Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

also it was based on the legend of pigpygmalion

yes, it is total classic. I love the bit where he looks at his ex-wife on the screen and says "Oh, that's Lalla! I remember... we became very close".

apparently the catchphrase in Tom Baker's autobiography is "we had the most terrible fun... and then I never saw them again".

Right... a *long post* here I feel; but I know the show well, so why not contribute?

In terms of Doctors:
Classic: Hartnell, Troughton, Tom Baker (manic, brooding, charming... his Doctor has perhaps generally been my favourite)

Dud: Pertwee (though not exclusively; his first season is a corker, and he's pretty good in it, but too often is rather staid in many later stories), Colin Baker (due perhaps to waning scripting, he was ill-served; he gave his all, but some things were ill-conceived. I generally like the way he tried to play the part).

Mixed: Davison (years and years since i've seen most of his stories... it's possibly his underplayed quality that meant I wasn't so taken with him; maybe not i'd appreciate it more. He certainly seems to along with Troughton have had the best post-DW career; "At Home with the Braithwaites", of which I only caught a few episodes of last year's series, sees him give a deliciously comic performance! I want to see "A Very Peculiar Practice" too...), McCoy (the 1987 season is weak all-round and his performance seems a little amateurish. Yet, he's never less than likeable, and gradually improved. By the final 1989 season, he had honed a very effective melancholia into the character. He was a wistful, wise, loveable uncle sort of figure, yet with possible darker leanings... it's only a shame that as an actor McCoy could never do angry very well).

Stories:
Search: the whole of Seasons 7 and 26; being only four stories apiece, these maybe have an advantage in terms of consistency. First is Pertwee at his early grounded best - all moral shades of grey in the writing, effective location work and sense of threats/mystery. Great monsters in the Autons and great plot in "Inferno". "Ambassadors of Death" is an all-o'er-the-place romp of some genius: very padded but entertainingly so. One of the more psychedelic and Bondian of Who stories, but with a morality play core to it. S26: barring possibly the straight adventure of "Battlefield" (which is entertaining at least, but not really good), the other 3 stories maintain a very high standard indeed. Use of historical settings was well overdue, considering the BBC's expertise at that. With fantastical and macabre elements brought into those settings. "Ghost Light" haunted me as a child, as did "Curse of Fenric"; both of which are dense, complex tales. "Survival" brought a suprising and wistful air of social (and magic) realism to the show. What a shame it had to be its finale at that time: just as the programme was getting *good* again!
Seasons 14 and 16 are close to as good as well... S16 maybe let down by weaker final 2 stories. The first four are a grand run though.
Random Search-worthy stories: "Seeds of Doom" (wonderfully tense first 2 eps. and then an enthrallingly barmy extended-"Avengers" style saga...), "Talons of Weng-Chiang" (all sorts of Victoriana combined in a sumptuous whole... archetypally wonderful DW, though few matched its level of hit to the miss), as some have said: "Castrovalva" (possibly with some dullish moments, but i like that leisurely progress it has; nice atmosphere, all quirky early-80s paraphanelia and Paddy Kingsland synth work... as people have said, a fantastic central narrative idea). "The Time Meddler" (barmy, winning Hartnell historical set in 1066 with a Monk who wants to assassinate William the Conqueror!), "The Mind Robber" (like the previous, this was in the fine BBC2 1992 repeat run of stories. Wonderfully surrealist hi-jinks; a world of fiction that constantly baffles even the Doctor!), "The War Games" (a massive 10 episodes long, this is a wonderfully epic tale; one of the key stories of the whole show. Last Troughton, and he gives a superb performance - his impersonation of a WW1 British Inspector of Prisons is a priceless, magical scene!), "An Unearthly Child (the very first episode of the whole show is genius; 'nuff said'), "City of Death" (the show's very best use of humour, and that's saying something; married to a fine plot, and Parisian locations, this is unutterably charming stuff... maybe my very favourite story of all. Tom B. and Lalla make a great pair), "The Androids of Tara" (from the 'Key To Time' S16, this blissfully ignores the umbrella theme and just gets down to telling a smashing swashbuckling story. Beautiful location work, T. Baker at his funniest... Mary Tamm actually rather good), "Warriors' Gate" (from that very odd final T. Baker season of which I have mixed feelings; this is avant garde Dr Who. Vaguely influenced by Jean Cocteau, with some effective sci-fi, it's beautifully directed and an effectively complex tale), "Black Orchid" (jolly old 1920s country house murder yarn, which beautifully has the Doctor just turn up and star in a cricket match! Davison great in this; a story in which T. Baker's Doctor would have been too dominating a figure... I need to see this again), "The Green Death" (for that key and rare emotional scene alluded to by someone on here... it really adds an unresolved depth to Pertwee's all too often autopilot portrayal. And a reasonable story as well), "Robot" (watch Tom Baker forming the portrayal as he goes along almost... his performance has the flavour of improvisational inspiration about it; wonderfully interesting for this reason), "Robots of Death" (one of the most scary certainly, and Leela in all her glory...! Great companion), "Horror of Fang Rock" (probably the best Leela story, this again shows DW playing its horror card precisely and beautifully. A lot of depth to this story in the writing and acting). And I could go on... ;-)
Too many Hartnell and particularly Troughton episodes were destroyed and have not been found... probably the most promising of the 'lost stories' are "Evil of the Daleks", "Power of the Daleks" (first Troughton, so poetically alluded to above by Mark S.), "The Massacre", "Fury from the Deep" (genuinely quite scary to listen to on audio, with brilliant sound and music; a very bleak, out-of-control atmosphere, doom-laden crises by the sea... has a great dazed cliffhanger where a possessed lady wife of one character walks off into the mist-laden sea... a surviving clip of this 'malevolent Laurel and Hardy' pair - purporting to be maintenance men - who exhale a gas that chokes this woman, is a macabre scene indeed), "Web of Fear" (the Yeti in London one; the extant opener is a corking episode; the rest according to audio seems a fine exercise in action, paranoia and tension).

Destroy: Haven't the heart (or frankly the time!) to go too far here... the show has clear faults; but I really think they should be overlooked in favour of its redoubtable strengths, but here goes...
"The Web Planet" (absolutely incomprehensible, if bizarre early Hartnell... it may have been the appalling UK Gold quality of sound/picture, but it was like a snowstorm with unexplained madness going on and mumbled words... all sorts of weird ants and bee-men. This might actually be genius if tidied up for DVD, but I sadly doubt it!), "The Sensorites" (sums up the worse side of early DW; incredibly slow-moving and literal sci-fi. Even the regulars seem lethargic), "Time-Flight" (woeful end to a generally good first Davison season; the money had ran out, and what we have is... a shoddy, shoddy effort all round), "Time and the Rani" (cringe-worthy first McCoy story; embarrassing really), "Attack of the Cybermen" (the most appallingly past-continuity-of-the-show-reliant story of all the later years; a gaudy adventure that lacks any control of tone, like quite a few Colin Baker stories), "The Twin Dilemma" (with suitable changes to production and writing, this could have worked... there are fine and brave moments, but on the whole it is fatally inept. Colin Baker doesn't quite pull it off... but as I say, it has its moments), "Silver Nemesis" (pointless, cut-up of all sorts of novelty elements), "Resurrection of the Daleks" (too much macho posturing, not enough humour or humanity; the case with a fair bit of mid-1980s Who), "Colony in Space" (there are many really quite dull Pertwees; this is one of them ;-)), "Revenge of the Cybermen" (possibly my least favourite Tom Baker; it has a few hilarious moments of Baker madness, yet is deadly dull otherwise and wastes the Cybermen for goodness' sake!) and the McGann TV Movie (just not Dr Who in so many core elements; McGann is good, but his costume is too pastiche Edwardiana, and it all just seems so streamlined and lacking genuine ideas and intelligence. An over-reliance on 'quirky one-liners' as well, no subtlety; all is too much of a bland action story... too many past allusions, too many pointless changes to the Doctor's character - 'half-human' etc. Not enough charm and wonder.).
I think the thing about the Colin Baker and Jon Pertwee eras is that there aren't really that many awful stories, yet there are comparitively far too few triumphs.

Overall, well, as people can probably tell, I love it... genuinely wonderful TV for the 'intelligent 12 year old', though clearly its appeal extends to those much younger and older than that. :-) In the words of Viv Stanshall, it's 'English as tuppence, changing yet changless as canal-water'...

Sinker totally OTM !
my younger sister was so terrified at the part with the arm gun
that my mum came in and turned the telly off

and yes, it's true - our couch wasn't against the wall
so we did hide behind it and other chairs in the room

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/photonovels/evilofthedaleks/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/photonovels/evilofthedaleks/one/47.shtml

Saw it a few weeks ago on UK Gold, who are currently showing the Jon Pertwee stories now for the 1st time in four years.
Into Pertwee's 3rd season now.

3rd Doctor:

Green Death is probably the best one out there (giant maggots) as long as you can get past some of the Welsh stereotyping and the "aren't environmentalists mad" subplot. The extras are good.
Spearhead From Space (Autons) is good for a "new Doctor" story and Claws Of Axos is a lot of fun (but with really 70s effects and an acid freakout).

4th Doctor:

You can't go wrong with any of the Gothic Horror stories - Pyramids Of Mars, Horror Of Fang Rock or Talons Of Weng-Chiang. We can argue over whether Robots Of Death fits into this category or not (I'd say it does) but that's another good one. If you don't fancy that, the recently released Genesis Of The Daleks is possibly the best-paced 6-parter ever and The Ark In Space is a great romp (if you ignore the at times very poor effects - bubble wrap will kill us all).

The Web Planet is possibly the most ON DRUQS Who I've seen. Also The Aztecs is quite brilliant in places.
The Mind Robber is probably the best Troughton on sale, and has the maximum ZOE UBER-CUETNESS factor (see also Tomb Of The Cybermen).
Caves of Androzani is one of the best-written Who stories, probably.
Vengeance On Varos actually stands up really well, with a Big Brother-esque plot 20 years before RTD did it, and Jason Connery topless.
I can't think of any reason to recommend any of the McCoy releases except they're better than I remember them being.

I have very fond memories of 'Paradise Towers' from when I was a kid.

Dan's the McCoy fan I think, you might get him defending them. (I actually think McCoy himself isn't that bad, he was just crippled with the two worst comoanions in the history of the show.)

Ghost Light is better than I thought it was at the time but MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE, which even the writer admits. If you watch it with the commentary on, he explains what happens in the scenes that were cut and you can see how it was supposed to work, but it barely saves it.

And you know what - it would work.

Er, hello? It's Doctor Who, not Senior Staff Nurse Who.