Past Seasons: Classic Who

[SnideAsides]

The Invisible Enemy kind of sucks. The whole Fantastic Voyage plot is one of my least favourite sci-fi tropes to start with, but it doesn't even really do that good a job with it? And then the enemy is a giant humanoid prawn? I think this is going straight to the skip pile.

 

And my highly analytical, incisive, well-argued thoughts on Image of the Fendahl are... "eh". I wish TV would stop trying to do ghost stories.

 

The Sun Makers is gloriously, utterly nonsensical. So it's about humans on Pluto? With mind control drugs polluting the air? And something to do with taxes? But no actual sun making? Weird.

[benteen]

Yeah, The Invisible Enemy wasn't that good.

 

I really enjoyed The Sunmakers and I liked Image of the Fendahl too.  Fun fact, the character of Thea Ransome is played by Wanda Ventham, who is the mother of Benedict Cumberbatch.  She mentions in the DVD commentary that the role was the first she did after the birth of her son.

[QuantumMechanic]

I just finished watching City of Death, which was a lot of fun and featured Julian Glover playing the villain.

It was very weird for me when years later I read the relevant Dirk Gently book and realized that Adams plagiarized himself when writing the book.  Actually, it was kind of annoying because I had paid for a book that I knew the ending to from very early on in the book.

[QuantumMechanic]

Colin Baker is a good actor. You can tell he's trying to do his best with crappy material and he was the first real superfan of Who who was made the Doctor so his heart was into it.

Colin was so wonderful in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot!

[SnideAsides]

I really like Colin Baker as the Doctor, actually. I can't wait until I get up to his episodes.

 

Underworld... wow, they really hammered the Jason and the Argonauts IN SPAAAAAACE! thing hard at the end there, didn't they? Shame it wasn't anywhere near as good as the original.

[Llywela]

It was very weird for me when years later I read the relevant Dirk Gently book and realized that Adams plagiarized himself when writing the book.  Actually, it was kind of annoying because I had paid for a book that I knew the ending to from very early on in the book.

Is one of the Dirk Gently novels based on City of Death? I didn't think so. The first of the two novels is a re-tooling of Shada, the serial that was never completed and never broadcast due to a strike.

[QuantumMechanic]

I too was a Saturday night PBS Doctor fan. There was something perfect about watching the show so "late" given it was scary for kids (occasionally) and a bit creepy. 

Interesting.  The PBS station I watched ran them "stripped" -- one each weeknight.  Can't remember the exact time.  Might have been 5pm might have been 7pm.  I'm leaning towards 7pm.

 

For the longest time all they had was "Robot" through "Invasion of Time".  Then they eventually got the rest of Four's run.  It was so great when something new finally happened!  But they didn't get Five right away so after "Logopolis" they'd go right back to "Robot".  Eventually they did get all of Five but that was by the time I was leaving to go to college so I didn't see very much of Five.  The only Five stories I can remember are "Enlightment", "Mawdryn Undead", and "Caves of Androzani".  I only saw "Earthshock" when they showed it as Five's "Doctor Who: Revisited" episode.

Edited February 29, 2016 by QuantumMechanic

[QuantumMechanic]

Is one of the Dirk Gently novels based on City of Death? I didn't think so. The first of the two novels is a re-tooling of Shada, the serial that was never completed and never broadcast due to a strike.

True, but there were some very important plot points lifted from City of Death.  From the Wikipedia description of the first Dirk Gently book:

Four billion years in Earth's past, a group of Salaxalans attempts to populate the Earth; however, a mistake caused by their engineer – who used an Electric Monk to irrationally believe the proposed fix would work – causes their landing craft to explode, killing the Salaxalans and generating the spark of energy needed to start the process of life on Earth. The ghost of the Salaxalan engineer roams the earth waiting to undo his mistake, watching human life develop and waiting to find a soul that it can possess.

[SnideAsides]

Wow, The Invasion of Time is blah. Gallifrey is pretty boring at the best of times, and the Sontarans feel pretty overused at this point, so the combination of the two just did nothing for me. At all.

[benteen]

The Invasion of Time was awful and Leela was written off in a terrible way.  This return to Gallifrey is especially when compared to the classic The Deadly Assassin.

[SnideAsides]

Short thoughts on The Ribos Operation: Liked the visuals, like the Key to Time idea, like Romana, buuut the "politics of gold mining" plot bored me.

[SnideAsides]

The Pirate Planet was an okay episode, albeit definitely on the good side of things, but I don't think I'll be in too much of a hurry to revisit it once this marathon is over.

[Lantern7]

I liked it enough to get a sketch of the Pirate Captain. I'm not a Douglas Adams superfan, but it was pretty fun. I'm guessing that "City of Death" is a better example of Adams' work on the show.

[SnideAsides]

I hope so. In the meantime, The Stones of Blood is far better than I was expecting it was going to be. Just from the title I was expecting something a bit more... Mad Libs-y, I guess... and while there was an element of that it still worked really, really well overall.

[benteen]

I liked it enough to get a sketch of the Pirate Captain. I'm not a Douglas Adams superfan, but it was pretty fun. I'm guessing that "City of Death" is a better example of Adams' work on the show.

 

I laughed at the Doctor's line to the Pirate Captain: “You don’t want to take over the universe, do you? No. You wouldn’t know what to do with it, beyond shout at it.”

 

I thought The Pirate Planet was a lot of fun and can only imagine what it would have been like on a bigger budget.  I thought The Ribos Operation was very good and I liked Mary Tamm as Romana.  In terms of sheer beauty, I think she may be Top 3, maybe higher.

[SnideAsides]

The Androids of Tara seems like it's the kind of story that would have worked better with a bigger budget too. It was plenty good, and it seemed surprisingly vibrant for what was essentially another "The Doctor and his companion run around an alien planet with fashion that conveniently lets the BBC whip out its Renaissance cosplay chest" story, but it could have been better.

[Joe]

The story is apparently ripped off from the Prisoner of Zenda, so that may be why.

[Lantern7]

Spoiler alert about "The Power Of Kroll": It's not about Nick Kroll. How funny would it be to see a Doctor have to deal with Bobby Bottleservice? But seriously, that's the weakest link of the "Key of Time" saga.

[benteen]

The Power of Kroll was awful although it does feature John Leeson playing a human role.

 

I enjoyed the whole Key of Time storyline for the most part but was disappointed with how flimsy the recurring storyline was.  You could eliminate the Key of Time references from the first five serials of the season and lose nothing.  It's ultimately a recurring storyline in name only.  It would have been more exciting if the Black Guardian had sent a champion of his own to search for the Key for him and give the Doctor and Romana an enemy to deal with.  It would be two more seasons before his return but The Master would have been perfect for this.  There's no sense of urgency in the Key to Time storyline and barely a storyline at all.

Edited April 8, 2016 by benteen

[Llywela]

I enjoyed the whole Key of Time storyline for the most part but was disappointed with how flimsy the recurring storyline was.  You could eliminate the Key of Time references from the first five serials of the season and lose nothing.  It's ultimately a recurring storyline in name only.

In fairness, the same is also true of many of the modern story arcs, which have regularly turned out to be little more than random references thrown into otherwise unrelated adventures, from which those references could easily be deleted without losing anything, so in that sense, the Key to Time arc was very much anticipating future narrative structures!

 

Seriously, though, it's an early attempt at an overarching seasonal story arc, therefore inevitably primitive, but aside from a weak ending it pretty much does what it says on the tin: they need to find the various segments of the Key to Time, so in each episode they search for and find one segment, despite misadventures along the way, and then the conclusion to the arc sees them assemble the Key to Time, realise they've been misled, and scramble to put things right. Job done. As a plot-based mini-arc, it provides structure to the season, which is pretty much all it was required to do (I'm not sure what more you wanted to see in each serial), so it succeeds in what it set out to achieve. In plot terms, it's right up there with random references to Harold Saxon through season two or Missy's random appearances snaffling the souls of the dead in season eight, etc. Doctor Who in general isn't a good fit with long-running plot arcs, which is why they often tend to be clumsy and/or get bolted onto the characters in New Who. The only thing the Key to Time arc really lacks is any real, focused character story to sit alongside the ongoing mission, which you're just never going to see in 1970s Doctor Who because that simply wasn't how it was done at the time!

[HauntedBathroom]

Spoiler alert about "The Power Of Kroll": It's not about Nick Kroll. How funny would it be to see a Doctor have to deal with Bobby Bottleservice? But seriously, that's the weakest link of the "Key of Time" saga.

It'll never be the weakest link while The Armageddon Factor exists.

Edited April 9, 2016 by HauntedBathroom

[benteen]

It'll never be the weakest link while The Armageddon Factor exists.

 

Armageddon was much better.  Kroll is boring as all hell.

[SnideAsides]

The Power of Kroll is indeed spectacularly boring, but it's never actually that shitty (except for the 1970s CGI, of course)? It's just absurdly mediocre.

 

I'm hoping to get through Armageddon Factor (the last six-parter!) some time this week, but after that I think I'll take a break. That'll basically leave me with a nice even ten seasons to get through when I eventually get around to finishing this off, and with shorter seasons and a nice turnover of doctors it shouldn't take too long for me to get through once I return. :)

[SnideAsides]

And The Armageddon Factor (and The Keys of Marinus: Season Arc Edition) is done! It's easily the weakest of the six parts, but on the whole I don't think the entire arc was all it was cracked up to be. Like the idea was great, but it didn't come together all that well.

[benteen]

At least The Armageddon Factor deals with the actual Key of Time arc.

[Lantern7]

Is the rewatch still going on? I haven't gone back to my DVDs since I started working again. The closest thing I've done is take out the Target adaption of Invasion Of The Dinosaurs from the library.

"The Power Of Kroll" would be funnier if Nick Kroll was spliced in. Discuss.

[benteen]

I actually finished watching all of Classic Doctor Who last month, the surviving episodes and a few only available as audio and stills.  I think I'm going to rewatch some of them now but am trying to decide on which one to start with.

[SnideAsides]

On 31/7/2016 at 8:23 AM, Lantern7 said:

Is the rewatch still going on? I haven't gone back to my DVDs since I started working again. The closest thing I've done is take out the Target adaption of Invasion Of The Dinosaurs from the library.

I don't know that there ever really was an official rewatch. I was just kind of working through the show at my own pace and then I decided to take a break for a while because seven seasons of Tom Baker in a row is too much for any non-Tom-Baker person, and I haven't had enough spare time to get back to it. Definitely hoping to soon though.

[Lantern7]

Is anybody else thinking of seeing "Power Of The Daleks" in a theater? It'll be playing at Times Square and Union Square in NYC. I'd be up to meet other P.tv visitors in the area.

[Lantern7]

I got my ticket for Union Square. I hope I'm not the only one reading this that's going to go.

ETA: Here's where you can get tickets. It's going to be screened nationwide, so you might get to check it out.

[Lantern7]

Saw it. I don't think animation really works for reconstructing all episodes of a story. There were a lot of awkward pauses. And I nodded off through a few minutes. It's still a good introduction to Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, and you get the Daleks acting servile . . . "acting" being the key word. It's as funny as "Would you like some tea?"

[Llywela]

I've pre-ordered the DVD so won't get to see it until that arrives. The story wasn't ever intended to be viewed all six episodes at once in a movie theatre, of course - it was only ever intended to be viewed from week to week, one episode at a time, and is probably much more viewable and engaging that way. I've never managed to get through the entire recon of this one, so I'm hoping the animation will be more watchable for me!

[Raingirlkm]

Just looked and it seems BBC America will be airing it in episodes starting on the 19th. They have them scheduled for 35 minute slots.

[Chyromaniac]

My wife and I saw "Power..." in the theater.  I thought the story itself was fairly interesting, although I can't help but think BBCA might be in trouble trying to air this in the original episodic format.  The pacing is kind of weird throughout, and the weakest part for me is actually the regeneration bit at the beginning.  Both the dialogue and action are pretty sparse, and there's not much in the way of characterization, especially for Polly and Ben (who comes across as "Preppy Jason Statham").  Also, the central conceit of the scene - is this still the Doctor - isn't really addressed until much later in the story.  I don't see anyone other than Who die-hards actually sticking through the first episode, let alone coming back for the more fun latter episodes.

The other huge problem with the show is the utter cheapness of the animation.  As still frames, the artistic style would actually have been pretty compelling.  However when the drawings are put into motion, anything beyond simple dialogue looks ridiculous.  It's actually laughable watching the characters kind of shuffle stiff-legged away from the Daleks.  There are also a few fairly blatant animation glitches that should have been spotted and corrected before airing.

However, the one element of the show that absolutely works for me are the Daleks.  They always look great, and their animation is much smoother - probably less moving parts.  They also manage to come across as genuinely menacing, while also having darkly humorous moments as well.  It actually makes me wonder if modern Daleks would be more convincing in cartoon form.  Also, once he settles in, Troughton is fun to watch, and makes for a good Doctor.

[Last Time Lord]

Just watched the first episode of the Power Of The Daleks reconstruction. It was good, but a bit of a slow start to the whole story, with the majority of the episode being about the regeneration aftermath.

Did any of the episodes survive? Are they are going to show those, if they did, or is the whole thing going to be shown as animated?

[benteen]

Sadly, no episodes survived.  The first 11 episodes (the six episode The Power of the Daleks, the four episode The Highlanders (which introduced Jaime) and the first episode of The Underwater Menace are lost.  Season 4 was particularly hard-hit by the BBC wipings with only 10 episodes surviving and no complete serials.  Although animation and telesnap reconstructions have been used to complete some.  You can find about three minutes worth of surviving footage from The Power of the Daleks on YouTube however.

I saw the first episode and I liked it.  I heard the beginning was slow and it was.  A lot of pauses due to pauses in the dialogue.  But damn, Troughton is still great even when you have only the original audio to go by.  I loved his answers, or lack thereof, to Ben in response to his regeneration (or renewal as it was referred to here).  The brief shot of Ben trying to play the recorder was funny too.  I liked the animation on Vulcan as well.

Edited November 20, 2016 by benteen

[Last Time Lord]

18 minutes ago, benteen said:

Sadly, no episodes survived.  The first 11 episodes (the six episode The Power of the Daleks, the four episode The Highlanders (which introduced Jaime) and the first episode of The Underwater Menace are lost.  Season 3 was particularly hard-hit by the BBC wipings with only 10 episodes surviving and no complete serials.  Although animation and telesnap reconstructions have been used to complete some.  You can find about three minutes worth of surviving footage from The Power of the Daleks on YouTube however.

I didn't realize every episode of Jamie's introduction had been lost. That's so disappointing.

[benteen]

It really is disappointing.  From what I read, The Highlanders was the earliest known example of an episode that was erased.  The BBC wiped it two months after the last episode had aired.

[Lantern7]

At least we got most of Jamie's run. He might be the definitive male companion (competing with Ian), and he had to run around time and space in a kilt.

I remember Doctor Who Magazine doing a special on moments from each story. All I remember reading about "The Highlanders" is that the Doctor really, really liked hats. Come to think of it, where did he get the headpiece in POTD?

[Llywela]

My Power of the Daleks DVD arrived today, so I sat down after work intending to watch just an episode or two, but ended up marathoning all six. I really enjoyed it - I'd read the novelisation previously, so already knew the story, but had never made it through the recon. However cheap the animation, it apparently made all the difference for me! The story is long and slow-paced, it's true, but I found it tightly plotted with strong worldbuilding and a sense of tension that escalated inexorably from episode to episode, while the Daleks are really creepy - so manipulative and subversive. The wholesale slaughter in episode six is a bit grim, but certainly sells the high stakes, while Troughton makes an immediate impression and is well and truly cemented as the Doctor by the time we reach the end of the story. Great stuff.

[Last Time Lord]

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but I seemed to have found a Big Finish audio on Spotify. The Davros one from 2003. 

Didn't really listen to it, but it began with a particularly epic monologue by Davros about how he refuses to die, which leads directly to the opening credits. 

[benteen]

I really enjoyed the second episode of The Power of the Daleks.  The first episode was a little slow but this one really picked up.  Even with only the surviving audio to go on, Troughton was amazing.

[Last Time Lord]

Since they decided to animate all 6(?) missing episodes of this, I wonder if that means there are plans to animate the missing episodes in stories that are only missing one or two episodes.

As for Power Of The Daleks episode 2, it was a much faster paced episode than the first. The first was bogged down with the regeneration aftermath, this got right to moving the plot forward, and I have to say, The Doctor  going on and on about how evil the Daleks are, all while the Dalek repeats "I am your servant" over and over again, made for a shockingly effective cliffhanger.

[Lantern7]

Minimum, I know that "The Reign Of Terror" and "The Invasion" have missing episodes animated. I feel that stopgap measures are acceptable, but a whole story animated is a little off-putting.

[benteen]

The Ice Warriors and The Moonbase also have a pair of animated episodes along with the final episode of The Tenth Planet.  The Underwater Menace was originally going to have its lost two episodes animated but eventually just ended up as telesnap reconstructions with the original audio.  I heard years ago The Crusade would have its missing 2 (of 4) episodes done in animation but nothing ever came from it.

Edited November 27, 2016 by benteen

[Last Time Lord]

So, when I moved, earlier in the year, I was and still am unable to find some of my Classic Who DVDs. Among the missing are Genesis Of The Daleks and Earthshock.

Today, I found a gift set at Walmart with two DVDs. A Dalek and a Cyberman one that has episodes featuring them starting with the 2005 series.

However, the special features include Genesis Of The Daleks and Earthshock, respectively. 

It also came with a toy sonic screwdriver, so I especially feel I came out ahead, here. 

[Lantern7]

Heads up: POTD airs at 11 tonight on BBCA.

[Last Time Lord]

5 hours ago, Lantern7 said:

Heads up: POTD airs at 11 tonight on BBCA.

A decision I am most displeased with. Guess it wasn't doing so well at 8:25?

Man, this is such a great story. It is a real shame the full live action version is probably lost forever.

There's so much going on, all the intersecting plots that the episode just flies by.

[ratgirlagogo]

Does anyone have any idea why the animation for this is so incredibly crude?

Also I have heard BBC Radio versions of some audio-only TV Who episodes that filled in some of the sound gaps by having a surviving cast member provide narration (or perhaps I should say more accurately description, in the manner of movies/shows described for the blind), which I found less problematic than some of the gaps in this version, especially in that first half hour.

Still I'm enjoying this and I'm glad the effort was made to present this to those of us who never saw the original episode.

Edited December 5, 2016 by ratgirlagogo

[Last Time Lord]

Finished Earthshock on the Cyberman DVD. I do love that story. Perfectly paced, and shockingly, for an Eric Saward penned story, the death toll is not in the triple digit.

Really need to find my copy of the DVD, though. I want to watch with the updated special effects, so it look like the freighter actually crashes, and not a still image that becomes blurry and explodes for some reason.

I always enjoyed the commentaries they have on them. The audio and text ones. Too bad the only store I knew that sold them was a Barnes And Noble that got rid of the electronics section.