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Tag: Classic Who

Nu-View #8: Lucky Number Seven

The Curse of Fenric  (Story #158, 1989)
Viewed 15 May 2012

Doctor/Companion:   Seven, Ace
Stars:  Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred
Preceding Story:  Ghost Light (Seven, Ace)
Succeeding Story:  Survival (Seven, Ace)

The masses have small number of regular readers has spoken! The lucky winner of our who-do-the-Ladies-watch-next contest is Seven. Since we’ve already seen my favorite (Remembrance of the Daleks, Nu-View #6), I decided to go with another one that seems to be generally well-regarded by “the fans” (whatever that means).

Even more exciting than having let the readers decide our viewing material, we’ve got a new addition to the team! Please welcome the newest of the Ladies of WhoFest, L! L is a more recent acquaintance (now friend) of mine, and always acted a bit jealous when I’d talk about WhoFest. Finally, she asked, “how do I get in on this thing?” and here we are.

I’ve known for a while that L is a Whovian, because I could tell her things like the fact that Louise Jameson was a guest at Gally (though I did have to clarify with a “Leela”) and she knew enough to be jealous. It turns out she, much like jE, grew up watching Who, though not religiously. So there’s a lot she’s already seen, and plenty she’s missed. Sadly, jO was unable to join us again, but the rest of us had fun anyway.

After we’d made introductions all ’round, and L was settling in, jE took it upon herself to explain the format: “we make snarky comments while we watch.” What’s not to love? And L seemed to fit right in with the gang. As the story opened, jA noted that even the font used to subtitle the Russian was evocative of the ’80s; jE wondered how, with the boats all of 2 feet apart, the soldiers didn’t notice their “comrades getting eaten”; and L said she liked how they make them Russian by adding eyeliner. I just loved the way that Seven and Ace bluff their way onto the base: “About time, too!” huffs Seven, as the British soldiers finally get around to pointing guns at them to question their presence. It was very “Hounds of Baskerville“- or, y’know… vice versa.

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Fire and Ace

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Review of Dragonfire (#151)
DVD Release Date:  08 May 12
Original Air Date:  23 Nov – 07 Dec 1987
Doctor/Companion:  Seven, Melanie Bush, Dorothy “Ace” McShane
Stars:  Sylvester McCoy, Bonnie Langford, Sophie Aldred
Preceding Story:  Delta and the Bannermen (Seven, Mel)
Succeeding Story:  Remembrance of the Daleks (Seven, Ace)

Since this month’s R1 releases included two Seven stories and a Four story, I was going to start with Nightmare of Eden and keep it chronological. After Simon Guerrier (a fellow panelist with me at Gally, and Whovian content creator in his own right) responded to one of my tweets essentially telling me I was slacking, I decided I had to start with Dragonfire.

To be honest, I was sort of looking for an excuse. I adore Ace, and have been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to see her introduction. Coming at it from the future, so to speak, was actually a tad unsettling. While the original audience was still reveling in a recognition-of-returning-character moment (Glitz!), I’d cut that moment short to squee that I’d just noticed Ace(!) quietly serving him a drink in the background. Almost from that point on, I have a hard time paying any attention to Mel. Maybe it’s that Ace is my all-time favorite Companion (yes, lately Rory’s been giving her a run for her money, but stepping back from the swirl of new episodes for a while, the cream rises, and Ace comes back out on top), maybe it’s that I know it’s Ace’s turn next, or maybe it’s just that the script seems to have more for Ace to do than for Mel. Whatever the case, it already feels like a Seven-and-Ace story to me instead of a Seven-and-Mel one.

And the script doesn’t waste any time developing her character, either. I mean, I love that our first proper look at Ace involves her chafing against authority. We get the whole sense of where she’s come from (though, seriously – how does a kid from Perivale know it was a “time storm” that swept her off to Iceworld?) and what her life on Earth was like, too. On the other hand, I was a tad taken aback that there’s never any explanation for why she chose to call the Doctor “Professor.” Oh well. I suppose that’s part of its charm.

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Retro-View #1: Take It From the Top

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An Unearthly Child (Story #1, 1963)
             and
The Romans (Story #12, 1965)
Viewed 30 Apr 2012

Doctor/Companion:   One, Susan, Ian, Barbara / One, Ian, Barbara, Vicki
Stars:  William Hartnell, Carole Ann Ford, William Russell, Jacqueline Hill, Maureen O’Brien
Preceding Story:  None / The Rescue (One, Ian, Barbara, Vicki)
Succeeding Story:  The Daleks / The Web Planet (One, Susan, Ian, Barbara / Ian, Barbara, Vicki)
Notable Aspects:

  • First ever episode

I’ve got something a little different for you this time. I have a dear friend of a slightly different generation who remembers watching Doctor Who in its early days. She would have been within the target age range when it first graced the air waves in 1963, but – as an American – didn’t really watch until college, and occasionally at that. From what she tells me, she watched off and on, but hasn’t seen it in ages – probably since Four’s tenure.

Some time over the past year, we got to talking about Who, and she said she was really interested in seeing what they’d done with it (meaning post-Hiatus). Since then, our plan has gradually morphed into a sort of variation on a theme, similar to and yet different from both my regular Nu-Views and The Experiment of Adventures with the Wife in Space. G is not a novice viewer, but neither is she someone who has followed the show religiously for decades. I’ll be showing her a sample of each Doctor and sharing with her what I love about each of them, and she’ll be telling me what she remembers and how it strikes her now.

So here we go!

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Nu-View #7: A Grace-ful Perspective

Doctor Who: The Movie  (Story #160, 1996)
Viewed 24 Apr 2012

Doctor/Companion: Eight, Grace Holloway, Chang Lee
Stars: Paul McGann, Daphne Ashbrook, Yee Jee Tso
Preceding Story: Survival (Seven, Ace)
Succeeding Story: Rose (Nine, Rose)
Notable Aspects:

  • We’ve seen it before!
  • Only on-screen appearance of Eight
  • Broadcast mid-Hiatus; only new TV story in that 16 years

It’s a new year for the Nu-Views! What a crazy few months this has been. Nearly a third of the way into the year and we finally managed to get the Ladies together again. Well, most of us; jO couldn’t make it. But we’re back in business, and hopefully there will be more frequent Nu-Views in the coming months.

With all my recent chatter about Gally (well… within the last couple of months; this it the first time we’ve been together since then!), I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when jE requested we watch The Movie again. After all, even though I’d seen it some eight times before (~ahem~), they’d only seen it the once, and that was at the beginning of our WhoFest get-togethers, something like a year and a half ago. So, after spending some time regaling them with tales of Gallifrey One (if you haven’t read my posts yet, you can start here), we headed back to San Francisco, December 1999.

Vague memories began to emerge as the record skipped while the Doctor relaxed with his book and cuppa in the TARDIS. There were glimmers of recognition throughout, but much of it was like watching it for the first time again.

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Polari the Carny?

Review of Carnival of Monsters: SE (#66)
DVD Release Date:  13 Mar 12
Original Air Date:  27 Jan – 17 Feb 1973
Doctor/Companion:  Three, Jo Grant
Stars:  Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning
Preceding Story:  The Three Doctors (Three, Jo, the Brigadier)
Succeeding Story:  Frontier in Space (Three, Jo)

I have to admit, I was not really looking forward to this one. It had only been a few months since I last watched it for the Marathon, and it’s never really struck me as a particularly engaging story.

Whether it was my mood on this day, my evolving tastes in pre-Hiatus Who, or something else, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it this time around. It seemed like there was just the right balance of random political intrigue and technobabble-based s.f.-hijinks in the interior and exterior plot lines.

On the down side, I have to wholeheartedly concur that “Doctor Who should be banned from using dinosaurs.” Both the plesiosaur and the Drashigs are utter rubbish (seriously – the Drashigs have six eyes, and they still can’t see worth beans?). Bless Katy Manning, she can look terrified at any non-existent horror you can dream up, but I’m afraid I can’t muster the same emotion here (unless it refers to the effects). I know, I know… The show is about so much more than the effects, but the Drashigs always make me want to giggle. Or cringe. Or giggle while cringing. Regardless, it’s not the impact they were intended to have on tots in the viewing audience, I’m sure.

Another thing that irritated me was the scaling for the miniscope. For example, since the scope itself is between waist and chest height, the “livestock” inside must necessarily be miniaturized to roughly a centimeter or less in height in order to fit (along with their habitats). Yet the TARDIS comes out roughly 8-10 cm tall (at a guess). Worse, the Doctor himself stumbles out of the machine at one point, clearly several inches tall (maybe 20 cm? – regardless, even larger than the TARDIS had been) before beginning to de-miniaturize.

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Neither Angel Nor Devil

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Review of The Dæmons (#59)
DVD Release Date:  10 Apr 12
Original Air Date:  22 May – 19 Jun 1971
Doctor/Companion:  Three, Jo Grant, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Stars:  Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning
Preceding Story:  Colony in Space (Three, Jo)
Succeeding Story:  Day of the Daleks (Three, Jo, the Brigadier)

A lot of Long-Term Fans have a pretty high opinion of The Dæmons, from what I understand. That kind of reputation always makes me approach a story with caution. With a pedestal so high, can it possibly be as beautiful as those who put it there believe?

For me, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Yes, it’s an enjoyable story. There’s a lot to recommend it, and I could probably watch it again relatively soon without complaint. But there are the standard silly bits, too, and it’s not quite engaging enough for me to ignore them all.

Based on conversations elsewhere, I think at least some of the story’s charm is lost in translation, as it were. An idyllic English village doesn’t trip all the cultural nostalgia triggers that it would for a Brit or that, say, a small rural town or farm would for me, as someone who was raised in the American Midwest. So while the village square surrounded by pub, chapel, and such may stir something deep in the soul of a native of the British Isles, I find it merely quaint.

So what is it I’m not ignoring? Let’s start with the Master’s whole plan. Why the hell (~ahem~) is the Master bent on dominating humanity? Doesn’t he hate this backward little planet? Hasn’t he already tried to wipe out our species several times over? Isn’t he sick of the place? For a while I thought maybe that last bit was part of the answer – he’s stuck here, but has decided to make the best of it, and live up to his name. But that can’t be right – it’s not till the end of The Dæmons that he’s locked up by UNIT (so he can later wreak havoc with The Sea Devils), and since we’ve just seen him in Colony in Space, we know he’s got full control of his TARDIS. So I’m back to square one: wtf?

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Three Has Company

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Review of The Three Doctors: SE (#65)

DVD Release Date:  13 Mar 12
Original Air Date:  30 Dec 1972 – 20 Jan 1973
Doctor/Companion:  Three, Jo Grant, the Brigadier
Stars:  Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning, Nicholas Courtney
Preceding Story:  The Time Monster (Three, Jo, the Brigadier)
Succeeding Story:  Carnival of Monsters (Three, Jo)

Whoever first decided the crazy idea of having all three Doctors in one story wasn’t so crazy after all (I guess that’s either producer Barry Letts or script editor Terrance Dicks, then) deserves an award, in my opinion. This first multi-Doctor story was precursor to many others, both on- and off-screen and I, for one, love that.

The story serves multiple purposes, too. Not only did it provide the fan service of bringing back the previous Doctors, but by the end Three had also regained his ability to leave Earth (which made subsequent story arcs easier, after so many invasion-of-Earth stories already in the can). And those social-interaction pieces of the story, at least, are plausible.

The science, on the other hand… ~sigh~ An antimatter universe? Through a black hole? No. Just… no. I think that – more than any other Doctor Who story – the “science” here is painfully awful. Most of the time, I can gloss over it, suspend my disbelief and say, “yeah, that sounds almost plausible,” and roll with it. This bit, though, is egregious enough that it regularly jars me out of that mental story-space. I can get past it enough to enjoy the story, but I kind of have to work at it. I think Letts said it best when he pointed out in the commentary (see below) that “this is really science fantasy, rather than science fiction. It bears no relation really to what … scientists think goes on in the middle of a black hole.” Makes for a pretty good story, though. So let’s move on to those good bits.

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Buried Treasure

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Review of The Tomb of the Cybermen: SE (#37)
DVD Release Date:  13 Mar 12
Original Air Date:  02 – 23 Sep 1967
Doctor/Companion:  Two, Jamie McCrimmon, Victoria Waterfield
Stars:  Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines, Deborah Watling
Preceding Story:  The Evil of the Daleks (Two, Jamie, Victoria)
Succeeding Story:  The Abominable Snowmen (Two, Jamie, Victoria)

This particular story seems to engender reactions on polar opposite ends of the scale. Either it’s the greatest Cybermen story of all time (it’s reportedly Matt Smith’s favorite), or it’s racist schlock. I personally find myself somewhere in the middle. There are distinctly racist facets, I can’t deny that. However, they don’t put me off the story entirely because I find I’m able to approach them as “historical context” – that is, I can recognize that society has evolved in the past 45 years, and like everything, Tomb is a product of its time. I don’t have to agree with the presentation of the dark-skinned Toberman as a nigh-mute servant (“dumb muscle,” if you will) to find the rest of the story entertaining.

If we’re going to nitpick about yesterday’s attitudes that irritate us today, we may as well talk about the women, too. As actress Shirley Cooklin (Kaftan) puts it (see Commentary Track 2, below), female characters in that day and age were primarily “set dressing.” The dark-skinned characters were the baddies; the ladies were there to look good. Interestingly enough, the character Victoria even comments with frustration on her lot when told she doesn’t get to go with the others down to the catacombs: “Who’d be a woman?” (It doesn’t help that the spaceship captain with the bad fake-American accent responds with “How would you know, honey?”, marking her as even further down the social ladder due to her youth.) Despite all this, I can’t help enjoying Tomb.

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The Timelessness of Robots

Review of The Robots of Death: SE (#90)

DVD Release Date:  13 Mar 12
Original Air Date:  29 Jan – 19 Feb 1977
Doctor/Companion:  Four, Leela
Stars:  Tom Baker, Louise Jameson
Preceding Story:  The Face of Evil (Four, Leela)
Succeeding Story:  The Talons of Weng-Chiang (Four, Leela)

I’m not sure why I didn’t really take to Robots when I first saw it a few years ago. I liked it better during the Marathon, and better yet this time. (This trend can’t continue…) I guess part of the reason I’m enjoying it so much these days is that I can see how well it stands the test of time, especially compared to some other stories. The plot is pretty timeless, and as pointed out in some of the extras, the more retro design keeps that from looking dated, too.

At its most basic level, Robots is a cross between an Agatha Christie-style locked room murder mystery and an Isaac Asimov-inspired future-of-robotics thriller. But there are both deeper and more superficial ways to look at it, too. Is it a commentary on our society’s attitudes towards class? Is it a just a great way to get Leela into the swing of traveling with the Doctor? It all depends on how the viewer chooses to approach it.

One thing that particularly struck me, as a Neowhovian, was how blatantly the Heavenly Host from Voyage of the Damned were modeled off the robots here. The tone of voice, the pleasant visages, the creepiness of it all when their programming is subverted all can be traced directly back to this Sandminer. It’s almost insultingly obvious, once you see it.

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Old Face, New Face

Review of The Face of Evil (#89)
DVD Release Date:  13 Mar 12
Original Air Date:  01 – 22 Jan 1977
Doctor/Companion:  Four, Leela
Stars:  Tom Baker, Louise Jameson
Preceding Story:  The Deadly Assassin (Four)
Succeeding Story:  The Robots of Death (Four, Leela)

As the story opens, a young woman is being cast out of her tribe. The scene sets up the character of soon-to-be-Companion Leela perfectly: she’s strong and outspoken, not willing to suffer fools gladly, and yet willing to subvert her own position for those for whom she cares. Conveniently for future exposition, she is soon orphaned (a bit subtly, actually) and cut off socially from her home. Why wouldn’t she ask the Doctor to take her with him?

From that perspective, it was nice finally to get to see Leela’s “origin story.” But aside from that, there were several interesting plot points that make one think a bit more, and clearly demonstrate that the production team were trying to stretch their storytelling muscles. Perhaps most in-your-face (~ahem~) is the idea that the Doctor has clearly been here before, as evidenced by the likeness of his visage carved in stone. He’s done his usual number of sticking his proverbial finger in the pie of the planet, only to have it backfire (“I thought I was helping…”). It’s a rare situation when we clearly see how fallible the Doctor can be.

There’s also the pretty major idea of an insane computer. Obviously this is not the only time in science fiction history that a sentient computer has gone mad (it’s not even the first time in Doctor Who – think back to BOSS in The Green Death, or even further back to WOTAN in The War Machines). The results, though, which include eugenics, linguistic drift (Leela’s tribe the Sevateem derive their name from their antecedents on Survey Team 6), and sociocultural evolution (a habitual motion among spacefaring folk has become a sign to ward off evil). It’s a rather fascinating quasi-academic study, if one wants to approach it that way.

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