✨ Classic Doctor Who ✨
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Want to watch Doctor Who from the very beginning, but don't want to slog through the boring episodes?

Check out my guide: averylychee.neocities.org/doct

Now updated with recommendations for all of Season 2!

Doctor Who 

Old thread was here: computerfairi.es/@lizardsquid/

I'll be continuing the thread from this post, just so if someone clicks on the thead and scrolls up, they'll see the link to the guide.

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

[ Galaxy 4 ]
this one is interesting - basically all of the footage is gone entirely, unlike several of the other missing stories which have some footage, or at least telesnaps. The Loose Cannons team spent a lot of time and effort recreating a bunch of things and using visual effects to pull in footage of characters from different stories, in order to recreate it

Doctor Who [Season 3], sexism 

The actor for Steven hated this story, because it had been originally written for the companions Ian and Barbara, and when it was rewritten for this season, Steven's lines were mostly barbara's.

He felt upset that his character had been "feminised".

Doctor Who [Season 3], sexism 

Peter Purves, the actor for steven: I didn't like that my character was overpowered by Maaga, a woman. He's supposed to be a man.

me: hmmm.... that sounds like a pretty terrible thing to say, but maybe it makes sense in context

*watches the episode*

maaga: *is a highly trained military commander, overpowers steven because she has a gun and 3 guards*

me: :thaenkin:

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

lets see if my source is recent enough to have the real version of episode 3, which was recovered in 2013

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

nope, it's the reconstruction

oh well

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

I found the real version on youtube, so I'm gonna watch both at once and see how it goes...

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

this is actually really fascinating...

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

it's interesting how good the reconstruction is, given how rediculously little they had to work with

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

the first 25 episodes of season 3 are missing....

jeez this is gonna be hard to get through

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

in season 3, there are 45 episodes.

28 of them are missing.

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

Mission to the Impossible.

I've never seen this one, and it's unique in that it doesn't include the Doctor or his companions at all

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

The problem with reconstructions: they require a lot more attention, otherwise you lose track of what's going on.

But they're also harder to pay attention to, because there's no motion, it's just telesnaps and sound

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

ah yes, the loose cannon opening sequences.... where they use literally every animated slideshow transition they can

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

todo tomorrow: figure out a more clear way of marking the reconstructions in my guide

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

The Myth Makers was a weird one - the story is a farce, the way they depict the trojans is a farce, the way they make Vicki fall in love with a random dude and run off with him is also a farce.

And yet it very clearly wasn't intended to be that. It's just garbage.

The third story to get a "Don't Watch" recommendation.

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

The Dalek's Master Plan

This one is sooooo looonnnnnggggg

it's 12 episodes....

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

also 9 of them are missing, so we've only got reconstructions

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

something that New Who does better than Classic Who: Cold Opens.

Classic episodes don't have them, and it feels.... wrong

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

oh no, the daleks are burning down the forest~

how will the Doctor escape thie one~

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

the answer: run into the dalek city, which is right next to the forest

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

so this story had a teaser episode earlier in the season - they cut away from the doctor and companions for a bit to show the daleks organising a meeting between a bunch of villans from across the universe.

Except between the teaser/cutaway and the actual episode, the actors for several of the villains in-explicably changed, so it's very confusing

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

one of the villains is a bunch of vines in a robe

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

I'm almost up to Katarina's death scene.

Not only is this the first time a companion of the doctor's dies, but it's also the first scene the actor recorded - the character was written and cast, but then they realised that they couldn't actually make her an interesting long term character, so they killed her off in her second story

Doctor Who [Season 3] 

holy frick that was way more intense than I expected it to be

Doctor Who :: [ Season 3 (1965-1966) ] 

The author of this story (Terry Nation) is one of the good authors.

But they also don't seem to know what the solar system is... they put a bunch of extra planets into it???

Doctor Who :: [ Season 3 (1965-1966) ] 

ah, we're up to the part where the author switched, because this story was so long they needed to get Dennis Spooner to write the second half

Doctor Who :: [ Season 3 (1965-1966) ] 

oh, I thought so!

one of the actors in the first part came back a few years later to play Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, one of the most famous characters from the classic series

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 3] 

I'm watching the christmas episode now...

what utter garbage

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 3] 

so much yelling...

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 3] 

hmm.... assuming the rest of The Dalek's Master Plan is good, I'm going to have to do a partial recommendation for this one..

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 3] 

as an aside: someone suggested that editing down the episodes would make people more likely to watch them. I'm sure that's true, but it's also a lot of work...

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 3] 

I'm starting to regret saying "maybe" for The Time Meddler - it's not a very exciting story, but it is very memorable.

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 3], racism 

*realises that the villain in this story is wearing dark makeup and some fake folds to make him look south east asian*

hmm....

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 3], racism 

looks like I really do need to add a content warnings section

Follow

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 3] 

episode 11 of The Dalek's Master Plan is interesting - the doctor goes missing right at the start, and isn't seen for the rest of the episode

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 3] 

I've updated the site to have a bunch of extra navigation buttons, which aren't super useful right now, but will be very useful when there are 38 seasons on the page

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 3] 

here's the link again, in case you want to see:

averylychee.neocities.org/doct

(I also rewrote the introduction a bit)

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 3] 

The War Machines is even better than I remembered it being.

(Although it is a bit weird that they write out Dodo, one of the Doctors companions, by hypnotising her and then just saying "she went to the country")

✨ Classic Doctor Who ✨
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Want to watch Classic Doctor Who, but don't want to slog through the boring episodes?

Check out my guide: averylychee.neocities.org/doct

Now with:
✨ updated recommendations for all of Seasons 1-3
✨ a much better introduction
✨ useful navigation buttons
✨ indicators of major plot changes

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4] 

The first story of season 4 is so awful that it took me a week to build up the energy to watch it.

It's hard to even explain how it's bad, it's just... boring and predictable and nothing happens, and it has the same problem that almost all of the historical stories do: there's no energy. No-one seems to care all that much.

And it's made even worse by being a reconstruction, so you've only got stills of the actor's faces.

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4] 

I'm so proud of myself for adding the navigation buttons to the webpage, tbh... it makes it a lot nicer, and I did a surprisingly good job designing them

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4] 

Most of the titles of these stories start with "The"

In the first 4 seasons, there are 36 stories. Only 4 of them don't start with "The"

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4] 

I'm watching "The Tenth Planet" (the last story starring the first doctor), and the doctor just... collapses unconcious for no reason at the start of episode 3

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4] 

that was.... a much more intense regeneration scene than I was expecting

Classic Doctor Who :: Retrospective on the First Doctor 

Despite many mediocre stories, the first doctor is still one of my favourites. His charm, his wit, his lovely laugh (youtube.com/watch?v=NPlI1WpAwp)... and his indescribable anger at human suffering.

He's a grandfather, who cares deeply about the world and those around him. None of the other doctors have that grandfather-ness to them, and it's part of what made the first doctor so special.

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4] 

I knew something felt weird when watching Victory of the Daleks (an 11th Doctor story) - it's a story that's already been told, in the first 2nd Doctor Story (The Power of the Daleks)

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4] 

I really wish the footage for Power of the Daleks still existed... the reconstruction is really hard to watch.

I was planning on watching the animated version of this story afterwards, but I think I'm going to be too drained to watch this same story over again, so maybe I'll try watching it after a long break.

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4] 

nearly 2 weeks after starting, I finally got through The Power of the Daleks.

It's not a bad story, but it's just.... hard to watch something that's missing so much footage.

In my guide I gave it a maybe: averylychee.neocities.org/doct

because (while I haven't watched all of it) the animated version would be a really good watch

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4] 

I'm noticing that, in general, the stories that are completely missing are usually not worth watching at all

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4] 

And now: The Highlanders, which is also completely missing.

Fun Trivia: The Highlanders is the last* of the "historical" stories – the show was originally conceived as having a mixture of historical stories (to teach kids history) and sci fi stories. But the historical stories were hated by the production team, and rarely were as engaging as the sci-fi stories, so they were abandoned - all subsequent stories set in the past also contained a sci-fi element.

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4] 

footnote: while not intended to be an educational story, one of the 5th doctor stories was set in the past and contained no sci-fi element.

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4], question about possible transphobia 

So there's a section in this story where the doctor dresses up as an old woman to get passed some guards. Should I make a note of this in my reccomendation, or should I just ignore it?

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4] 

The highlanders was pretty good!

It's definitely one of the stories that I wish hadn't been destroyed, because even though it's a historical story, it's quite entertaining.

Next: The Underwater Menace.

It took me a while to track down a copy of Episode 2, which was thought to be destroyed until 2011.

Unfortunately, my source for all the other episodes seems to come from the mid 2000s, so it didn't include this episode

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4] 

"They're going to carry out the fish operation on her!"

Show newer

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4] | spoiler 

@lizardsquid I think that last sentence is probably a bit too spoilery outside of the major plot change thing.

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4] | spoiler 

@BatElite except.... if you scroll down 1 line you see that we've moved on to the next doctor, so it's not that much of a spoiler

I'll rephrase that, though....

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4], question about possible transphobia 

@lizardsquid I'd make a note of it. I don't know that it's "transphobia" specifically, but it's definitely a "look cross-dressing is funny haha especially when a ~man~ is wearing a ~dress~ lol" moment, which is worth TWing for, I think. :/

re: Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4], question about possible transphobia 

@lizardsquid
I would note it, and note that Ben (I think) teases him about it. It's definitely "man crossdresses for laughs," and that's a problem, but there's a larger discussion to be had here about this trope in British comedy, and in that context it's fairly tame because iirc the Doctor is genuinely trying to pass for disguise purposes.

re: Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4] 

@lizardsquid
I wish I could see this one so bad

re: Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4] 

@lizardsquid
There are a few in seasons 5 and 6 that you need to watch. Like The Ice Warriors and the ones with Lethbridge-Stewart (wasn't a brigadier yet).

re: Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4] 

@DialMforMara The Ice Warriors isn't missing ALL of it's episodes, though - I just mean the stories with no suriving episodes

re: Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4] 

@lizardsquid
Many that are missing 5 out of 6 are worth it.

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