Menu Close

Tag: Regeneration

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.

Read more →

Retro-View #12: Melancholy Moment

Logopolis (Story #115, 1981)
Viewed 03 Jun 2013

Doctor/Companion: Four, Adric, Nyssa, Tegan Jovanka
Stars: Tom Baker, Matthew Waterhouse, Sarah Sutton, Janet Fielding
Preceding Story: The Keeper of Traken (Four, Adric, Nyssa)
Succeeding Story: Castrovalva (Five, Adric, Nyssa, Tegan)

It seems to me that by the time Logopolis rolled around, Tom Baker was more than ready to leave his role as the Doctor. He just seemed tired, pensive, and like he simply wasn’t having very much fun any more. Luckily, it fits well with the story, and doesn’t translate into any sort of loss of quality.

G is immediately intrigued by the way the police box and (Master’s) TARDIS merge, and in on alert when Tegan and Auntie Vanessa pull up next to it with their flat. “Ooh dear. And they’re by the box.” Then when the Doctor’s TARDIS turns them all into dimensionally transcendental matryoshka dolls, she catches onto the danger right away. “This is serious. It’s like he’s ingested poison by materializing that guy in there.” She proceeds to make an analogy with holding mirrors up to each other to make an infinite regression, well before the possibility is mentioned on screen. G’s all over it.

The Watcher has her fooled, though. She reads it as all first-time viewers are meant to: a slightly creepy threat. I can’t help but think of it as the precursor to Ten’s departure, though in this case it’s only the Doctor, rather than the whole audience as well, who anticipates what’s to come. We both enjoy this particular conceit, though. When the Doctor tells Adric that “nothing like this has ever happened before,” G declares that “that’s the fun part.”

Read more →

Retro-View #7: Here We Go Again

7 Comments

Robot (Story #75, 1974-75)
Viewed 05 Nov 2012

Doctor/Companion: Four, Sarah Jane Smith, the Brigadier, Harry Sullivan
Stars: Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen, Nicholas Courtney, Ian Marter
Preceding Story: Planet of the Spiders (Three, Sarah Jane)
Succeeding Story: The Arc in Space (Four, Sarah Jane, Harry)

We’ve finally made it up to the era G saw bits of in college. “Yep. I remember him” is her first comment as Robot begins. It’s wonderful to see this post-regeneration transition period again through the eyes of someone who’s never seen it before. Granted, it’s only been about five years since I first saw it myself, but evidence suggests I’ve turned into a bit of a ming-mong since then.

So I take great joy in her delight over things like the Doctor’s erratic behavior, his mention of “the definite article,” his first sight of himself in a mirror, and the way he chooses his outfit. It is, perhaps, the main reason to recommend this particular serial. Not, of course, that G doesn’t enjoy it thoroughly while still pointing out the obvious and/or silly bits.

To wit, she realizes immediately when our intrepid Companion (Sarah Jane always did have a bit more gumption than sense of self-preservation) ends up at Think Tank that, “whatever it is is going to fall in love with Sarah.” She wasn’t taken in by the off-screen tinkering with K1’s inhibitor, either: “A little WD-40, and we’re on track to kill!” As Part Two progresses, she is particularly enamored of the way Sarah Jane is so proactive (she loves the Brig’s call to action, “or shall we leave it all to Miss Smith?”), and she believes she’s got it sussed when Kettlewell (whose hair is truly impressive) goes to answer a knock at the door: “Uh oh. It’ll be the silver dude. It’ll be like killing dad.”

Read more →

Retro-View #6: That’s a Wrap

Planet of the Spiders (Story #74, 1974)
Viewed 26 Oct, 01 Nov 2012

Doctor/Companion: Three, Sarah Jane Smith, the Brigadier
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Elisabeth Sladen, Nicholas Courtney
Preceding Story: The Monster of Peladon (Three, Sarah Jane)
Succeeding Story: Robot (Four, Sarah Jane, the Brigadier)

Our first session started out a bit rough. G couldn’t commit to sit down straight through because she needed to pop home briefly to give her dog B some meds at a particular time, and I couldn’t go too late because I needed to vacate the premises at a later particular time. However, we started early enough that we figured a pause after Part 1 for dog-doping would still give us time to finish in one sitting.

How wrong we were.

Poor G got home and discovered B had eaten all the meds in the half hour since she’d left. Luckily, they were of the dietary supplement kind rather than the deadly overdose kind, but we spent the next hour watching Who with a kind of nervous concern at the backs of our minds as we waited for the vet to return her call. It was a weird day.

Things started out well for the Doctor, though. G recognized the om mani padme hum chant, and figured using it as the basis for “black magic” would not go over well with Buddhists. Can’t say that I disagree, but I suppose at the time it seemed as exotic as bubble wrap, so in that sense I can’t get too uptight about it.

Read more →

Retro-View #4: A New Leading Man

4 Comments

Spearhead from Space (Story #51, 1970)
Viewed 10 Oct 2012

Doctor/Companion: Three, Dr. Elizabeth “Liz” Shaw, the Brigadier
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Caroline John, Nicholas Courtney
Preceding Story: The War Games (Two, Jamie, Zoë)
Succeeding Story: Doctor Who and the Silurians (Three, Liz, the Brigadier)
Notable Aspects:

  • Three’s first story

Now this was not a reaction I’d anticipated – G is a shipper! She’s convinced that Three fancies Liz. I suppose she might have a point. She’s not far off base when, after the Doctor wiggles his eyebrows at Liz and tells her “That’s Delphon for ‘how do you do?’,” she says, “It’s also wolf for ‘what a babe.'”

Of course, she appears to fancy Three herself (have I mentioned that she’s about a decade older than Pertwee was when these were filmed?). The shower scene prompts her to comment that Three’s is “not a bad body.” By the end of Part 3, G’s praise is effusive: “This is a good one. I just like the new guy a lot. I’m in love.” Perhaps, then, there’s a bit of projection at work in her Three/Liz ship.

She loves the switch to color, and comments on the updated music, too. (Not sure how updated it can be, since Dudley Simpson was also responsible for The War Games – though admittedly there was hardly any incidental music in that particular serial.) The humorous bent of the Doctor-based portions of this adventure are right up G’s alley, as well. Three’s first view of his own face, Liz’s take-no-prisoners attitude toward the Brigadier (Brigadier: Am I interrupting? / Liz: Yes.), the way the Doctor calmly appropriates first an outfit and then a car – all of these result in the gleeful noises I so love to hear. “This is very Monty Python-ish,” she declares as the Part 1 credits roll.

Read more →

Retro-View #3: The Games Are Afoot

11 Comments

The War Games (Story #50, 1969)
Viewed 25 Sep, 04 Oct 2012

Doctor/Companion: Two, Jamie, Zoë
Stars: Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines, Wendy Padbury
Preceding Story: The Space Pirates (Two, Jamie, Zoë)
Succeeding Story: Spearhead from Space (Three, Liz Shaw)
Notable Aspects:

  • Two’s final story
  • First mention of the Time Lords (by name)
  • First appearance of the Doctor’s home planet

It is an utter joy to watch Who with G. She’s an ideal audience for indoctrination from the beginning, as she comes into it willingly and with love and appreciation for television of the ’60s anyway. You can always count on her to giggle with absolute glee at the poor stage fighting, Two’s gurning, or the long-since-outdated science fiction props.

On the other hand, she’ll also ask the kinds of questions I imagine the audience at the time would have asked, and is often completely quiet because she’s just soaking it all in, getting involved in the plot. Either that, or she’s exclaiming about something being revealed on screen, “uh-oh”ing at all the right moments or gushing about the “wonderful” sets. I can just imagine if those responsible for creating this story were on hand to observe her they’d be grinning ear to ear the whole time.

For my part, I had a hard time not interjecting things left and right (“Look! The sonic screwdriver is being used as an actual screwdriver!” “He just said his name was Doctor John Smith!” “He just mentioned the Time Lords for the first time ever!” “It’s Philip Madoc! Isn’t he brilliant in this role?”). It was worth it, though, to get her unadulterated reactions (e.g., “I like the War Lord. He’s kind of cute.”).

Read more →

Necessity Is the Mother of Reinvention

4 Comments

Review of Spearhead from Space: SE (#51)
DVD Release Date: 14 Aug 12
Original Air Date: 03 – 24 Jan 1970
Doctor/Companion: Three, Dr. Elizabeth “Liz” Shaw
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Caroline John
Preceding Story: The War Games (Two, Jamie, Zoë)
Succeeding Story: Doctor Who and the Silurians (Three, Liz)

When Pat Troughton left Doctor Who, the show was kind of in trouble. Ratings had fallen, and the BBC wasn’t sure it wanted to put any more into something that had such a lackluster performance. For various reasons, it continued nonetheless, but by necessity – both due to casting changes and other production pressures – it did so as quite a different program.

As a result, there are a lot of amazing firsts in this story. We get our first taste of a new Doctor, a new Companion, a new credits sequence, a new “monster” and a new era of television: color. Sitting through it again, I couldn’t help but draw parallels to multiple later stories, primarily Terror of the Autons and Rose, thanks to those pesky Nestene-controlled Autons, though the dual-hearted x-ray (another first – the mention of a Time Lord’s now-famous binary vascular system) had me flashing to The Movie for a moment.

Its opening episode is a lovely way to bring UNIT back into the mix – where it would stay, to one degree or another, throughout Three’s time in the TARDIS and beyond. I can’t help but smile at the Brigadier’s reaction to the news that an abandoned police box has been found in the middle of a field, or at the exchange between the Brigadier and the Doctor as both realize how much his face has changed.

Read more →

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.

Read more →

A Regeneration for the Ages

8 Comments

Review of The Caves of Androzani: SE (Story #135, 1984)
DVD Release Date:  14 Feb 12
Original Air Date:  08 – 16 Mar 1984
Doctor/Companion:  Five, Perpugilliam “Peri” Brown
Stars:  Peter Davison, Nicola Bryant
Preceding Story:  Planet of Fire (Five, Turlough, Peri)
Succeeding Story:  The Twin Dilemma (Six, Peri)

There are plenty of Long Term Fans out there (and polls, no doubt) that will tell you that The Caves of Androzani is The Best Doctor Who Story of All Time. I’d heard that about Caves ever since I started immersing myself in Who, and was really eager to get to it that first time, some three-and-a-half years ago. I have to admit I was underwhelmed.

Don’t get me wrong; I liked it well enough. I just didn’t think it was “all that.” Recently, I was discussing it with an Internet friend who is a Long Term Fan. I eventually decided that, in part, it was because I first saw it while I was still largely unfamiliar with the pre-Hiatus canon. Having now re-watched it both during my pre-Gallifrey One Marathon and for review of the Special Edition DVD release here, I have to conclude that most of it is more likely to be a difference in the Long Term Fan v. neowhovian perspectives.

There are unarguably some brilliant facets. The regeneration – more correctly, the series of events that lead up to the regeneration – is the most poignant, selfless, Doctor-y one ever. I am in complete agreement with those who cite it as The Best Regeneration of All Time. If for nothing else than being able to see the Doctor completely swept along with events out of his control and paying the ultimate price in order to pull it out for his friend at the last moment, you should definitely go watch this one. But I’d be lying if I told you I thought there were none finer.

Read more →

Pearls Before Time

Review of Time and the Rani (#145)

DVD Release Date:  14 Jun 11
Original Air Date:  07 – 28 Sep 1987
Doctor/Companion:  Seven, Melanie Bush
Stars:  Sylvester McCoy, Bonnie Langford
Preceding Story:  The Ultimate Foe (Trial of a Timelord) (Six, Mel)
Succeeding Story:  Paradise Towers (Seven, Mel)

It was with mixed trepidation and excitement that I awaited the release of this particular title. As a regeneration story, it ranked high in my want-to-see list, but knowing the history behind this particular change of Doctors (Colin Baker, who played Six, was canned – the scapegoat for falling ratings; unsurprisingly, he was none too keen to return to do a regeneration scene), I was wary of the event itself. Sadly, this is the one instance in which a YouTube viewing does not detract from the in-context regeneration. We get no more explanation than the TARDIS hurtling through space, with Companion Mel and the Doctor both unconscious on the floor of the control room. Upon landing, the Doctor is rolled over by a Tetrap minion, triggering the regeneration process. Even the magic of television can’t hide the fact that Six is just Seven in a bad wig and old costume. In that sense, this story starts out extremely disappointingly.

The rest of it, though, is surprisingly entertaining. I say “surprisingly” because, knowing ahead of time that the Rani (one of my all-time favorite foils for the Doctor) would be impersonating Mel, I was ready to cringe. However, even those sections came across relatively well. They were saved, of course, by the brilliance of Kate O’Mara (the Rani) and the perfect tone she kept while being simultaneously ingratiating and condescending (the unintentionally one-sided snarking between the Rani and the Doctor is great fun). Once she got out of Mel’s atrocious outfit (and the equally atrocious ginger wig), I was able to enjoy her performance fully.

Read more →