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Tag: Classic Who

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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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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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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Metamorphoses

Review of The Green Death: SE (#69)

DVD Release Date: 13 Aug 13
Original Air Date: 19 May – 23 Jun 1973
Doctor/Companion: Three, Josephine “Jo” Grant, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
>Stars: Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning, Nicholas Courtney
Preceding Story: Planet of the Daleks (Three, Jo)
Succeeding Story: The Time Warrior (Three, Sarah Jane)

What is it with green slime that infects the innocently curious on Doctor Who? First Inferno, now this…

Aside from being the finale of the Third Doctor’s fourth series, The Green Death marks the end of his Companion Jo’s time in the TARDIS. You can see when the farewell scene comes, no one really had to do much acting; all the emotion was right there on the surface. It’s so appropriate for this well-loved Companion because, unlike some of them, Jo gets a proper send-off story.

From the beginning of Episode One, we get foreshadowing of her departure. She’s exhibiting a new independence from the Doctor, refusing to go to Metebelis III with him and following her own plan of action instead. Then, when she meets the handsome, young Dr. Jones, she gets off on the wrong foot with him in almost exactly the same way she did with the Doctor. Their relationship is allowed a chance to grow, the romance bloom, over all six episodes (unlike, say, Leela’s utterly shocking, sudden, and perhaps even out-of-character decision to stay behind on Gallifrey to be with Andred when she leaves Four in The Invasion of Time).

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Burn Baby Burn

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Review of Inferno: SE (#54)

DVD Release Date: 11 Jun 13
Original Air Date: 09 May – 20 Jun 1970
Doctor/Companion: Three, Dr. Elizabeth “Liz” Shaw, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Caroline John, Nicholas Courtney
Preceding Story: The Ambassadors of Death (Three, Liz, the Brigadier)
Succeeding Story: Terror of the Autons (Three, Jo, the Brigadier)

It seems strange to me that despite how much I love this serial, I’ve never actually given Inferno a proper review before. I count it among my Top 3 pre-Hiatus favorites and have recommended it often to those who want to try out new-to-them earlier Doctors (as long as they can handle a seven-part serial), so I was thrilled a few months ago to see it pop up on the list of upcoming Special Edition releases.

I was further thrilled when I realized June had seen the release of two stories written by Don Houghton (the other being The Mind of Evil). It’s only as I’ve gotten more deeply entrenched in Whovian culture that I’ve paid attention to such details. (I used to watch television and simply take what I saw on screen as it came, passing judgment in terms of “I do/don’t like this,” but not paying the least attention to writers, directors, and such. Go figure.) But I feel the richer for it; I have a new appreciation for why MoE worked for me, knowing my fondness for Inferno.

So what’s so hot (see what I did there?) about Inferno anyway? Well, for one thing, it throws in a beautiful idea not really seen in Doctor Who up to this point: that of an alternate universe. I love the way we get to see little personality differences between familiar characters and their counterparts in the parallel dimension. The supporting cast is brilliant, not least the stellar (if regrettably named) Olaf Pooley as Professor Stahlman. Despite some pretty “out there” plot developments, the whole cast plays everything straight, and you can’t help believe in their experiences and reactions. If nothing else, the administrative red tape that ties Sir Keith Gold’s hands from doing anything useful to prevent impending disaster adds a sense of (slightly depressing) realism.

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Retro-View #13: The Celery’s Fresh, But G’s Wilting

Castrovalva (Story #116, 1981)
Viewed 24 Jun 2013

Doctor/Companion: Five, Adric, Nyssa, Tegan Jovanka
Stars: Peter Davison, Matthew Waterhouse, Sarah Sutton, Janet Fielding
Preceding Story: Logopolis (Four, Adric, Nyssa, Tegan)
Succeeding Story: Four to Doomsday (Five, Adric, Nyssa, Tegan)

I had high hopes for this story going in. G seems ready to try a new Doctor, and despite the fact that my kids are home on summer break from school, they have plans for how to occupy themselves while the grown-ups are involved with their silly videos.

And it starts out well. The regeneration scene is recapped, and the action continues on right from that point. The guards catch up to our heroes and drag them off. Tegan huffs, “Take your hands off me. This is an official uniform!”, causing G to chuckle and declare “I like her the best.” Finally—someone who shares my fondness for the Mouth On Legs!

G asks some good basic questions, too. “Why did the Master do that?” she wonders when he materializes in middle of the fray, then seems to go running, allowing the Doctor to escape into his own TARDIS, and leaving Adric behind to be rescued. “So he’d still have a good adversary?” Now if she’d take her speculation to the next level, we might make a Fan of her yet…

I’ll admit that I still enjoy the whole regeneration regression part (as the Doctor does impressions of himself) far more than G does; I don’t even bother to pause and explain when he spouts “reverse the polarity of the neutron flow” and she doesn’t laugh with me. Then again, maybe she didn’t even hear it. After several moments that I’d expected to get a reaction from her get none, I realize she’s left me.

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Technicolor Triumph

Review of The Mind of Evil (#56)
DVD Release Date: 11 Jun 13
Original Air Date: 30 Jan – 06 Mar 1971
Doctor/Companion: Three, Josephine “Jo” Grant, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning, Nicholas Courtney
Preceding Story: Terror of the Autons (Three, Jo, the Brigadier)
Succeeding Story: The Claws of Axos (Three, Jo, the Brigadier)

Although the BBC archives include all six episodes, The Mind of Evil is unique in that none of them (currently) exists in the original color format. Due to that fact, this serial has never before been released on DVD, making it—until now—the only Pertwee adventure I had yet to see.

Through technical machinations, color information buried in Episodes 2 through 6 could be pulled out and used to re-infuse them with a semblance of their original character. However, Episode 1 had no embedded color, rendering the chroma dot color recovery technique used on the other episodes useless. Instead, some seven thousand keyframes had to be hand colorized by the ridiculously talented (and dedicated!) colorizing artist Stuart Humphryes, better known by his YouTube handle BabelColour.

I’ll get to the story in a moment, but first I want to convey exactly how bloody brilliant BabelColour’s work is. I would put money on it that someone watching this DVD for the first time, never having been told about its history, would never guess it was anything but a cleaned-up original color print—until they got to Episode 2. At this point, the color seems to pulse every couple of seconds—it’s particularly egregious on faces in a couple of spots—and one realizes just how seamless a job BabelColour had done in that first episode. While I wouldn’t wish the horrendously long, painful, probably underpaid hours on him again, I know I’d dearly love to have him colorize all the other episodes (in this serial and others) that have so far only been done with chroma dot. His work is vastly superior.

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