Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

a teatime children’s show about a space wizard.

look

lol

completely unfair. doctor who is a teatime _family_ show about a space wizard.

Lawrence Miles having a go at Roberts (one of several tweets on the topic today, in a couple of threads):

Yes. Yes, it does remind me of something, Gareth. It reminds me of the mid-'90s period when you worked in mainstream TV and your coke habit led to your becoming nervy, disturbed, and utterly self-obsessed. (And writing "Zamper".)

Think you'll find that was you, not "everybody". pic.twitter.com/OjqEci8GZ7

— Dr Who Drinking Game (@DWDrinkingGame) July 29, 2019

lol “writing Zamper”

a teatime children’s show about a space wizard.

mods pls change thread title

porting from the Chibnall thread:

i came dangerously close to ordering some BF audios today. Talk me down.

― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Tuesday, October 9, 2018 8:30 PM (one year ago)

Discovered recently that Nev Fountain has written several Big Finish spinoffs headlining female characters. The Diary Of River Song: Series 3 episode 1: The Lady In The Lake is a mixture of time-hopping playfulness including River interacting with earlier and later versions of herself, a riff on a setting from a Fifth Doctor story (Davison himself shows up at the end, and River leaves to be his companion for the rest of the series), and some fairly grim examination of both regeneration and River's own origins.

If I had more time, I'd buy a ton more Big Finish... it's been a few years now, but when I was listening to them they were more consistently good than the TV show storywise.

Episode 2 of the same series, A Requiem For The Doctor is a fun quasi-historical by Jac Rayner, that gets plenty of comedy out of go-getter know-everything River's frustration with the most passive and self-doubting of the Doctors.

Episode 3, My Dinner With Andrew by John Dorney, is a real delight. Adding River-standard time-out-of-order shenanigans to a farce pastiche, it features multiple Peter Davisons, Madame Kovarian and a comedy French waiter, and is mostly set in a restaurant with similarities to Davison's last TV appearance before his Dr Who debut. It's a treat to get another comedy so cleverly structured very-nearly-next-to a Nev Fountain joint (switching the balance firmly towards jokes, in this one).

as excited as I was for the last season i completely stopped watching halfway through. Should I finish it?

Demons of the Punjab, Kerblam!, and It Takes You Away were fun/interesting, I think all in the second half?

You mean the first Chibnall season? IIRC the episodes from the last half of the season that ILX liked were "Demons of the Punjab," "It Takes You Away," and maybe "The Witchfinders." Though I don't personally think any of those would make my shortlist of can't-miss nu-Who ("It Takes You Away" comes closest). xp

Yeah, if you're only going to watch one, make it It Takes You Away. Most eps are pretty terrible in various ways, but that's the one that bothers to use the can-be-anything card the series has built in, without also being alarmingly conservative in both politics and creative scope.

Chibnall thread is here btw: WHOCHURCH: The Chris Chibnall era

thanks. I'll probably dip back in and cross my fingers that the next series fares a bit better.

The four half-recommendations above are all the non-Chibnall eps - you can safely skip his (I'd actively warn against Kerblam too, but from other threads this week I don't think you'd have any of the same objections).

I think Arachnids was the last one I watched and it was fairly dire.

i remember moderately enjoying the Dalek one, but let’s accept they were all terrible the Doctor talks like a an overmatey estate agent now

obviously I am excited about the new one

I sort of want Jamie Demetriou to be the Doctor next

Also entertaining and recent in Big Finish: a Scottish trifecta 12th Doctor "Short Trip" (single-performer short audio, in this case Madame Vastra actress Neve McIntosh) by Lizbeth Myles: a 99% straight historical that embroils 12 with real-life C17th playwright and spy Aphra Behn on the cusp between the two careers.

Was listening to RED MOON, an audio play series set in an alternative history version of 1979, and was pleased to hear in the background of one scene a TV announcer saying, "And now Graham Crowden starring as Doctor Who, in episode four of The Curse of the Jagaroth".

I'm watching the new series with my kids, we just got to The Eleventh Hour and it went down very well indeed, think series 5/6 is going to be their favourite.

yesssss

Eleventh Hour remains the peak regeneration story of nuWho by some margin.

Spearhead From Space is the only contender in all of Who imo (Unearthly Child is on par as a starting point but a different category)

The Twin Dilemma is underrated

.... hahaha I couldn't even post that without typing a "lol jk" disclaimer before hitting submit

Yeah, Spearhead is pretty amazing.

Wait, who? I don't think I ever heard of say Jennifer Garner needing anything as serious as surgery when she was doing her own fight scenes in for ~20 episodes over 4-5 seasons of Alias.

Shauna Duggins, interviewed on WTF this week, says she filled in on Alias when Garner's double was injured two episodes in, and then again when the stuntwoman returned and blew her knee out, and then stayed on as Garner's double through five seasons and the Daredevil and Elektra films.

The latest restoration-with-animation of missing episodes is out soon, of early Troughton story The Faceless Ones. As with the previous, second BBC-made one, they've gone for widescreen colour on the grounds of "why not, it's a 2020 release, not archival" and are apparently not basing the imagery on existing stills for the wiped episodes (nor, blessedly, including every last second of audio if they can't guess what it soundtracked).

A new wrinkle is that this story has two existing episodes, but they've animated all six for a cohesive viewing experience in 16:9 colour (the release will also include a version with telesnap reconstruction, for folks who want to watch the original eps in that context). While the motion is less clunky than on Power Of The Daleks, the first BBC animation, being able to compare the actual framing and blocking done in 1966 really shows up how the software version looks like paper marionettes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inVVy6S2K8s

looks like fury of the deep is up next? nice. interesting to seeing them get more creative. have to wonder if they're going to take a stab at those series 3 episodes. you'd basically have to make up shit for those (including, for "the massacre", at least one important plot point, right?)

maybe my standards are low... with the technology available, is it really reasonable to expect better-quality animation for these episodes? even "the good ones" (which probably isn't a descriptor that applies to "the faceless ones") are still episodes of a dodgy low-budget old '60s tv show.

It's not reasonable to expect better animation, for the budget they have, when these are being done as side-gigs by people with other jobs at the BBC, who do not have training or experience as animators or directors. It's also reasonable to be very aware while watching that the results are pretty underwhelming animation and that the preset faces under-serve the performances.

I thought the surviving episodes of The Faceless Ones were nicely spooky, but the audio couldn't carry the other episodes. I look forward to seeing the animated version.

I know it would go down very badly with the fans, but I'd like to see the 6 (or however many) episodes edited down to 45-minute single shows, even for the ones where every episode survives.

for the first two doctors only, that is

apparently there was somebody making classic series fan edits and sharing them on a blog (which is honestly the best you can hope for from the old series) but a little googling to find out what happened to them revealed that he is a garbage-tier human being so honestly good fucking riddance

it's an interesting thought experiment. what would classic doctor who look like without the padding? frankly i'm not sure there would be anything left. i can't even _imagine_ a tautly-edited and compelling edit of the first dalek serial.

for the first two doctors only, that is

Reminder that the third doctor has several 7-part stories and one 12-parter

TBH two of those 7-parters are remarkably well-paced, but Silurians is pretty flabby around the rubber gills. Hulke whittles the plot well down to make room for actual characterisation and backstory in the novelisation. I haven't watched the secret 12-parter since I was a kid but I dare say the two six-ep halves could thin down to a 2x45.

I died of old age twice in the cinema during Power Of The Daleks. If that blog still existed I'd try his hypothetical cut-down for a rewatch. (I downloaded loads of them years ago and got around to watching approx. 1.5. Dude's guiding principle was that if the Doctor wasn't on screen then nothing important was happening, which may fail to understand "premise" and "story" and "character" in important ways.)

i can't even _imagine_ a tautly-edited and compelling edit of the first dalek serial.

The seven episodes of this definitely could be filleted to, say 75 minutes without losing anything (**checks running time of the Cushing version: 82 minutes! **) iirc most of eps 3, 4, 5 and 6 are just going back and forth from the Thals camp to the Dalek city, getting captured and escaping, rinse & repeat. To be fair, when nobody had ever seen Daleks before, just getting a few minutes of them every week for a month and a half was probably enough to make a winter evening thrilling.

The Sensorites would be a good test case for a 45-min edit: fantastic haunted house / spooky spaceship first ep, although nothing actually happens per se. It then takes two eps just to set up the premise of aliens don't trust explorers / Doctor has chance to persuade them / intrigue within the caste system. Then about five minutes of investigation drag out over three weeks on the local planet, while Jacqueline Hill is on holiday IRL and Barbara stays on the spaceship.

I actually made a vague plan for these a I was watching -

An Unearthly Child - Leave this single episode alone
100,000 BC (other three episodes) = 30 mins edit
The Daleks - 45 mins edit
The Edge of Destruction = 20 mins edit
Marco Polo = 45 mins animation
The Keys of Marinus = 45 mins edit
The Aztecs = 45 mins edit

...and so on. The Daleks' Master Plan would be two 45-min episodes.
The test for me would be watching these and trying to work out where the cliffhangers are - because there were some really inconsequential cliffhangers.

You can definitely write a 45-minute first Dalek serial, I dunno if you can cut a coherent one from the existing episodes. Most of the taped-as-live-ish Hartnells have that problem, of course.

I love Edge Of Destruction / Inside The Spaceship, but will allow it could get the job done in 30 minutes. I can just look at the TARDIS sleeping couches for ages though. The value of Marco Polo is supposedly sumptuous costume and production design, hopefully directed by the compelling Waris Hussein of An Unearthly Child, not the inert one of 100,000 BC*, but WE'LL NEVER KNOW!!!

* obv he only had the deadly dull script he was given

Yeah, editing isn't about cutting out the dull bits, it's about piecing together what you have in the most effective way possible, even if that involves changing the structure of the story itself, naturally would have to keep or even emphasize how doddering Hartnell's Doctor is.

Should say that I am 100% never going to actually make these, I have promised myself not to start any more ridiculous projects.

You can definitely write a 45-minute first Dalek serial, I dunno if you can cut a coherent one from the existing episodes. Most of the taped-as-live-ish Hartnells have that problem, of course.

― Fantastic. Great move. Well done (sic)

i come to realize i've never particularly wanted doctor who to be "coherent", the more like a bargain-basement un chien andalou the better

why yes i do love the first episode of "the mind robber", why do you ask?

The Mind Robber rules

The Web Planet is a good bet for sourcing a demented Un Chien Doctorwhovian fever dream short

Started watching The Chase for the first time this week, and I can imagine an impressionistic cut-up version might give just as much narrative satisfaction. Loving the commitment to having a different bonkers setpiece every 11 minutes so far, for sure

The Web Planet is a good bet for sourcing a demented Un Chien Doctorwhovian fever dream short

― Fantastic. Great move. Well done (sic)

i mean yes but at what point do you start turning literal christmas panto into bunuel films?

The more you change The Web Planet the better, for a show where the majority of the cast are dressed as insects it is incredibly dull.

The Chase is ridiculous, the Count Dracula and Robot Doctor parts particularly, complete pantomime, yes.

i do think a lot of my love for doctor who, and my way of understanding the show, relates to it being shown in omnibus format past my bedtime. any particular episode tended to only get good for me about half an hour in, when i got too tired to be able to make out what was happening narratively. it's kind of weird to me how much short shrift is given to the visual aspect of the show.

which probably mostly is down to the set designers and the costumers, but i feel like talking about directors. who are your favorite directors on classic who? who are your least favorite?

i sort of wish more of hugh david's work for the show survived. The one minute of his that does survive is fucking amazing.

contrast with morris barry who was a fucking terrible director

Paddy Russell for sure!

indeed, i don't know why "the massacre" never shows up on episodes people would like to see recovered, christ i would love to see how russell directed it

The workprint of Ghost Light on the S26 box set is quite brilliant, it actually makes sense while you're watching it.

i haven't bought any official who releases for ages... might be time for me to actually get some of these new full-season sets. of course i am grateful for all the care and effort the restoration team have put in to the stories and all the weird supplementary material they throw on... most of it i probably won't watch but i'm one of the, like, three people who does find film trims interesting.

i'm not _entirely_ sure i have a blu-ray player but i bet we have _something_ i can play them on. i still probably won't pick up s26, as interesting as a comprehensible ghost light is to me, because i'm just not a fan of that era of the show.