Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

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.

we just got rid of our blu-ray player, but i'd love to see the proper cuts of fenric and ghost light. they're like some lynchian puzzle that's never meant to be solved

mccoy's performance just grows and grows on me - he's such an unusual combination of very good and very bad actor. it's rare to see a performance go from extreme to extreme in the same scene - and yet he's always magical and charismatic, somehow. maybe sisko in DS9 is comparable for that weirdness

embarrassingly it turns out i don't have a blu-ray player... the last tom baker season and first davison season are temptingly priced right now (30 USD), and i'm not sure if they'll stay that way. trying to decide if i should order anyway on the theory that i'll wind up with one of those fuckers eventually.

mccoy is fascinating to me, he's so outsized, so charismatic, so completely unsuited to small-screen acting. i don't feel like the three seasons of doctor who he appeared on necessarily present him at his best. i'd really love to see some of his "vision on" work, or some of the stuff he did with ken campbell, but fuck knows if any of that stuff even exists...

I wasn't buying them but the small rerelease of S12 flashed across my radar so I jumped in. Got all those available but will have to live with S10, S18 and S19 being unattainable as I'm not going to pay £200 for them.

McCoy is not a "good" actor, and Aldred is probably actively bad. But he's a wonderful performer, their chemistry is just magical, and sincere thesping would not enhance this era in which every story has a completely different heightened non-realistic tone from every other story's completely different heightened etc.

It's probably to McCoy's benefit that the only Cartmel story without another companion in it dispatches Bonnie Langford to go and look for a swimming pool as soon as possible, and lets him get on with things by himself for 3.5 weeks.

there's a few episodes of McCoy era Vision On uploaded to youtube

also McCoy and David Rappaport as the O-Men from about 10 minutes into this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9HLOEkwZK0

the "what would make the mccoy era more watchable for me?" is an interesting one, because i don't find it watchable. i feel like a lot of it is just the technology of the times. i hate the visual aesthetic of the mccoy era and i love the visual aesthetic of the '70s. personal bias.

so no, merely putting an actor in the role in place of a hyper-kinetic stage magician like mccoy probably wouldn't improve things by itself because there's too much else going against the era.

if the uk ones are going out of print already i guess i will jump on them whether or not i have a blu-ray player. just seasons 18 and 19 as those are my favourite of the ones available right now - season 12 is of course classic but i'm a bit burned out on it.

let's see, what other seasons would i buy? 7, 13, 14 for sure. the rest honestly i'd have to think about... season 10 probably is the second-best pertwee season, but i really only like the first two stories.

oh yes, popped right up, now why could i never find that before?

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

i hate the visual aesthetic of the mccoy era and i love the visual aesthetic of the '70s. personal bias.

nah, they were basically filming on tin cans connected with string at this point. I appresh the fact that the most allusive and layered and ambitious stories were being made on an afterschool show's budget - and making four stories a year on the allowed budget for three - but they'd all be even more enjoyable with Season 14 or Series 5 production values.

i only own season 12 (tom 1) from the classic series. it's a silly show to put on blu-ray, given how shit most of it looks.

it's unsilly to put out a package with six discs and new documentaries and improved edits, that is cheaper than the previous seven packages with eleven discs total

(it's idiotic to press fewer copies than demonstrated customer demand, especially for a perennial-replacement product, but that's different people making that decision)

yeah seriously number of doctor who DVDs i own = 0, number of doctor who blu-ray packages i have purchased since finding out about them = 2, and again i do not actually own a blu-ray player, i understand one can't generalize from one data point but while i know they've resisted putting the show on blu ray for quite a long time for reasons of quality, i'm happy to able to affordably own full seasons of my favourite tv show in high quality with lavish extras. thanks to y'all who bought the dvds for basically subsidizing my getting reams of cool shit super cheap...

probably the budget for the mccoy series being unusually low has something to do with it. i'm sort of in the same place re: those episodes as the people who point out, rightly, that the animated episodes are filled with paper dolls. chief difference being that i wouldn't be surprised if the animation was redone at some point to a higher standard, at least as long as people keep caring about "fury from the deep", which isn't something that's really possible with "ghost light".

counterpoint: Ghost Light is one of the best Dr Who stories ever, whose frustrated ambition was a beacon to much of what kept Who alive through the '90s, and for which viewers' calls for a restoration have continued to increase over thirty whole years until finally fulfilled this month

while Fury From The Deep is some endless old guff about murderous seaweed that's only getting a paper doll version from Big Finish because it was sensibly taped over with billiards as soon as practical

I think the truth is probably somewhere in between.

The older I get, the more I finally realise that Sylv and (especially) Colin were just let down by their times and these days I'm as likely to put on Paradise Towers or Vengeance on Varos as I am Enemy of the World.

I am almost certain Fury is going to disappoint, because the John Cura version isn't exactly sparkling, but will buy it anyway.

i mean maybe it's a great triumph that a rough cut of "ghost light" has finally been released, and if it's basically coherent so much the better, but i can't help but note that apparently reconstructing "the urge to survive", which was taped over with billiards on account of being shit before it was even broadcast, was a higher priority. of course that was all fucking ian levine, wasn't it? maybe all of the "missing episode" mystique is a result of being ensorcelled by his malign influence and once he's finally gone for good ghost light will get its due.

i respect "ghost light", i think what the people working on doctor who those last couple years did made a big difference in allowing it to come back. i'm glad home recording technology existed by the time "ghost light" was broadcast so it didn't get taped over by billiards. i don't necessarily think marc platt is as clever as some people think he is, and i'm not fully convinced that lungbarrow contributed anything of value to "doctor who".

maybe a coherent "ghost light" would change my mind on some or all of these issues, but the likelihood is pretty low i'll ever actually see it. i'll probably watch the animated "fury from the deep" when it comes out. i might just put on the second episode of "The Underwater Menace" in the background (old Doctor Who is great to play in the background, where I can just sort of half-pay attention to it) right now. of course it's some old crap, of course people are going to forget it even existed probably sooner rather than later. it's, i don't know, comforting to me.

IMO ghost light gets worse the more coherent it is - the atmosphere is great and there are some excellent characters and clever jokes but the actual story is ridiculous and stupid.

I just rewatched The Pirate Planet and will probably have “MOONS OF MADNESS!” echoing in my head for the next week.