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Tag: Classic Who

Nu-View #6: An Auspicious Introduction

Remembrance of the Daleks  (Story #152, 1988)
Viewed 07 Dec 2011

Doctor/Companion:   Seven, Dorothy “Ace” McShane
Stars:  Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred
Preceding Story:  Dragonfire (Seven, Mel, Ace)
Succeeding Story:  The Happiness Patrol (Seven, Ace)
Notable Aspects:

  • Returns to the scene of The Unearthly Child
  • Dispels the myth that Daleks can’t handle stairs

Seven often gets a bad rap. I’ve never understood that, but perhaps it’s because this is the first of his stories I ever saw. Not only does it have some interesting plot points (a few that never quite get explained), but it also includes a bit of fan service in the sense of bringing everything back to 76 Totter’s Lane, where it all started (this was, after all, the beginning of the 25th series; there needed to be some nod to The History). Further, this regeneration comes across as genuinely fond of his young Companion, which is a nice change of pace after Six and Peri (though the Ladies didn’t react as poorly to Six as I initially did).

All three Ladies were sitting down with Seven for the first time – a situation I don’t believe we’ve had since The Movie (our first ever WhoFest viewing). You may recall from their introductions that though jA and jO came to Who as I did, through the post-Hiatus stories, jE grew up with it. However, she had such a negative reaction to Six that she stopped watching. That makes this story, and Seven in general, a more even field than ever before.

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Authoritative and Genteel

Review of the Third Doctor’s era

1970 – 1974
Spearhead from Space
Doctor Who and the Silurians
The Ambassadors of Death
Inferno		 Terror of the Autons
The Mind of Evil
The Claws of Axos
Colony in Space
The Dæmons		 Day of the Daleks
The Curse of Peladon
The Sea Devils
The Mutants
The Time Monster
The Three Doctors
Carnival of Monsters
Frontier in Space
Planet of the Daleks
The Green Death		 The Time Warrior
Invasion of the Dinosaurs
Death to the Daleks
The Monster of Peladon
Planet of the Spiders

The switch to Three brought in some big changes. Most noticeably, the episodes were now in color! However, there was also a distinct change in the personality of Three when compared to One and Two. First off, he was the first example of the Doctor as Action Hero. With his Venusian aikido (or Venusian karate, depending on the story), he was not averse to getting into hand-to-hand combat. He was also a fairly good with a blade, prompting one adversary to comment that he’d never seen “a finer swordsman.”

Another change was that for a significant portion of his tenure, Three was stuck on Earth – exiled here by the Time Lords, with his knowledge of the relevant technology blocked. Thus began his real, long-term relationship with UNIT. Usually he only helped because he decided the problem the Brigadier brought to him was interesting, but of course we never saw the instances that didn’t result in an adventure. And somehow, Earth always seemed to be under threat of invasion from someone.

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Confession #19: I Love the B&W Era

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In honor of today’s 48th anniversary of the first broadcast of Doctor Who (that would be An Unearthly Child, in 1963), I thought I’d talk a bit more about the early years of Who and why they’re worth your time to seek out if you’ve never had the opportunity to see them before.

For a general sense of what they’re all about, check out my recent posts on the First and Second Doctors’ eras, where I give a broad overview. Let me express a bit more love for that whole black-and-white era, though. There’s a special something – maybe you could think of it as an innocence – that doesn’t necessarily carry over into the color/modern era. The show is so earnest and new and takes itself so seriously, even though it also clearly knows it’s a bit rubbish in places.

Admittedly, it took me a while to warm to all that. Coming as I did straight off Series Four with Ten and Donna, I was taken aback at first, even though I knew I was stepping into the Wayback Machine when I sat down with An Unearthly Child that first time. Forty-five years’ worth of technological advances are nothing to sneeze at, especially where television is concerned. So even though I’d steeled myself for bad (by modern standards) effects – having grown up with Star Trek, I thought I had an idea of what it was likely to look like – and the black-and-white view, I wasn’t truly prepared.

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Still Raze-y After All These Years

Review of Colony in Space (#58)
DVD Release Date:  08 Nov 11
Original Air Date:  10 Apr – 15 May 1971
Doctor/Companion:  Three, Jo Grant
Stars:  Jon Pertwee, Katie Manning
Preceding Story:  The Claws of Axos (Three, Jo)
Succeeding Story:  The Dæmons (Three, Jo)

When the Doctor forcibly regenerated into Three, he was exiled to 20th Century Earth. While that made for some less expensive down-to-earth filming for about a series and a half, eventually he needed to get back out into the broadness of time and space to keep the show fresh and interesting. Thus begins the Time Lords’ co-option of the Doctor’s services for their own purposes.

Off the Doctor and Jo go, quite unwittingly, to just one more dystopian Earth-colony of the future where a mining company is prepared to raze the planet for its mineral wealth. Notably, despite having already had three adventures with Three, this is both the first time Jo has set foot inside the TARDIS and, resultantly, the first time she’s traveled with him away from her own planet or time. Unlike some Companions, she’s less than thrilled at first, though just like all of them, she’s thrown right into Yet Another Fine Mess.

This story is from Season 8 – the one in which every single story involved the Master – so the only surprise is that, barring passing mention by the Time Lords in episode 1, he doesn’t show up until episode 4 (of 6). When he does, though, it’s Delgado’s typical schmoov operator, complete with updated TARDIS defenses (and filing cabinets! what Time Lord would be without them?) and classic quotes (like “tried and true methods are best,” and “but of course that’s typical of the High Council of the Time Lords – know everything; do nothing”).

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Marathon in the Works

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Recently I've had several conversations in which it seems obvious that it's about time for me to indulge in another marathon viewing of as many of the pre-Hiatus stories as I can get my hands on (out on Region 1 DVD or available as a photonovel at the BBC website). I'd made a plan to do that in the 8 weeks leading up to Gally as a way to get myself refamiliarized with the older stories.

After taking a look at the playlist, I've realized there's no way I can do it in eight weeks; I need more like sixteen. Conveniently enough, if I start tomorrow, I'll have those sixteen weeks (plus a few days for The Movie) before Gally! So, if you'd like to play along, next week I'll be attempting to watch through the following:

  • An Unearthly Child
  • The Daleks
  • The Edge of Destruction
  • The Keys of Marinus
  • The Aztecs
  • The Dalek Invasion of Earth
  • The Rescue
  • The Romans
  • The Web Planet
  • The Crusade [photonovel]

I might skip over The Aztecs – or at least give it only a partial viewing – because it's one I've seen more than once. Regardless, this is going to be a tall order! Feel free to comment on your favorites/least favorites, general impressions of One and his Companions, and/or the idiocy of my plan.

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Conceptual Gumbo – Just Add Salt

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Review of The Talons of Weng-Chiang: SE (#91)

DVD Release Date:  11 Oct 11
Original Air Date:  26 Feb – 02 Apr 1977
Doctor/Companion:  Four, Leela
Stars:  Tom Baker, Louise Jameson
Preceding Story:  The Robots of Death (Four, Leela)
Succeeding Story:  Horror of Fang Rock (Four, Leela)

This release is unusual for me in that it involves a story I’d already watched (albeit only once). It was interesting to go through it again with not only much more experience of the Whoniverse but also a memory of both the storyline and my initial reactions. With a bit more perspective, I came away with a new appreciation for Talons and an understanding of the fondness so many Long Term Fans have for it.

For anyone new to the story, let me just throw out the one thing that really bothered me on first viewing: the main Chinese character (Li H’sen Chang) is played by a (Caucasian) British actor (John Bennett). That and the fact that the titular deity (who was, by the by, actually a god of culture and literature) was pronounced “weng chai-ang” – like a coffeehouse drink – rather than a more nearly correct “wen ch[ah]ng” – with an [ah] as in “father” – very much rubbed me the wrong way when I first saw Talons three or so years ago. This time, I was able to take it all with a grain of salt, and let me tell you – it was much more palatable this time.

The story is pretty much a love letter to Victorian-era literature. It has elements of Sherlock Holmes, Pygmalion (or My Fair Lady, if you prefer the musical version), Phantom of the Opera, and various Fu Manchu stories that fed into the stereotype of the Limehouse (Chinatown) area of Victorian London, not to mention a bit of Jack the Ripper. Taken as a nod to all these rolled into one, it’s quite charming.

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Like Night and Day

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Review of Day of the Daleks (#60)
DVD Release Date:  13 Sep 11
Original Air Date:  01 – 22 Jan 1972
Doctor/Companion:  Three, Jo Grant
Stars:  Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning
Preceding Story:  The Dæmons (Three, Jo)
Succeeding Story:  The Curse of Peladon (Three, Jo)

To start Three’s third season, the production team was looking for some sort of hook to draw in viewers. The resulting story became the first of Three’s encounters with the Daleks, who returned after a nearly five-year absence (about half the show’s run, at that point). The viewing public loved it (more than 10 million people watched), and yet it’s often had a bad rap since for its less-than-stellar execution. Enter the DVD era.

If ever there was an embodiment of a fan’s obsessive love for this show, it’s the Special Edition of Day of the Daleks. Aside from a plethora of good extras, there’s an entirely separate version of the story to watch, with updated effects and even new footage spliced seamlessly into the original material (SE). Unless you’re the type of person who really enjoys the ambience and historical context of bad production values, I really recommend starting with the SE (disk 2). However, if you don’t watch any of the original (disk 1), you’ll never appreciate just how much it has been improved (I recommend episodes 2 and 4 for comparison, or just episode 4, if you want to whittle it down to the bare minimum).

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A Viewer’s Purgatory

Review of Paradise Towers (#149)

DVD Release Date:  09 Aug 11
Original Air Date:  05 – 26 Oct 1987
Doctor/Companion:  Seven, Mel
Stars:  Sylvester McCoy, Bonnie Langford
Preceding Story:  Time and the Rani (Seven, Mel)
Succeeding Story:  Delta and the Bannermen (Seven, Mel)

While I wouldn’t call Paradise Towers “awful,” it certainly wasn’t a scintillating piece of work, either. It suffers from a strong story concept poorly realized. Not all of that is due to the special effects (though they certainly contribute), but one wonders what could have been if there had been a bigger budget.

In the manner of a disclaimer, I suppose I should start by saying that Mel is among my least favorite Companions. Therefore, anything that starts with the Doctor pandering to Mel’s desire to go for a swim (because he’d jettisoned the pool from the TARDIS – something she’s obviously regrown since) and includes dialog with even a passing reference to one of her typically tragic outfits (as if we hadn’t been trying really hard to ignore it) is unlikely to yield an unequivocal thumbs-up from me.

The pool serves as a plot device to bring our heroes to Paradise Towers (a supposedly utopian high-rise presumably located on Earth, somewhen post-21st Century), though it’s a pretty thin one. I mean, when the pool appears inaccessible, Mel is ready to abandon the plan as well as the whole damn planet (“You don’t happen to know another planet with a swimming pool, do you?”). What – there’s only one pool left on the entire Earth? Get real…

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Nu-View #5: Color Me Surprised

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The Mark of the Rani  (Story #140, 1985)
Viewed 09 Aug 2011

Doctor/Companion:   Six, Perpugilliam “Peri” Brown
Stars:  Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant
Preceding Story:  Vengeance on Varos (Six, Peri)
Succeeding Story:  The Two Doctors (Two, Six, Jaime, Peri)
Notable Aspects:

OK – I’ll admit it: I was really surprised by the reactions to Six. While jE was already familiar with him (in fact, he was the reason she stopped watching, back in the day – and despite not feeling well, I’m pretty sure that’s her real excuse for missing this time), neither of the other two had ever seen him before.  I carefully picked my favorite of his stories in order to cast him in the best possible light.  Who knew – it worked!

First impressions were mixed. The credits were declared more ’70s than ’80s (and Six’s smile garnered such adjectives as “creepy” and “psychedelic”), but the music was “totally ’80s!” Then came the requisite disgust with Six’s coat-of-many-colors, which for this story was closely followed by “what is she wearing?!” in reference to Peri. Finally, there was the general snarking about the supposedly American Companion (“gotta work on that accent, lady”), which actually continued through the whole show (“you’re so incapable!” “I don’t like her at all…”). So far, I was in familiar territory.

Then things turned weird.

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Misleading Title Goes Here

Review of The Sun Makers (#95)

DVD Release Date:  09 Aug 11
Original Air Date:  26 Nov – 17 Dec 1977
Doctor/Companion:  Four, Leela, K-9
Stars:  Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, John Leeson
Preceding Story:  Image of the Fendahl (Four, Leela)
Succeeding Story:  Underworld (Four, Leela, K-9)

Robert Holmes is widely regarded as one of the best writers in Who history, and he certainly contributed vastly to the franchise. In The Sun Makers, he takes a time of personal irritation and molds it into a weirdly engaging dystopian tale of excessive taxes and stagnating humanity. Having fled Old Earth, the human race now lives on distant Pluto, in constant daylight from its six artificial suns (the only mention of any “sun makers” we are ever to get).

It starts out wonderfully creepy with a Citizen apparently pleased to hear of his father’s death, and continues with lots of stereotypical tromping (not much running, really) through corridors from there. However, to my eye, it soon took a rather darker turn – something I feel was unintended, or at least reflects the change in times since its original broadcast. Things are quite violent on this future Pluto, as people threaten each other with all sorts of tortures (not just Leela, either, who seems actually to be on par with the locals for a change). Public torture and execution – viewable in person, for a small fee – also appear commonplace. Near the end of the story, there’s even a cheerful – not angry, mind you; cheerful – mob of revolutionaries who throw an official to his doom.

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