Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

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.

This actual Chinese Whovian who has seen "Talons" hated the experience of watching it, just in case anyone was curious.

Hmm should probably have changed my DN there.

Thanks for sharing your experience, Leee. In matters like this it's pretty crucial.

Hmm should probably have changed my DN there.

irl giggle

This is sorta an extension of the Louis CK discussion

Sometimes bad things happen to art you like, and it's okay to let it go

You can take my Tintin books out of my cold dead hands though

(Let it go, as in, stop reading/watching/caring about it)

I should add that I don't have much patience for a lot of classic Who serials, but that's because of how much slack their stories have. "Talons" falls into this category for me, but this issue also happens to be subsumed by that other thing.

Bung a dung bung a dung bung a dung
Bong a dong
Bung a dung bung a dung bung a dung
Bong a dong
Ooo-weeee-oooooh
Ooooooh-wee-oooh-ooh
Doctor who-we-ooo-weooo
Ooh-wee-ooh

Vrrrm vrrssm
Vrrm vrrsm

BBC load German iTunes with start date for new series.
British websites report those facts from the public domain.
BBC send legal letters to said websites telling them to take down the information.
It's still on German iTunes.

more of a Whochurch thread post imo

Fair point.

I should add that I don't have much patience for a lot of classic Who serials, but that's because of how much slack their stories have. "Talons" falls into this category for me, but this issue also happens to be subsumed by that other thing.

never seen talons, but this is very much my feeling when i watch old Who from my youth - too much "assistant wanders off, gets kidnapped, lots of runaround, etc". would be up for skilful edits that pared serials down to the stuff that's actually compelling and not padding.

you could edit out entire seasons

I watched a bunch of Hinchcliffe era Who last year and felt the same. Pyramids of Mars is wonderful but it's bloody draggy and repetitive, even at four parts.

Outside of that period, Inferno and Androzani felt like the most "modern" episodes - Inferno surprisingly so, as it's a seven-parter (!) and the story is all over the shop. But it's never boring. And Androzani's relentles grimness creates its own energy.

Curse of Fenric and Ghost Light have *issues* but they're also pretty fast-paced, if only because they both demand a lot of concentration to figure out what the hell's happening.

the re-edited Fenric on DVD barely adds any scenes, it just doesn't have to cut frenetically from scene to scene to remove reactions, and is vastly superior

desperate for* a Ghost Light that does edit back in the excised footage, timecode and all

would be up for skilful edits that pared serials down to the stuff that's actually compelling and not padding.

I watched Genesis sometime in 2016 or early 2017, and then the 90-minute version in the cinema in June, and the only thing I missed was Harry getting his foot chomped by a giant clam.**

** and it was absolutely the right decision to cut it

* I mean I'm unlikely to ever own a blu-ray player and in all probability will live my life without ever rewatching S26 again, but if I were to...

Sapphire and Steel may be the true champion of timestretched sci-fi television

"Inferno" is one I really like! Don't remember it being in 7 parts, so it evidently kept my attention.

Just seen that the first episode of Jodie Whittaker is going to be October 7th which is a Sunday

The advantage of Inferno is that there’s no need for the doctor to prevent the foolish humans from making catastrophic decisions, so things can just steadily get worse in a more natural way.

Inferno (if I remember right) has constant white noise in the background of some scenes, like some kind of J-Horror movie. Very disorienting.

Just seen that the first episode of Jodie Whittaker is going to be October 7th which is a Sunday

Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

I'll rep for The Seeds of Doom as a pretty taut six-parter.

I know Colin Baker has called out fans who talk about how much they love the not-very-good aspects of Who, and he has a point, but I still am a little bit of the opinion that the padding is a lot of what I love about Doctor Who. Maybe it's nostalgia for childhood - watching a show where nothing particularly happens and I don't have to pay very close attention and I can fall asleep halfway through (I grew up on the omnibuses) without missing much. I wasn't so much into the show for the great plot - a lot of the time the plot wasn't very good at all - but I really enjoyed a lot of the meaningless goofing about. Cutting the dross out of old Doctor Who is a lot like cutting the White Album down to one LP - people's idea of what the "dross" is differs, and a lot of its appeal is that kind of shaggy dog ramble it had to it.

Mind you this only goes so far. The glacial, stagy pacing of Hartnell's stories is beyond me. I love the hell out of "Enemy of the World", though, and you know that's a story where NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENS in the third episode (which may have something to do with its former poor reputation...)

the cinema in June, and the only thing I missed was Harry getting his foot chomped by a giant clam

at least I’m consistent

xp Old-Who is good ambient television. I think when I watch stories from the 1963-89 series the enjoyment comes more from 'experiencing' them rather than from following the narrative in the way that you might do with something more tautly plotted. I watch them in a similar way to the BBC4 repeats of old episodes of Top Of The Pops, soaking up the ambiance, attention wandering between the dialogue and the sets and the outfits and period details and the style it's shot in etc.

I think this is partly because I've already seen pretty much all of the surviving original series stories before and know basically what happens in them already - in fact, in most cases I'd read about the stories in episode guides and books before seeing them for the first time

Any old TV show takes on this stylized aspect with the passage of time, where every element of the production down to the smallest detail looks achingly 1987, or 1973 or 1965 or whatever year it was made, and this gives them an odd glamour - and at the same time Old-Who was often kind of a mess and an odd ragbag of different styles and genres thrown together - so the old stories are interesting because they're simultaneously all over the place and have this unifying aesthetic because they manifest era they were made in every aspect (and also because Dr Who was already very stylized and non-naturalistic to begin with?)

Absolutely, in the late 70s I devoured guides and novelisations of old series knowing I could never see them. Seeing them is kind of like live footage from ancient Egypt. And the Baker and Pertwee eras - on endless rotation mid afternoon in the Australia of my youth - are the furniture of my mind.