Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

MIND FITE!!!

Castrovalva is rubbish though!

The VERY FIRST companion was Susan, who was the doctor's DAUGHTER? No? She was interesting, it being 1963 and therefore pre- pop, let alone pre-Kate Millett: cuz she was SUPER-CLEVER, and the earth-boys were baffled and threatened and intrigued by this. But I don't remember her to look at since (a) B/W episodes never repeated

I remember the surviving B/W episodes being shown on UK Gold when UK Gold first started, in the early 90s. I think Susan told everyone that she was the doctor's granddaughter, but this might just have been a ploy to explain why he was her guardian to boring Earth people.

My favourite Doctor Who related thing is probably Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, a Douglas Adams novel put together from late-70s Doctor Who scripts that were never broadcast. (as was the third Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy book)

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".

to wit,

the really bizarre stuff are his "reconstructions" of episodes that never existed, like "yellow fever". i tried watching one because i haven't ever actually seen a breakdown of the plot beats of it or know how far it got to having a script written. it was just so. fucking. bad. utterly execrable. sic, aldo, whoever, do you know how far "yellow fever" got and how much of this "recon" is just shitty ao3 fanfic?

The entire three-episode, 135-minute plot breakdown of "Yellow Fever And How To Cure It" consists of https://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g294265-d324758-i202515446-Haw_Par_Villa-Singapore.html

(but Holmes would have had to add fifteen minutes of extra detail for the six-episode version.)

...

argh :( pics:

https://i.ibb.co/wFyCnXnq/Grf-BV4s-Xg-AAD7-DQ.jpg

https://i.ibb.co/Vc87RpT7/Gu-TRz-GCXs-AATMo2.jpg

ah! this would explain why i have never seen anything about this supposed story mentioned in any other source, including richard molesworth's holmes bio, which i do have a copy of, read, and liked, but can't recall very well. in general i get the impression that molesworth is a reputable, reliable writer who seems to have done a good deal of research, in contrast to unnamed superfan, who gives the impression of having nearly the exact same talent for self-promotion possessed by UP without _quite_ the level same level of artistic refinement as said UP. which leaves just one mystery left to solve: how the hell is moonstone's cover of "the visitors" such a fucking banger?

this does remind me though that i do wanna track down a copy of the book by that guy who wrote an early, pretty much entirely abandoned, draft of "the ark in space". i forget his name. not lucarotti. whoever did the info text on "the ark in space" did a good job on those... i learned a lot from them.

well i can't say that unnamed superfan doesn't know his audience, at least.

ok, i went through and watched the first three episodes straight through - i'd seen "day of armageddon" before, but i figured there was no point in just skipping from episode 1 to 3. i'm glad i did, because it really brought home that there is just no larger story at all here - it's as close as the show came to a classic movie serial. it's just a bunch of stupid, random shit happening with no larger point or real respect for its audience, and i love the story so much for that. hartnell here is doing what i kind of think of as "prequel trilogy george lucas", which is to say, a sort of burlesque, exaggerated version of the character he was supposed to play, with almost complete indifference to the actual lines. this is just as well, because the doctor here is written as an absolute bumbling idiot who has nothing but terrible ideas.

like, the literal first thing the doctor does on this story is land on a random planet and go out looking for drugs. he doesn't know anything about this planet - its name, its population, whether or not its atmosphere is _breathable_. he's just like "oh, cool, a hostile jungle planet. well, i'll go see if i can find someone here who has drugs." then nick courtney shows up - and he's great, god, just a joy to watch. we get some great scenes of courtney's character, bret vyon, and kert gantry doing this very... well, in my head they're gay lovers, is all i'm saying. why not, if bret vyon is apparently sara kingdom's brother, you know? everything in this story is just shit randomly thrown at the wall, and some of it is fun. i actually enjoyed watching the scene where lizan and roald argue about what to watch on TV. there's this real feel of, i don't know, kitchen-sink sci-fi. characters argue for no reason and then bret vyon tells them to "shut up" and then billy hartnell does this whole character bit where he's like, well, ok, the script says i'm supposed to say "no, you shut up," how can i do that in a way that feels like the doctor? ok, the line wasn't written as "we must get through! the daleks will stop at anything to prevent it!", but you know what, i like it better the way billy says it. it's a dumb line. it doesn't deserve to be read as written. really this is not terribly different from how tom baker around season 17 would deal with lines of dialogue he didn't like, but tosh and wiles were trying to bring a real season 18 vibe to things. fortunately tosh and wiles were so shit that they couldn't even manage to get rid of a lead actor who clearly couldn't remember his lines and was not well enough to continue in the role...

anyway, this kind of thing is just perfect for terry nation, because he's great at writing filler and this whole story is nothing but filler. i didn't realize that the macguffin doesn't even show up until episode two! which of course leads us to the great scene where bret vyon does a stealth takedown of seaweed alien zephon, solid snake-style (clearly going for that big boss rank), at which point the doctor has the brilliant idea of tying up zephon, stealing his clothes, and infiltrating the conference pretending to be zephon. i mean, the doctor isn't, in fact, a seaweed alien, doesn't sound anything like zephon, and doesn't even steal, apprently, the only significant part of zephon's costume, zephon's blinged out necklace. he's just a random guy in a black robe covering his face who doesn't know anything about what he's doing or why he's there. he still manages to steal the macguffin, though, because, like i said, this story has no respect whatsoever for its audience.

i am really enjoying watching douglas camfield's direction. i don't have any strong opinions on richard martin as a director (HE'S STILL FUCKING ALIVE!?!?!?), but the show was fun to watch, and the good kind of stupid, and i think a lot of this is down to camfield bringing a certain amount of panache to the proceedings, even if there's just nothing he can fucking do with desperus. god, what a piss-poor excuse for a "prison planet". apparently everyone there is a caveman? like, if the cavemen from "100,000 BC" spoke english, it'd be basically the same fucking thing. i also have to say that clearly nobody had any idea at all how to write katarina, because as written she's a complete fucking idiot who believes she's dead and is incapable of understanding concepts like "keys" and "drugs". adrienne hill does the best with what she's given, which is, really, less than nothing. perhaps that's why i'm so fond of the character!

best discovery from the episodes - i have heard the complete soundtracks, but it hits different to be able to actually watch them - is that the doctor _invented his own bondage furniture_. i know there are a lot of weird things about the first doctor era of who, but even by those standards "doctor who, designer of kink furniture" is, uh, a little odd. for the record - i'm speaking as someone who's seen a fair amount of kink furniture here - the doctor should stick to his day job of saving the universe. dungeon interior design is not his forte.

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technical notes: it doesn't seem to have undergone much restoration at all... episode 1 in particular looks not great... the closing credits scroll is obviously misaligned, for instance. i'm not really connected with broader fan communities... are these prints suppressed field or stored field? has their been much speculation on the source of the prints? like, we now have five of the eleven-ish episodes of this story, from three different recoveries... is it fair to assume that they're all from the same set of prints, either the set that we know was sent to australia or another set that was made at some point before the videotapes were wiped? like, maybe there was a set that went walkies in a way where it wasn't, like, extremely well valued or desired or cared for. these were just some old junk prints of some old TV show. and since they weren't valued, any or all of them could have been junked by now, or they could still be around somewhere. i don't buy into these "hoarder" theories where there's some superfan sitting on a hoard of 50 episodes that they're keeping for themselves... that's probably true in at least _one_ specific case, but given what i know of film collectors, a lot of it is just weirdo film collectors with weirdo film that they don't want to talk too much about because it's _technically illegal_ and they don't want to get in trouble, nevermind the fact that they don't even know what half of the shit they have is (hi, i'm a digital hoarder with way too much random uncategorized shit on her file server!)