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Retro-View #14: Taken in Stride

Earthshock (Story #122, 1982)
Viewed 22 Oct 2013

Doctor/Companion: Five, Adric, Nyssa, Tegan Jovanka
Stars: Peter Davison, Matthew Waterhouse, Sarah Sutton, Janet Fielding
Preceding Story: Black Orchid (Four, Adric, Nyssa, Tegan)
Succeeding Story: Time-Flight (Five, Nyssa, Tegan)

It’s been four months since G and I last sat down together to watch Doctor Who. A lot has happened both in our daily lives and in the life of the show. In our flurry of catching up, the latter got lost; I never did tell her about the amazing episode recovery announced earlier this month. I did, however, manage to explain a little bit about the Cybermen.

One of the many reasons I chose this particular serial to screen for G next is that our methodology—viewing introductory and final stories for every Doctor, with one or two “representative” stories in between—has meant that she’s missed out on the Doctor’s epic struggles with some of his most iconic foes. She only met the Daleks a few sessions ago in Genesis, and until now, she’d never come across the Cybermen. So it was predictable that the “big reveal” at the end of Part One—when it turns out the Cybermen are behind it all—didn’t get much of a reaction: “Okay, now we’re to the silver guys.”

You see, since the Cybermen are all over the DVD menu, she’d seen them ahead of time. I’d had to explain who they were, and that the Doctor had come across them often before (though it was quick). So her reaction was completely unlike any fan who watched it at the time (“Cybermen! They haven’t been seen for years!”) or even a post-Hiatus fan otherwise unfamiliar with pre-Hiatus stories watching this one without spoilers (“Hey, Cybermen! I guess the Doctor did say that one was an ‘old friend’…”). In fact, I had to remind her that these were, in fact, the Big Bad; she’d been hoping for some sort of pyramid scheme in which we’d keep finding another kind of mechanical creature behind the last, as the Cybermen had been behind the androids in Part One.

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Befriending Strangers Isn’t Weird, Is It?

Review of Adventures with the Wife in Space: Living with Doctor Who
Author: Neil Perryman (with interruptions by Sue Perryman)
Release Date: 07 Nov 2013
Paperback List Price: £12.99 or $16.99

Neil Perryman is partially responsible for the existence of this blog. It was the blog “Behind the Sofa” that he and several of his friends ran that gave me the idea that perhaps I could write about Doctor Who myself. When they decided to mothball the site instead of answering my request to become a contributor (I swear that wasn’t my fault!), I decided I’d just start my own blog.

So you can just imagine what it meant to me to receive a review copy of Neil’s new book, based on his wildly successful blog by the same name—the one that took up his time after “Behind the Sofa.” It felt like I’d arrived, somehow.

Then I started to read.

Now anyone familiar with “Adventures with the Wife in Space” from its two-and-a-half-year run online will probably know already that this book is not simply a collection of the blog’s content; Neil told us that at the blog several times. Even so, I was not prepared for the kind of content the book actually provides.

I don’t know what I was expecting, in retrospect. But I think it’s safe to say that I didn’t expect to get such an intimate portrait of Neil. Although I felt like I sort of knew him and Sue both via the blog—enough that I figured I could sit down with them for a drink at a con, if the opportunity ever arose, and have a not-terribly-awkward conversation—after reading the book, it was obvious I’d only scratched the surface before. Nothing can substitute for personal give and take, but one can hardly read what Neil has chosen to share without coming away feeling like you’ve been let in on something only a friend would divulge.

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Let Zygons Be Zygons

Review of Terror of the Zygons (#80)
DVD Release Date: 07 Oct 13
Original Air Date: 30 Aug – 20 Sep 1975
Doctor/Companion: Four, Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan
Stars: Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen, Ian Marter
Preceding Story: Revenge of the Cybermen (Four, Sarah Jane, Harry)
Succeeding Story: Planet of Evil (Four, Sarah Jane)

(Why yes, I have been waiting years to use that obvious, overdone title. Why do you ask?)

With all the recent hullabaloo surrounding the recovery of The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear, October’s otherwise noteworthy DVD release kind of got lost in the shuffle. Terror of the Zygons is widely regarded as one of the best stories of the pre-Hiatus era, yet for whatever reason (rumor has it, it’s because someone was being pissy to someone else who’d mentioned it was his favorite), it got shunted to the end of the release schedule.

Since I started my fandom well into the age of the DVD, I’ve never purchased a VHS copy of any Who story. Therefore, Zygons has the distinction of being the absolute last Fourth Doctor story (as well as the last complete story of the entire show) I ever saw—on this release. Hell, I even saw Shada before Zygons; that should give you an idea how overdue having this DVD out feels to me.

Needless to say, I’d heard a lot of hype. That always makes me nervous: will it live up to all these high expectations? As a jaded forty-something, will the magic still be there? Luckily, this time I had some real experts to help me test those waters.

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Atmos-Fear-ic

Review of The Web of Fear (#41)

iTunes Release Date: 11 Oct 13
Original Air Date: 03 Feb – 09 Mar 1968
Doctor/Companion: Two, Jamie McCrimmon, Victoria Waterfield
Stars: Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines, Deborah Watling
Preceding Story: The Enemy of the World (Two, Jamie, Victoria)
Succeeding Story: Fury from the Deep (Two, Jamie, Victoria)

The recovery of two back-to-back stories from the sorely underrepresented Troughton era of the show feels almost too good to be true (though them being found together makes a fair amount of sense). Yet here they are, and The Web of Fear starts up where the cliffhanger ending of The Enemy of the World left off.

Episode One isn’t what’s got Who fans’ collective panties in a bunch, though; it’s the only one that had remained in the archives. So although watching the cliffhanger resolution is more meaningful in context, having seen Enemy Episode Six for oneself, what follows is the familiar setup we’ve already seen (that is, if one had bothered to track down a copy). It is, in essence, your basic “our heroes get themselves into a pickle” episode.

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Friend of My Heart

Review of The Enemy of the World (#40)

iTunes Release Date: 11 Oct 13
Original Air Date: 23 Dec 1967 – 27 Jan 1968
Doctor/Companion: Two, Jamie McCrimmon, Victoria Waterfield
Stars: Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines, Deborah Watling
Preceding Story: The Ice Warriors (Two, Jamie, Victoria)
Succeeding Story: The Web of Fear (Two, Jamie, Victoria)

I can’t even describe the thrill I felt watching The Enemy of the World unfold before my very eyes. I’d long since inured myself to the idea that my only chance to see Troughton in his double role as the Doctor and Salamander was to watch Episode Three, which had previously been the only one remaining in the archives. And while I’d read both a full synopsis and the BBC’s photonovelization before, it’s a completely different experience to see it for oneself.

For anyone who has never seen the Second Doctor in action, you could hardly ask for a better introduction. I’ll admit it’s probably an advantage to know him so one can appreciate the differences between Troughton’s two characters better, but the story itself is a real cracker. Each episode unfolds another layer of intrigue until we see what a truly tangled web the players have woven.

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Once Bitten, Twice—OH MY GIDDY AUNT!

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Over the last several months, a Who fan would have had to have been hiding under a rock not to have heard the rumors that missing episodes of First and Second Doctor serials had been found. There was the hype, the counter-hype, the supposed confirmations, the supposed denials, back and forth for months. The lost episodes are like the Holy Grail of Doctor Who, so fans have understandably been by turns excited beyond words and bitterly disappointed.

This last week, the rumor surfaced again. Several outlets of various degrees of reliability broke the “news”—first the Mirror claimed on Sunday that all 106 had been found. On Monday the Radio Times reported that an unnamed number of “episodes” would be made available for purchase on Wednesday, then reversed and said the press conference wouldn’t be till Thursday. On Tuesday, the BBC itself posted a story. Although fandom considered it all old news by then, having word come down from Auntie Beeb herself certainly seemed like the “official word” many of us had been waiting for before going off the deep end in ecstasy.

By Tuesday evening, there was a post on Deborah Watling’s (who played Companion Victoria Waterfield to Patrick Troughton’s Two) official website saying that she and Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon) would “be helping the BBC to launch the newly found Dr.Who episodes” sometime on Thursday.

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A Dark, 21st Century Doctor

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Review of The Doctors Revisited – Ninth Doctor

No matter who ends up being our favorite, I think if we’re honest with ourselves, each fan instinctually compares every other Doctor to the one they see first. Whether you declare that one “your” Doctor or simply your first, everyone else is, on some level, automatically compared with the one who set your personal standard.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2013 BBC

Thus it is for me with Eccleston. Sure, I became a Tennant fan, and consider him “my” Doctor because it was him who cemented my fandom—but Eccelston’s Ninth Doctor defined the Doctor for me, and watching him in the role always feels like coming home.

I was gratified that those interviewed (including Neil Gaiman, Steven Moffat, Marcus Wilson, Nicholas Briggs, Noel Clarke (Mickey Smith), Corey Johnson (Henry van Statten), and John Barrowman (Capt. Jack Harkness)) picked up on some of the same things that drew me to Nine. For one thing, he was always sure of himself—no “absent-minded professor” vibe to this guy. (This could explain why it took me a while to warm to, for example, T. Baker’s Four, who often seemed at a loss.) Further, he doesn’t have to be busy, busy, busy to be in control. As Gaiman put it, “He doesn’t do anything quite a lot and yet he’s still the center of attention.”

There’s a distinctive darkness about him, too. Perhaps one reason I so love Dalek is that moment when he first comes face-to-face with the eponymous creature. We’ve only ever seen this Doctor (and on first viewing for me, that meant the Doctor) be confident; even on Platform One when things went wrong, his “that’s funny” face is not one of “how unexpected; now what?” but of “I’ve just found a new puzzle to solve.” Here, though, suddenly confronted with not only a known-dangerous foe but also a reminder of the atrocity he had been forced (now in vain?) to commit, he stands before us stripped to the bare emotions. His whole arc is about showing us how damaged he is. Moffat expanded on that idea as follows:

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Meanwhile, In an Alternate Universe…

Review of Scream of the Shalka (webcast)

DVD Release Date: 17 Sep 13
Original Air Date: [online webcast] 13 Nov – 18 Dec 2003
Doctor/Companion: Alternate Ninth, Alison, the Master
Stars: Richard E. Grant, Sophie Okonedo, Derek Jacobi
Preceding Story: Shada [webcast] (Eight, Romana II)
Succeeding Story: N/A

In the year or two leading up to the 40th anniversary of Doctor Who, fans knew not to expect much. The Movie had made a brave effort at reviving the flagging franchise, and now everyone just knew it was deader than a proverbial doornail. Nothing official was being done to commemorate the milestone, and the future of the show seemed to be relegated to alternative media.

Enter webcasts. The Web seemed to be where everything was at these days. Naturally, the BBC decided that if it were to continue the Doctor Who storyline at all, it would be online. Thus was born the idea of a series of webcasts, to star an entirely new, Ninth Doctor.

As we know by now, things went wahooney-shaped when it was announced in September 2003 that the show would be returning to television proper. Richard E. Grant’s stellar Ninth Doctor became obsolete before he’d even made a proper appearance. But somewhere, in some alternate universe, the show didn’t make it back to tellie, and we all know and love Grant as the Ninth Doctor instead of Eccleston.

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Revival of the Fittest

Review of The Ice Warriors (#39)
DVD Release Date: 10 Sep 13
Original Air Date: 11 Nov – 16 Dec 1967
Doctor/Companion: Two, Jamie McCrimmon, Victoria Waterfield
Stars: Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines, Deborah Watling
Preceding Story: The Abominable Snowmen (Two, Jamie, Victoria)
Succeeding Story: The Enemy of the World (Two, Jamie, Victoria)

For some reason, Troughton’s second season (Season 5, by the original count) was into cold climes. Starting things off with the cryogenic Tomb of the Cybermen, it proceeded on to Tibet and The Abominable Snowmen before landing the TARDIS crew in the glacier-covered future wasteland of The Ice Warriors.

Regardless of the seeming repetition of setting, I was glad to see another Troughton story I hadn’t had the privilege of watching before. Even when you’ve read a blow-by-blow plot synopsis, seeing it on the screen in front of you is a different kettle of fish. Besides, how can anyone resist any performance involving that infamous cosmic hobo?

As with many early stories, one has to take this one with a largish grain of salt. Not only are the Ice Warriors’ creature costumes ridiculously unconvincing (its the rubber mouths that don’t move in sync with the actors’ jaws that really does it), but the science is sorely outdated. The idea that extreme deforestation (not that the script calls it that) would lead to less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might have been a believable hypothesis at the time, but these days we’re seeing the opposite effect. So the very premise comes across as extremely retro-futuristic.

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Confession #43: I Love/Hate the Ten/Rose Ship

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There’s one thing that can divide a fandom faster than the Vashta Nerada can skeletonize a human: shipping. And the Dallas Cowboys (or Man U) of Who fandom ships—the one you either love or love to hate—is the Tenth Doctor and Rose. Let me break down the two camps, in terms of very broad generalizations (we’re talking horoscope broad, so obviously, YMMV).

On the one side, you have hardcore Ten/Rose shippers. They see Ten and Rose as an OTP (or “one true pairing”)—the ultimate ship that cannot be sunk, no matter what else is written before, after, for, or about the couple. As far as I can tell, some of these shippers go so far as to deny that any story that doesn’t involve Ten and Rose is innately inferior, and thereby beneath their notice, or at least a questionable use of their time.

On the other, you have Ten/Rose shipper-haters. These fans actively hate the Ten/Rose ship, and in many cases even extend that distaste to fans who do ship it. Further, a fair number of these anti-shippers believe that the Doctor does not (or should not) ever be in a romantic relationship of any sort. A non-negligible subset of these fans seem to think very little of the post-Hiatus show is worth their time.

And here I sit in the middle.

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