Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

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.

At the risk of overselling things, I have been enjoying STRANDED Vols 1 and 2, two boxed sets from Big Finish. The premise is that the Eighth Doctor is stranded in 2020 for months with the TARDIS out of action and is stuck being landlord for a whole block of flats, the various residents of which all become companions as he slowly wrestles the TARDIS back to life. The stakes are usually refreshingly low and the characters and storylines pleasantly progressive (one new companion, and love interest for a long-term audio companion, is a trans woman; another story is about two gay men getting together while serving in UNIT in the 1970s). It's not world-shattering but overall it is rather good--certainly better than almost any other BF stuff I've tried to listen to.

Of course, being Big Finish, they have at least 2 more box sets in the series planned and so will presumably flog it to death, but in the meantime...

If everyone thinks I'm wrong I'll blame lowered expectations from the Chibnall crap years.

cool premise

That sounds really interesting. The only BF I've heard so far was Holy Terror, which was genuinely actually good, not just low-expectations-good.

Is McGann still a wee bit leaden?

He's good in this, doing the Doctor is ultra distracted and driven mental by boredom

This fun twitter thread with someone ranking every nu-Who story reminded me that we're only a few seasons to passing the total number of classic-era stories.

is COVID a thing in this story?

Weirdly not.

This fun twitter thread with someone ranking every nu-Who story reminded me that we're only a few seasons to passing the total number of classic-era stories.

Great list! And excellent number 1 choice (i.e. same as mine). Love and Monsters is fine but pushing it for Top 10.

It's a lot more than fine and tbh I wouldn't have checked out the list without hearing that.

Gridlock at number 16, though...

Nice thread. Interesting (to me at least) that there's nothing story arc/mythology heavy near the top.

Her #1 is the apex of the most complex story arc the series has ever done, and sets up threads that run for another two years tbf! Definitely leans toward stand-alone, though that might also be a function of what works best considered as individual units.

I did think that but nothing else from the plot leading up to it is rated anywhere close and what they like about it is the resolution of the self-contained plot.

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

4,068 pages of scripts, designs and other documents in the PDF materials on the S24 blu-ray.

New from Big Finish: "Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor Adventures - Three brand new adventures featuring Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor..." interesting!
"..written by Nicholas Briggs." oh, never mind

There really isn't enough appreciation for that link abanana posted, holy shit

Fun and informative!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=901pWVPu2mQ

Paul McGann has now been Doctor Who longer than anyone alive had been Doctor Who when he became Doctor Who.

— James Cooray Smith (@thejimsmith) May 27, 2021

I'd forgotten that Pertwee died 7 days before the movie was broadcast in the UK, but 6 days after it was shown in the US (and 8 days after Canada!)

My one year old kept trying to steal a cup from another girl at a cafe today, and the girl’s mum turned out to be doctor who. Was super friendly and called my daughter “tiger”

Haha, that is excellent.

'it's not actually part of Tom's first production season'

I don't understand this. Wouldn't they have to shoot his introductory scenes in his first season?

― remove butt (abanana), Friday, February 12, 2016 3:35 PM

Sometimes I think about how rarely production corresponded to transmission seasons in old Who. 1976-78 and 1987-89 are basically it:

Two stories (ten episodes) were held over from season 1 to season 2
.
Two stories (five eps) were held over to season 3
.
One story (four eps) was held over to season 4, and Troughton's first episode was the ninth ep of the season.
.
(Out of nine stories made that production season, the first introduced the Cybermen, the fifth brought them back with a new design, and the last one brought them back with a new origin story. and 13 of the season's 43 episodes were taken up with two Dalek stories! Imagine the action figures you'd get these days out of that lot.)
.
One story (four eps) was held over to season 5
.
Two stories (ten eps) were held over to season 6
.
Season 7 (four stories) was made and aired in one go, but the entire production team did fuck off permanently during the filming of the first serial, which had already changed partway through to become the only fully-shot-on-film story in the UK programme's history, both of which resulted in the four-parter taking eight weeks to shoot, instead of eight hours. Pertwee was the first classic Doctor to have his debut story made as the first production of his first season.
.
Season 8 got made and aired all in one go! In order, too!
.
One story (four eps) was held over from season 9 to season 10, and aired second in that season, over six months after it wrapped.
.
One story (four eps) was held over to season 11
.
One story (four eps) was held over to season 12 - this was Baker's debut. The other four stories aired in his first broadcast season were all made out of transmission order, even though they each flowed directly into the subsequent one. Six episodes were planned to be held over for season 13, but that one story was cut down to 4 eps, and then the tx date of S13 was brought up by three months, so they had to stay in production, and thus...
.
Four stories (sixteen eps) were held over to season 13, which only had two stories (ten eps) actually made in its own production season.
.
After this absolute chaos, Tom's final five seasons were all made and aired pretty much as written, with the exception of Douglas Adams' last serial getting abandoned 2/3 of the way through, at the end of S17.
.
Having banked some chaos again, Davison shot the second and fourth of his serials (basically two rejected Tom scripts left in the pantry), went off and made a BBC sitcom for his day job (nb: he also had a side-job at the same time, as lead of an ITV sitcom), came back and shot his third, first, and then fifth-through-seventh serials for season 19.
.
In season 20, he shot his second and first serials in a break after one of his sitcoms, then went off to do one of his sitcoms, then again came back and made the rest of the serials in order, before heading off to one or another of his sitcoms and, then, returning to Dr Who to make the 20th anniversary feature-length special.
.
His final season then had Colin Baker's first four-parter at the end of it. Ten months later, Colin's first solo season turned up, reformatted into a 45-minute American-style show, and got the entire series cancelled. 18 months after public outcry, it returned, reformatted as a single 14-part 25-minute serial, so profoundly started without a plan that five different people wrote the last two episodes, with lawyers physically watching in meetings to make sure the final two didn't get to read all the other scripts. Then Colin was fired because the resulting show somehow turned out poorly? (He had gotten paid for the season that didn't exist in between, though.)
.
In season 24, for the first time in 17 years and the second time in all 24, Sylvester's Doctor had his debut story aired be the first one he made.

7 doctor who books in the uk Kindle daily deal today

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kindle-Daily-Deals/b?ie=UTF8&node=5400977031

tip of the hat to sic's mammoth post there, it shouldn't pass unacknowledged!

(xpost) Got the Shearman. Thanks!

This is the funniest thing l've read all week pic.twitter.com/qWKErl0ikn

— Stephen Brennan (@Stephen_NDBB) June 28, 2021

thanks for the new dn

i have a lot of questions but also lmao

setting a bar for the Morbius Doctors

UNIT surveillance photos from IE in The Invasion. Anyone recognise top row subjects? First 4 row 2 Derrick Sherwin? Next 3 presumably Murray Evans. Don't recognise first 4 row 3, next 3 are Edward Dentith. Bottom row Peter Bryant? Douglas Camfield? And Terrance! #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/owE3K1i5lI

— graemeallan (@graemeallan) July 10, 2021

Thanks everyone for playing. The consensus is as shown. That's one for whoever's pulling the extras together for the eventual Invasion Blu-ray to verify..! 👍 https://t.co/W90Go71wPK pic.twitter.com/TDr3PtEgIQ

— graemeallan (@graemeallan) July 12, 2021

Such a shame this episode is missing, you really want to be able to see this stuff. pic.twitter.com/zG4pa1MiEn

— Jonny Morris (@jonnymorris1973) July 26, 2021