Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

I watched the telesnaps version of Power of the Daleks today. First episode's extremely weak, trying to rely on the actor change instead of doing anything interesting -- I had no interest in Vulcan or examiners. The denouement in the final episode is boring too.

I noticed that the Doctor's music-playing as a distraction was reused to better effect in Four to Doomsday, and the servile Daleks got reused in the execrable Victory of the Daleks.

The actor change is pretty bloody interesting tbf! Whitaker blends that into the examiner plot once that starts, with Polly's initial doubtful will to trust that this is the Doctor being strengthened - despite Ben continuing to disbelieve - by the way he snaps into focus when faced with a mystery and a threat. But once they're alone again, he stays as opaque to the companions as initially.

Yeah, the denouement has always been "pull the End-Of-Story lever," without being able to see if anything interesting was done with it, and the animated version utterly fails to repair the confusion too.

i liked the first episode and the last episode.

for me the weakest part of classic who has always been the lives and conflicts of the people the doctor interrupts. they're grey, boring people in grey, boring costumes played, for the most part, by grey, boring actors. they have to literally wear nametags for me to tell them apart. that moment in episode one when you cut from the doctor in the tardis to two anonymous mooks talking about grain requisitions or something is the toughest part of a story for me.

but troughton's performance in that first episode was him bringing his a game from day one. (unlike later actors, where they'd usually start out a new doctor with the second story of the season to let them get their feet, troughton's first recorded episode was the first episode of power of the daleks, no?) he really leans into the uncertainty and confusion. i think it was right of whitaker to not have anything else going on, even if as a result we do get one of the many, many dalek episodes where the episode 1 cliffhanger reveal is... gasp... DALEKS! (having the doctor called "the examiner" by most of the characters is a clever conceit on whitaker's part. there's no real reason the examiner wouldn't have a name, of course.)

i also found the sixth episode more satisfying than i thought i would. watching contemporary who, or contemporary television in general, i tend to want to watch something where the ending makes some sort of sense and/or has a satisfying denouement. maybe i am projecting my own fears too much onto what was always just a piece of throwaway pop culture, but i was struck by the psychological realism of the way it portrayed war, the chaos, confusion, the way nothing makes sense. one gets the sense that the doctor, clever as he is, was not quite sure what he did to win. maybe i give whitaker too much credit here.

one can, if one tries hard enough, find the sort of ironic justice for which the doctor would become notorious. in "evil of the daleks", the daleks isolate the human factor in order to remove it from humans- instead the doctor adds it to the daleks, thus causing them to destroy themselves. (v. cynical on whitaker's part, really.) so likewise, in power of the daleks, the daleks spend the entire story seeking power, and in the end the doctor gives them more than they want, thereby destroying them. but mostly, if we're to be honest, he just blows them up.

The double-meaning of the title is very thoroughly laid into the story, which I hadn't appreciated watching a recon. Harder to miss when you've got the same 1.5 seconds of characters and telephone cords power cables looping over and over.

unlike later actors, where they'd usually start out a new doctor with the second story of the season to let them get their feet, troughton's first recorded episode was the first episode of power of the daleks, no?)

No, this was never a thing:
Pertwee's first is obviously his first shot, because it's all on 16mm OB due to a studio strike and them having to get something ready to air.
Tom's was his first, and shows it, because it was made by Letts and Dicks as the last story in the production block of Pertwee's final season, UNIT, terrible CSO and all. (To repeat myself, Tom's real first season - and Hinchcliffe/Holmes' - runs from Ark In Space to Terror Of The Zygons. In that case, they shot the second story first, but because it was all OB, not for getting-the-character-down reasons; and it was months after his own first story.)

Colin's obviously couldn't be the second story of the season, as his first story had already aired ten months before, at the end of S21.
Sylvester's couldn't be, because Cartmel hadn't been hired and been able to commission scripts for the second, third and fourth stories of the season until months after JNT had commissioned and approved Pip & Jane's script into pre-production.
McGann's couldn't be bcz etc etc...

Davison's first story to air was shot FIVE MONTHS after his first episode shot, but also - JNT propaganda aside - not for any sensible "getting to grips" reasons. With no script editors and no plan on how to follow up the events of Tom's last season, AND limited availability of Davison between seasons of sitcoms, the office simply had to start commissioning and shooting scripts that had been tentatively developed so far. So his second story was shot, then his fourth, then he went off to shoot an entire season of Sink Or Swim, then Dr Who resumed and he shot his third story, and then they shot his first.

Eventually JNT appointed a script editor and they commissioned the guy that had written Tom's last story to write the story that immediately followed it. But Kinda, the last story shot before Castrovalva, was commissioned on September 25th, and Castrovalva, the first story to air, was commissioned on April 8th. Four To Doomsday started shooting on April 13th.

(Just checked and the time crunch on S24 was such that Cartmel was hired a month after JNT commissioned the Bakers, and he commissioned the other three stories within 10 weeks, with trial scripts from two weeks after he started. But looool forever at JNT and Pip & Jane: Time And The Rani, in 1987, was based on one of their terrible Dr Who Choose Your Own Adventure books from 1986, which itself had been adapted from pitches they'd had rejected from telly Who in 1984. Yes, after he'd had the entire program cancelled under him, salvaged it only by whipping up press fervour, lasted one year before being forced to fire his star personally or be axed again, JNT decided to debut a new Doctor, with his best chance of getting publicity and drawing new or returning viewers, by commissioning something that had been too shit to make three years earlier.)

i had that choose your own adventure book. it was at least better than the other one i had, which was by william emms.

but yeah, the whole jnt era was one long car crash. it's a miracle that anything good at all came out of that period.

thanks for the correction re: production order! i knew the chaos bidmead went through with "project zeta sigma" falling apart and all, but didn't realize that filming episodes out of intended broadcast order to accommodate cast changes was never a deliberate policy on classic who.

i think i'm more forgiving of you on the animation because when it comes to classic who i sort of expect it to be a cheaply done rush job. obviously the restoration team and their dvds do not fit that mold- with them it was cheaply done brilliant work- and if those were my expectations i'd probably be a lot more disappointed. but when i think of "power of the daleks" i don't think of the dvd line but of the surviving clips of the original broadcast- patrick troughton looking in the mirror at a still photo of william hartnell, a "dalek army" made up of extremely obvious cardboard cutouts, a dalek running smack into the camera (i laughed when they actually animated this last; my wife had to elbow me in the ribs). the brass may not have cared, but the people who did the work did, and that's really all i can hope to ask for.

I had two of the Find Your Fate books - a David Martin which was very bad, and the Michael Holt, which was kinda competent. I may have tried to read the P&J one borrowed off someone at school, and tapped out bcz the Rani is terrible.

My local library has a bunch of the Big Finish stories that I borrow in digital format, and I'm going through the McGanns right now ("Chimes of Midnight" easily my favorite so far, and just finished "Minuet in Hell"). Any other notable ones from other Doctors I should check out?

as well as Chimes of Midnight, Robert Shearman wrote two Colin Baker stories called The Holy Terror and Jubilee, they're two of my favourites of the Big Finish plays I've heard.

(he wrote another two Colin Baker stories as well, and one with Derek Jacobi playing the doctor, but I haven't heard them)

Sea Devils And Die: GeroniMoffat's Doctor Who In The 2010s

After the new show started the audio series started getting a little too "trad" for me, but I do recommend the "companion chronicle" Peri and the Piscon Paradox in the strongest possible terms.

^ absolutely, that's another Nev Fountain and one of the best

anyone in America going to see Genesis Of The Daleks in the cinema on Monday night?

nah but i've really been enjoying twitch's doctor who marathon. i didn't really connect with the who fan scene in indiana - nice enough folks but really merch-focused. i also found that a lot of the fans i ran into didn't seem to really, uh, watch the show? which i thought was weird, but whatever, i didn't see last season either.

LONDON 1965

I can’t justify dumping my kids on my wife so I can go see it

take the kids, plus a sofa, teach them how to watch from behind it

whatever, i didn't see last season either.

catch up imo, Asbill + Pcap is an A++ companion / doctor combo

I ordered the Tom Baker blu-ray set that's coming out soon, it has Genesis in it... I'll watch it then!

This is a fun bit of pedantry: https://www.herocollector.com/en-us/Article/doctor-who-the-logos

all the post-reboot Doctor Who logos have been complete crap except the newest one

Is the new Doctor debuting in September

they haven't announced the air date of the debut episode yet... September or October likely

all the post-reboot Doctor Who logos have been complete crap except the newest one

― com rad erry red flag (f. hazel)

Aw I'm kind of fond of the cheesy Tardis in the letters Matt Smith one. It's pulpy.

title sequence for all seasons of doctor who after pertwee has always been cheesy rubbish, it just depends on what your appetite is for cheese

obviously as a doctor who fan it is enormous

This is a fun bit of pedantry

bemusing that it doesn't include the 1970-73 logo, esp when it's discussed so much!

ordered the Tom Baker blu-ray set that's coming out soon, it has Genesis in it... I'll watch it then!

yeah but not in restored picture quality on a big screen with lots of ppl laughing

new logo is the worst since McCoy's, I also like the cheesy DW TARDIS from the Smith era

but that's like the worst one! it's not a show about Doctor D.W. Who

They're all pleasant enough or cheesy enough but the Pertwee and Baker-Davison-Baker ones are the best by miles. They feel like actual logos, as opposed to random fonts laid out randomly.

I like the changes in the new logo but the font itself is a bit characterless.

it's not a show about Doctor D.W. Who

How do you know that's not his secret real name?

because I read that wretched Marc Platt novel that had his "real name"

real heads know the deal

http://i67.tinypic.com/25gx6s4.jpg

And let's not forget The War Machines - "Doctor, who is required."

The Ecclestone/Tennant logo is the worst, it looks like the sign for a grim Tiger Tiger-esque theme bar in 2001.

70s/early 80s ones obviously the best, although the Capaldi era one is great as well. New one looks pretty shoddy in a BBC3 vampire drama sort of way.

The Ecclestone/Tennant logo is the worst, it looks like the sign for a grim Tiger Tiger-esque theme bar in 2001.

The lens flares are particlarly egregious.

I hate all the ones where the Who part isn't under the Doctor part.

Somehow find the McGann one (also used on a lot of merchandise for years) most pleasing all round.

bemusing that it doesn't include the 1970-73 logo, esp when it's discussed so much!

70-73 logo is also by the far the best one imo! The 1996 version is particularly annoying for looking almost exactly the same but not quite as good

http://www.popretrorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PR_Pertwee-Credits.jpg

http://www.bbc.co.uk/staticarchive/2968aa52e6af77cbb2ea0715259ab0b0e72c3fa1.jpg

i can relate to sutton so much today

sir keith is such an anti-trump republican

catch up imo, Asbill + Pcap is an A++ companion / doctor combo

― we used to get our kicks reading surfing MAGAzines (sic)

honestly i just kind of got burned out on moffat. he's great but he's so heavy on the subtext that he can be very draining to watch, and also i feel like he kind of ran out of ideas. i'm sure a season or so of chibnall and i'll get over it and catch up then, but in the meantime i'm really enjoying rewatching the "action by havoc" era of who.

Big-screen Genesis totally ruled, the audio seemed to have been lovingly remastered (or just sounded incredible that loud), and I didn't miss anything from the story but the giant clams

i don't actually follow the who fan scene these days but i am vaguely aware of the coming front in the culture war. the other day i was driving behind a car that had one of those "my other car is a tardis" licence plate things (though i read it as "taurus", obviously not a TRUE FAN) and a bumper sticker about how much they love guns and i argued with my spouse about to what extent this is like a trump supporter going to a social distortion concert. in the meantime for lack of anything else to argue about people are arguing about talons of weng-chiang again?

and this time out i find myself taking a more radical position than anybody i've seen in the fan debate. much as i hate to undermine the argument that "nobody is saying you shouldn't watch talons of weng-chiang", i think there's a good case to be made for the stance that maybe we should just let the past have that story and move on, like the world has with, say, certain looney tunes cartoons.

I think the approach that Warner and Disney have taken to some of their racist old stuff is best - release it, but contextualize it, go from a "yeah, this is racist" pov from the start.

Which is the opposite of what Hearn did.

warner hasn't released the censored eleven and disney hasn't released "song of the south" in the us, have they?

My favourite writer about Doctor Who nails it:

http://www.andrewrilstone.com/2018/08/actually-its-about-ethics-in-doctor-who.html?spref=tw&m=1

yeah, i've never heard of him before but it got viral enough to pop up in my feed. (like i said i'm not a big follower of the fan scene). the orman essay he linked to was also good. definitely some good points about "mind of evil" vs. "talons", which helped me a lot in coming to my current conclusion. what with all the old trashed episodes i think maybe it can be a little more difficult for fans to let the past go, embrace the impermanence of all things, after having spent 40 years fervently hoping for the recovery of those stories.