Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

There are too many great stories to count, but my favourite episode is probably The Ark In Space, or whatever that scary one with the sleeping people in the space station that got eaten by giant bees.

Also, the whole season that was the "key to time" story arc, I can't remember the name of any individual episodes, but just the fact that the Sonic Screwdriver ended up being the key on which the whole universe hinged was pretty damned cool. Plus, I had, like, a huge crush on Adrik, the original indie maths nerd, when I was a pre-teen. Though of all the companions, I think Romana was the coolest, just cause I wanted to *be* her. She was smarter than the Dr, after all. :-)

Funny, cause all the things that people point to, saying it's a dud- abysmally low production budget, lack of special effects, socks with googley eyes glued on for monsters- were all the things that made it endearing. And the quality of writing was just AMAZING- the minimal budget that they had, they spent on getting the very best in sci fi writers to come up with concepts and stories so engaging that you didn't care that it looked crap.

I could go on at length, but I've already outed myself as a geek enough on this board for one week...

"Doctor Who" was far and away my favorite show growing up. "The Ark In Space" is definitely high on my list, along with "The Robots of Death", "Kinda", "The Caves Of Androzani", the whole Key To Time season, "Inferno", "The Mind Robber"... Oh, I could go on and on. Favorite Doc is Davison, mostly because he managed to pull off underplaying the role and comes across as even more powerful because of it. Hell, I'm so into it that I've got EVERY book published in the New Adventures series from _Timewyrm: Genesys_ in the Virgin series through _Vanishing Point_ in the BBC series. (I do draw the line at conventions, though. Even when I was a kid, I thought the entire concept of a Doctor Who convention filled with adults dressed as these characters to be really disturbing.)

Best companions? Without a doubt, Leela, Romana I, Tegan, Sarah Jane, and Turlough. Especially Leela. (cf: fictional characters I've had a crush on)

Classic: the (original) Master, played by Roger Delgado.

Dud: all the stuff with Unit (ur-notion for the Initiative in Buffy? Only rubbish instead of good, obviously), and Pertwee himself (to me = Troughton nut). But Pertwee's ENEMIES were often grate (=Devils, Sea Devils: one of the Devils was called BOD!!)

Ten-ton dud: Tom "Overract why fucking don't you" Baker. But the Gallifrey/Time Lord business was often amusing.

Three-ton dud: Peter Davidson. BUT the ing on the first season of stories (esp. CASTROVALVA, abut timewarps and paradoxes, name taken from a lithograph by ESCHER = overlooked classic)

Hundred-ton duds: subsequent Doctors /Peter Cushing movies

Castrovalva! Was that the one where they were trapped in the scarily moebius strip city that Adrik (ah, archetype of all indie mathsrock nerds of my heart...) discovered that he had mistakenly created with his mathematical formulae?

Oh, and here's a question: K-9, what think you? Super-cool uber gadget who always saved the day, or annoying cutesy ploy, the Dr. Who equivalent of Ewoks?

Man, I have always wished that I had a sonic screwdriver!

Castrovalva and Adrik: very possibly correct — of course, this era Who is NEVER repeated (cuz supposedly a decline on Pertwee/ Baker), plus my memory is swirling away like asteroids into a time discontinuity anyway, so I don't recall. Part of my mathrock reason for liking Adrik was that the maths was, erm, not utterly entirely bogus. (mathrock = mathmath in my case...)

Jo = my major crush-assistant, I suppose. Can't be: she always screamed and wuz scared. Who was the one who ACTUALLY DIED? Played by Jean Marsh (later of Upstairs Downstairs). Or am I tripping?

GOT IT! My major crush assistant was Zoe!! (This too is a Wow-factor thing...)

Sub-thread Q: lamest Dr Who assistant?

Mark is right - it's your second. Peter Davison in my case. This theory probably falls down if applied to any post-Davison due to transcendental awfulness.

Jean Marsh played Sara Kingdom in "The Dalek Masterplan" and has the distinction of being the only companion to join and die in the same story. (Of course, "The Dalek Masterplan" went on for 16 episodes or something like that...)

"Castrovalva" is definitely the one where the Master uses Adric to generate a trans-dimensional mathematical construct solely to trap a confused and newly-regenerated Doctor.

Patrick Troughton rocked the house as far as I can tell. The only stories of his I've really seen are "The Mind Robber" and "The War Games", though, so I don't have enough evidence to knock Davison outof the top spot. The Yeti were SORELY underused, though.

Frasier Hines, who played Jamie, was also on "Upstairs, Downstairs".

The Doctor had three companions die during the television series; Srar Kingdom, Katarina, and Adric. The books added Liz Shaw and Roslynn Forrester to this list, plus the Brigadier is now living out the rest of his life in an alternate dimension populated by faries. (No, really.)

The misfortune of the Peri character was teaming her with the sixth Doctor. Either forceful, grating personality could have worked, but both together were a SHOCKINGLY bad idea. Interestingly enough, the new fiction line has managed to not only completely salvage Peri and the sixth Doctor, but also the hideously misconceived Melanie Bush, who has gone from being a chirpy nightmare to one of the more capable people the Doctor has travelled with.

Worst companion? Victoria Waterfield, aka the extremely wet Victorian girl whose sole function was to scream, "Help me Jamie!" at every opportunity. They replaced her with Zoe for reason, folks...

No, but that would have been awesome! More sad fannishness:

Sixth Doctor, "Trial of a Timelord". The Doctor gets taken outof time by the Timelords and put on trial for being a general menace to the universe. As it transpires, he was pulled out of time as he was rushing to rescue Peri from having her brain sucked out and replaced with one from a slug-like dictator. Therefore, he wasn't there to save her and she was killed, becoming an evil pod person. The companion who ended up replacing her, Mel, was played by Bonnie Langford.

(At the end of the trial, it's strongly hinted that Peri was actually saved by one of the people fighting the evil slugs and ended up marrying him, which is why I didn't list her amongst the dead.)

And he had a soft spot for Jo. There's a scene in "The Green Death", at some point after she announces her engagement to Dr Jones, where he glances at her as if to say 'if I were ten...fifteen years younger'. Quite touching really.

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; and (b) her character/look is overlaid by things I much later read in ancient second-hand TV comic-books and by the very repeated film with Bernard fucking Cribbins in it). (BC = cool, just not appropriate to this story...)

But I do remember a scene with her in it, which is poorly revisited in the film, when the white bedford van she is in (driven by a dalek-resistance soldier) is strafed by the giant dalek ship. Cuz where I lived and where my dad worked the staff van was a white bedford van, and when I was in it, I often used to check out that there was enough foliage near enough that I could jump out of the van — as Susan had — and roll to cover into it, shd the dalek ship appear and begin strafing.

That is all. (That is enough...)

An episode of Fireball XL5 gave me the all- time nightmares-for-week spooking, though.

My memory of this is hazy, despite being told this story dozens of times in my youth, but by all accounts he was very nice, askign K9 why he wasn't in the tardis, who his friend was and so on. What a nice chap.

Best series Genesis of the Daleks, but only cos a friend did it as a one man show. His interpretation of Davros was jumping around in a frying pan, tom Baker was a pan on the head.

tom Baker was the best imho.

Ace was very annoying though, and janet what's her name from Blue peter

Anyway, Jo (Katy Manning) destroyed and stomped on my pre-adolescent heart by marrying the dull Sgt. Benson in the Pertwee/Unit days. I've never ever recovered, never will and don't want to. A goddess.

Great call on Roger Delgado. A scary mutha in a very English way.

Mark: my school library also always had the Mail. The librarian was a self-described "true blue" Tory, hmmm, what a surprise ...

Taking sides: Peanuts vs The Perishers

Did you all see the mid-90's TV movie with Paul McGann and Daphne Ashbrook? Any comments?

There's a great Doctor Who book floating out there called _Interference_ where the Doctor runs into an enemy who completely FUBAR's his past timeline. I love that idea and I'm kind of bummed out that the show never really exploited that aspect of time travel (ill-conceived Valeyard aside).

Doctor Who assistants - Search/Destroy
The Man That Ruined Doctor Who
Doctor Who Weekly/Monthly comic strips - Search/Destroy

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!

does that include the missing episodes?

it does, but the number of spinoff episodes (102) roughly equals the number of missing episodes (97) so their figure of "800" is interesting

The wording strongly suggests that Confidential and other / new retrospective material is being counted too

how long before AI is good enough to make all the missing episodes again using the recons?

maybe they can use frog DNA

That's how we got Chibnall.

so anthony coburn's kid is an absolute piece of shit (sadly that's not particularly noteworthy these days) BUT i'm just going to start calling it "the tribe of gums" from now on

mel was right

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qUmy7XFeUY

my god did moffat actually say "the queen should be played by a man"? because _that's_ never happened before. has he really not seen 1992's _orlando_? tilda swinton looks like an elizabethan dominatrix on the cover! it's like the movie was made to appeal to his personal sexual fetishes.

not entirely sure that your conclusion that Moffat wants to fuck the author of The Old Man Of Lochnagar is supported by his endorsement of the principles of regeneration but I do think selling drawings of it would be a niche concern

https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2023/55905

https://cms.doctorwho.tv/sites/default/files/2023-10/451412-e5f029a281.jpg

fuck, wrong link: https://www.doctorwho.tv/news-and-features/welcome-to-the-whoniverse-and-tales-of-the-tardis

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.