Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

Steven and Vicki?????

RTD has still got it!

This is by far the funniest thing I've seen in relation to all the Davros stuff pic.twitter.com/vwVuvECUMX

— Flight Red 50 (@FlightRed50) November 19, 2023

Suella Braverman attacks for Rishi Sunak for his failure to bring back the old Davros

i’m perhaps unreasonably stoked for next saturday

Rightly or wrongly the first thing I thought when I saw Julian Bleach in the CiN thing was 'damn he'd make a good Giuliani'.

I am also stoked.

probly time for an RTD2 thread

i’m quite up for it. unlike chinballs rtd does know how to put a show together, even if i find some of the melodrama a bit ott for my taste. so disappointing that the first female doctor didn’t have a better showrunner.

word

yes plz!

"I watched Barrowman do it and just laughed. HOOT!"

Fantastic wink skills here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt_1kx9z3kU

Fuck me, Stef Coburn is a better friend to Doctor Who than this. Makes Chinballs look like Bob Holmes.

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/marvel-adapted-doctor-who-star-beast/

new-nu-Who: RTD2 (Doctor Who on telly 2023-?)

Anyone else (who can) tried The Daleks In COLOUR on iPlayer? Barbara's pink shirt is tripping me out.

Also watched for the first time recently: The Aztecs (good esp. considering it's 'just' a history lesson type story), a few Troughton era openers, Spearhead From Space (not so good but wanted to see how indoors Who on film from that time looked) and started Genesis (seen some of before but never in full).

I just spotted that Dalek thing today! It's on my list, I've been watching the two surviving episodes of The Wheel in Space.

The Daleks looks lovely but the editing is all over the place, it's easily 15 minutes too short, nearer 25.

And if you hate Murray Gold's music then... intrusive isn't the word.

I've only dipped in and out, but they seem to have used some very odd sources for the uploads, Reign of Terror for example has a broken audio master that plays like a massively warped record.

I remember when the Blu-ray Spearhead came out, the most Hammer that Who has ever looked.

The thing I only really picked up on when I rewatched Spearhead this month was that the different look and feel is partly down to film but also very much because it's 100% filmed on location, no studio work at all in there.

Pertwee's has always been the one era I've had near zero awareness of, mostly because "stuck on earth" and "loads of unit/military stuff" have always both been huge turnoffs. But I'm finally working my way through it and finding lots more to enjoy than I expected. I don't particularly like Pertwee himself and a lot of it really is just men with guns chasing each other around grim industrial estates, it sometimes feels more like watching The Sweeney than Doctor Who. But some of the stories really stand up well (Inferno, Mind of Evil especially), and Delgado is just amazing, he hugely lifts every episode he appears in.

Parts of Inferno are like watching some of kind of art gallery video installation - it's very intense and strange, especially the sound

Cool I will try Inferno, Mind Of Evil and was planning to rewatch The Daemons. Any other Pertwee standouts anyone wants to rep?

God Inferno is so relentless, especially in the later episodes with all the shouting.

My Pertwee faves would be Mind of Evil, Terror of the Autons, The Sea Devils, The Dæmons, The Mutants

The Green Death is fun

Carnival Of Monsters is the Pertwee that is the best with no earthbound military stuff to worry about

Day of the Daleks is my absolute favourite but it's not for everyone and the pacing is a bit back and forth.

Claws of Axos and Carnival of Monsters are my two faves that I would say are universally appealing.

there are polls for each season if you search

Doctor Who : Best Episode In Jon Pertwee's 1st Season

(but I'm not sure they help)

Carnival has the bonus of Davros’ actor in silver face paint, it’s pretty funny hearing him speak and realising.

Also for my money the best actor on the show, makes everyone else look like panto.

Everyone has already mentioned my favorite Pertwee stories but I’ll also call out The Ambassadors of Death and Planet of the Spiders

My uncle is in Terror of the Autons, he was working as a circus rigger/driver at the tie and plays one of the strongarm blokes that accost the Master

Would say the Time Warrior is pretty top tier Pertwee not yet mentioned (that I can see)

Also quite partial to the Frontier in Space / Planet of the Daleks epic but you definitely need to be in a forgiving mood for some of it

Terror of the Autons also has Michael Wisher in neither silver face paint nor Davros makeup.

idk Time Warrior seemed like a let down

(I didn’t mention this but I’m watching in order and I’m only two seasons in, so my favourites are only my favourites so far. Just finished The Colony in Space and that was shit).

Terror of the Autons isn’t great as a story in itself, but as a collection of disturbing visual set pieces it’s amazing.

I did enjoy Claws of Axos but Jesus, that poor guy having to fall off his bike into the pond in the middle of winter! It looked bloody freezing.

Aldo perhaps I didn't recognise him with hair! Altho maybe I have only seen Spearhead From Space, my memory of Terror is pretty unreliable.

was looking for an image of all the various dalek variations over the years. instead i found this - http://www.dalek6388.co.uk/

it identifies and numbers all the individual daleks ever made and tracks their appearances throughout the tv shows and films. originally there were 4, 2 were given away to bernados (but loaned back if needed). the film daleks were a different set, the second film another distinct 19... seems like a momumental task even before they start swapping heads in april '67...

The name of, and title music to this channel gives me heartburn, but I enjoyed this -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLgAnCv5YlY

I just read an AV Club article talking about the rampant outrage that followed Donna’s exit from the TARDIS and how RTD is undoing it to correct his biggest unresolved plot point. The entire article seems to be wrong? Like, this wasn’t an unresolved plot point, it WAS the resolution? It was tragic and awful on purpose? People still talk bc about the emotional impact of it?

The hilarious thing is that the vast majority of the comments also say “wtf is the premise of this article, all of this is nonsense”

I keep meaning to unbookmark the AVClub, it's such a dire and depressing shadow of its former self (and has been for a while), but it's useful for "oh yeah, that exists" reminders

a terry nation army couldn't hold me back

y'all i love some of the art US PBS stations used to promote the show, these drawings are better than the ones on the pinball machine

https://broadwcast.org/images/6/65/1984-11-27_Ottawa_Citizen.jpg

"you told me i was supposed to meet Chancellor Goth, I wanted to make a good impression"

https://broadwcast.org/images/3/3f/1985-07-30_Centre_Daily_Times.jpg

you will never convince me that this picture of was not modeled on this

https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929a7d5ea9e61561daa569e/master/pass/e03be0cc.jpg

and here's the flip of Davison's

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xJL-AiJT15Y/VaAyH0rFnoI/AAAAAAAABHE/PaMRrC9TfUI/s1600/Hats+Front.jpg

am cherry picking the Cybermen episodes at the moment because i love the creepy look of those early Cybermen

porting over from the new-nu-who thread because it's not really about RTD2:

so glad you're watching again kate!

― bae (sic)

glad to be able to watch again!

my whole thing about doctor who is that i have been in love with this show since i was 11 years old. i love it with the same enthusiasm and intensity that i did when i was 11, despite now knowing that... a lot of the stuff i loved just wasn't very good. for me, the ideal way to watch classic who is in omnibus format, half-asleep, not really able to comprehend what's happening on screen and not terribly bothered by the fact that nothing really happens for long stretches of time. and watching it like that for an hour and falling asleep sometime around the time dick larosa comes on to do the new jersey lottery pick 3 and pick 4. and then the next morning waking up and having your brother tell you excitedly "he changed his face!" and being like "no way, he can DO that?"

...anyway i have the classic blu-ray set of season 19, which i loved when i was a kid, and i look at it now and realize "oh wow this was actually terrible, all of jnt's run was shitty, wasn't it?"

and yes, it was, and i still love the show, even when it's terrible. sometimes, though, sometimes i can't defend it. six episodes of completely cringe high-concept sci-fi as represented through the medium of modern dance? it's awful and probably unwatchable and i will defend it to my dying breath. six episodes of yellowface? no. fuck that. that is bullshit. i have not seen that story and i _never will_.

there's nothing that overtly _offensive_ in chibnall's doctor who, but it's just... indefensible. i don't hate-watch. i'm not going to watch that five hour video about how shit chibnall's who is. i couldn't. it would be too painful for me. chibnall got the character, the themes of the show, the subtext - my favorite things about the show, the most important things about the show - so wrong, on such a basic fundamental level, that i had to walk away.

i have _lots_ to criticize about RTD, particularly the way he treated christopher eccleston, but i fucking love this show and always will.

OK, the story on the 1964 Cadet Sweet Cigarette cards is kind of weird:

" Dr. Who " and Voord find Daleks and hear their plan -- there is a certain type of mushroom, which was used by Inca Priests. It gives superhuman powers. " Dr. Who " realises that if the Daleks take the juice of these fungi into their brain cells, their brain power will be so great, they will outwit any power used against them.

God dammit, Carlos Castaneda was a fucking Dalek double agent all along!

Hairy men are more frightening than Daleks - at least according to Mrs P.C. from Andover (Daily Mirror, 9th December 1965). pic.twitter.com/DChuPGEj37

— Archivetvmusings (@archivetvmus71) December 9, 2023

"a screaming girl held captive by a hairy man" makes it sound silly, but apparently the letter is referring to this scene, which is pretty grim for a kids tv show (featuring Peter Purves!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpQhlJoD3MY

intrigued by the idea that a 3 year old could have been following the show long enough for this kind of watershed moment to happen