol is studio-bound. Silver Nemesis I haven't seen since 1988 and am unlikely to unless the extended cut ever gets re-released, but I remember lots of village greens and such, not quarries. Dirt pit 1/4?

S26: Battlefield is Brigadier's gardens and country lanes and outside of pubs. Fenric is grim seasides and church yards. Ghost Light is studio-bound. Survival... the Master is living in a Quantel-painted purple quarry, maybe? Dirt pit 1/4.

Man I love Battlefield, it's so fun

I think they went with the PPV/theater distribution for the Power of the Daleks animation because it will probably make more money than just releasing it on DVD like they did the previous animations of lost stories... which are quite good!

It's being released first on the BBC Store, not DVD. And it's not the BBC's own impetus releasing it in cinemas, it's independent distributors in the US (Fathom Events) and Australia (Sharmill) who've arranged it. Fathom have been behind the Day Of The Doctor and Dark Water/Death In Heaven US cinema events before, but it was BBC Worldwide that instigated the Asylum Of The Daleks / Angels Take Manhattan and Day Of The Daleks* and Day Of The Doctor and Deep Breath and.... whatever the other twofer was - Pandorica / Big Bang? - in Australian cinemas. AFAIK, the only UK screening of Power is a one-off at the BFI.

*this may have only been in Sydney, not nationally

Also, it's an especially good and much-loved story, Troughton in top form

xp

yes, lots of people have heard about the animated reconstruction of Power Of The Daleks. Have you heard about the animated reconstruction of The Invasion? Or the animated reconstruction of The Reign Of Terror? Or the animated reconstruction of The Moonbase? Or the animated reconstruction of The Tenth Planet? Or the animated reconstruction of The Ice Warriors?

― sad, hombres (sic)

yes, i've heard/seen of all those other ones (all of which were lone one/two episode runs from otherwise existing stories, unlike power). just didn't know there was one of power. thought they were having trouble getting the finances together or something.

I think they went with the PPV/theater distribution for the Power of the Daleks animation because it will probably make more money than just releasing it on DVD like they did the previous animations of lost stories... which are quite good!

― erry red flag (f. hazel)

well i will certainly pay up because god damn do i want a reconstruction of evil of the daleks (and just go ahead and animate episode 2 as well, going into live-action for one episode of a 7-episode story is kind of tough to sell).

JUst saw a clip of Power Of The daleks on Newsnight as part of a piece on restoring old BBC material. It looked pretty great, so hope they get to restore more of the missing episodes taht way.