Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

pic.twitter.com/gBHxxKIGCl

— Max Curtis (@MaxCCurtis) January 12, 2021

RTD's new series, It's A Sin (set in young gay 1980s Manchester), will include an episode in which one of the leads gets a part in a McCoy-era Who serial.

https://i.imgur.com/CAbSAPK.jpg

(Davies' Regression Of The Daleks is an imaginary sequel to Resurrection.)

Show starts Friday 22nd on Channel 4 (and maybe HBO Max), with all five eps on All4 immediately afterward.

OK, I'm sold.

Including a Meddling Monk story where he's listening to disco in his TARDIS, goes to 1917 to play "Ra-Ra-Rasputin" for the lols, accidentally buggers up human history, and has to regenerate into Rasputin to set things back on course.
The Meddler to be played by Matt Berry.

Holy shit

ikr

instead we get john bishop

https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/1457800d-0814-44e8-b2b9-d0d92f21cbc9/d3iitcf-62315ba1-5860-4695-83e9-3ccb3447d6fe.png/v1/fill/w_900,h_718,q_80,strp/cubee___doctor_who_arcade_game_by_cyberdrone_d3iitcf-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOiIsImlzcyI6InVybjphcHA6Iiwib2JqIjpbW3siaGVpZ2h0IjoiPD03MTgiLCJwYXRoIjoiXC9mXC8xNDU3ODAwZC0wODE0LTQ0ZTgtYjJiOS1kMGQ5MmYyMWNiYzlcL2QzaWl0Y2YtNjIzMTViYTEtNTg2MC00Njk1LTgzZTktM2NjYjM0NDdkNmZlLnBuZyIsIndpZHRoIjoiPD05MDAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.-746ykDuMUZlbyK-vlMT5hNgjpH6uGPRJgHQrxnWmOU

Make your own model of the Doctor Who pinball table: you have to make your own fun in isolation!

{Actually adapted from the BBC Micro game, before sic leaps in with a correction)

bring back the pink TARDIS you cowards

how it started: carrot juice

how it's going:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLb-rlZQA9k

Cringe but also <333 which I suppose is very Sylvester McCoy

I loved every second of that

I don’t remember that terrifying melting head but I definitely saw Dragonfire first time round, aged 9, and was thrilled that Bonnie Langford was finally leaving. I guess it was the 80s and there were melting heads in everything back then.

Impressive grue fx for bbc of that era

I love these blu-ray sets so much, and the folks they've rounded up for the commentaries and behind the sofa stuff look great on this one

Yeah, that head's one of the best FX of the classic series ever. Or maybe it just stands out because the rest of that serial is absolutely atrocious visually!

Love the idea of Colin Baker watching and making fun of Season 24 as a bonus feature on the Season 24 box set. (Also the "let's not bother watching Time & The Rani" gag in the Sylv & Bonnie coda.)

Effects from that era that I remember as being good from when they first aired were basically the melting head and The Destroyer from The Battlefield, who was wisely mostly kept in the dark. And that creepy hand thing the Chief Clown does, though that wouldn't have cost them anything extra.

That promo video is great. Have they done that for previous DVDs?

Yes, I'll try and chase up some others.

They landed a whole-ass Dalek space shuttle in a real school playground in Remembrance. That still looks like "how tf did they manage this?"

This box will make Mel the second companion to have all her stories out on Blu-Ray, after the almost equally beloved Adric.
Every story in the set has alternate extended editions and optional new 5.1 surround sound mixes AND isolated scores. Also not mentioned in the video: twenty-five hours of studio footage (edited highlights of a hundred hrs!).

Other blu-ray promo videos:

Ace Returns! - Season 26 promo, the first of these

Jo and Cliff Jones return to Llanfairfach - Season 10 promo

The Home Assistants Of Death?! - Season 14 promo (also see the last 30 seconds of this trailer)

Jo Grant vs the Autons... Again?! - Season 8 promo

I liked the Jovanka Airways one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQEvPJC8AEI

from one of the folks who works on the blu-ray bonus features:

My favourite thing about Season 24 is that they wanted to have Sylvester McCoy playing the spoons but his first story was set in space so they had to design SPACE SPOONS. God bless @LeeBinding for including them on the cover, but we should be issuing them as free gifts too! pic.twitter.com/6HrVNRjAE2

— Chris Chapman (@ChrisChapman81) January 22, 2021

and the perils of presenting these programmes in high-as-possible definition, when the makers knew that all the TVs at home would be rounded at the corners so you'd never see anything at the edge of frame:

What makes it worse is that it's such a wonderful, witty shot - and all it needed was a tiny crop to hide the fault!

— Chris Chapman (@ChrisChapman81) January 22, 2021

And some earlier blu-ray trailers I hadn't seen before (lower yr expectations tbh) (also xpost):

Season 18 Announcement Trailer (Galactic Glitter Package Tours advert voiced by Tom)

The Season 19 Safety Video with Tegan Jovanka

The Sixth Doctor is on trial AGAIN!

how come I didn't know about these Blu-Ray trailers until now, this is seriously fantastic

The 24 Carat one has really raised the bar for future seasons.

(accidentally posted the followup on that second Chapman tweet - click through for a Delta & The Bannermen snippet)

Thanks for finding them. I think the newest one is still the best. I have 3 of the blu-ray sets now, but I've only watched half of "Battlefield" on them so far.

RTD's new series, It's A Sin (set in young gay 1980s Manchester), will include an episode in which one of the leads gets a part in a McCoy-era Who serial.

(Davies' Regression Of The Daleks is an imaginary sequel to Resurrection.)

Show starts Friday 22nd on Channel 4 (and maybe HBO Max), with all five eps on All4 immediately afterward.

Bit off-topic, but have just watched the first episode of this and it was really quite good, best thing he's done in ages.

I haven't gotten around to Midsummer Night's Dream yet, but the other three of his last four things were great-to-fantastic.

It’s incredible, I’m full of anticipation and dread for the next episodes in equal measure.

I missed it, the HEAVILY rotated trailers made it look like every gay drama ever, but I'll give it a shot if people say it's good.

Just bumped across the end of ep 2 of Remembrance on TV (streaming free on Pluto): the special FX of the Dalek starting to teleport into Shoreditch, all transparent and pink-brain-mutant showing first, then the scene of another Dalek chasing and shooting at Ace in the science lab, are also pretty great.

For those that might appreciate some classic-era nerdery, the original Myth Makers interviews have gone up on Amazon Prime, hours and hours of the stuff, and a lot of supplemental episodes too.

It's A Sin has an US premiere date: all five eps on HBO Max on Feb 18th.

(Am up to #4; cried through most of 3.)

Apologies if this constitutes unwelcome self-promotion (and please delete/ignore if it does), but I'm doing a live Doctor Who podcast at 8pm GMT tonight on Twitch (audio podcast to follow afterwards) looking at The Ark, Caves of Androzani and Heaven Sent + asking if they can tell us anything about the Very Strange Times we're living in right now.

Streaming here: https://twitch.tv/illexplainlaterdw

An article about the Daleky bit in It's A Sin, with some poignant details, director interview, and several irritating errors: https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a35347177/its-a-sin-doctor-who-crossover-scene/

Peter Davison's home audio booth for lockdown recordings.

There was a Love & Monsters tweetalong today, with the special commentary coming from the nine-year-old kid who created the Absorbaloff for a Blue Peter competition.

While Abzorbaloff wasn't originally inspired by the Slitheen, I like the world building and the similarities are obvious. He was actually inspired by boogers, nightmares and the Simpsons. #LINDAunited

— Channel Pup - Objectively Good YouTuber (@channel_pup) February 14, 2021

Ha. That's quite a slab in the face. Poor Ursula. Getting literally stoned in Elton's apartment. #LINDAunited

— Channel Pup - Objectively Good YouTuber (@channel_pup) February 14, 2021

In the spirit of valentine's Day, fun fact: Abzorbaloff gets auto-erotic pleasure from absorbing people. #LINDAunited

— Channel Pup - Objectively Good YouTuber (@channel_pup) February 14, 2021

well i just learned a lot from the "blue peter" wiki

Perhaps the most important revelation from this weekend's newspapers. #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/NqqAqlWF59

— Nathaniel Tapley (@Natt) February 18, 2021

Haha good god. Course he pretty much got his way with Yrcanos, eventually. That eyeliner was...dubious.

Incidentally, I've been ploughing through tons of 60s and 70s tokusatsu stuff recently, and was very happy to find that the bad guy in King Kong Escapes is an Asian Doctor Who

As pointed out in the comments, Troughton's first thought was to play The Doctor in blackface too:

"My original idea was to black up and wear a big turban and brass earrings and a big grey beard and do it like the Arabian Knights. I thought that would be a wonderful idea, but when I'd finished, I could shave off, take the black off, take the turban off and nobody would know who I was and I wouldn't be typecast."

And of course he did brownface as Salamander in Enemy of the World.

Brian Blessed hated Hartnell and almost decked him once:

I couldn't find this clip of Brian Blessed talking about how he once almost beat the crap out of William Hartnell anywhere on the internet, so here it is. pic.twitter.com/4vqgLOqu1G

— Paul Cornish (@PaulGCornish) August 13, 2020

The makeup aspect / white actors aside, it's notable that both Troughton and Blessed supposedly thought in 1966 "It is FINALLY time for a Doctor Who of colour!"

uh

I suppose that is one way to interpret that

Any day now.

(I’ve never seen any aspect of the Blessed story before; Troughton’s may be an exaggerated ‘80s convention anecdote - he doesn’t seem to have actually pitched doing the show in blackface and turban to the production team.)

"It is FINALLY time for a (white guy to play a)Doctor Who of colour!"

.@Paul_Burgin has spotted Peter Davison in the background as John Lennon performed 'Instant Karma' on Top of the Pops. pic.twitter.com/sN5ex9syaZ

— Jonny Morris (@jonnymorris1973) February 21, 2021

The Tenth Doctor might have been oblivious to Martha but she had better luck with some of the others... pic.twitter.com/B4fWlZo6oX

— Doctor Who Minus Context (@WhoMinusContext) March 2, 2021

DOCTOR WHO: 7/11 miniseries now please. Agyeman can drive the TARDIS while they bicker.