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: https://averylychee.neocities.org/doctor-who/#doctor2
because (while I haven't watched all of it) the animated version would be a really good watch
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]
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]
The Underwater Menace: finished
(see the site for a review: https://averylychee.neocities.org/doctor-who/ )
next up: The Moonbase
which is the second story about the Cybermen
Classic Doctor Who
I watched some clips of "Inferno", a 3rd doctor story, and.... hmm.
I thought Inferno was terrible when I last watched it, but these clips are exciting, and interesting - quite a bit more than some of the 2nd doctor eps I've recommended.
I see 3 options:
* inferno is not as bad as I thought, and I was just unncessarily harsh to it
* inferno is bad, and I need to be harsher on the older episodes
* inferno is bad, but the badness is not reflected in the clips
Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4]
this is a very interesting premise: there's a moonbase with a device for a gravitron. They use it to control Earth's weather - make it rain over crops, keep it clear over beaches.
But something is going wrong, and if they don't fix the fault, then the Earth's weather will become disastrously chaotic
Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4]
The Moonbase: rather good!
And the reconstructions don't harm it much – I'm thinking that I'm going to need my guide to make a distinction between a partial reconstruction and a full reconstruction - full reconstructions are very difficult to watch, and require a lot of dedication.
Classic Doctor Who :: (small) feedback request
ok, I've added the different indicators for partial reconstructions (as opposed to full reconstructions) - if you've got a spare minute, could you go take a look and give me some feedback?
Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4]
choosing a rating for The Faceless Ones is so difficult...
I really really want to give it a "Highly Recommended" rating, but it's partially a reconstruction. It's still incredibly tense and incredibly creepy, and really really really good, but it still.... isn't as good as it would have been.
Some of the missing stories I don't mind being missing - The Myth Makers, for example, is not very good.
But The Faceless Ones is such a good story and so so creepy...
Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4]
The next story: The Evil of the Daleks.
This story was supposed to be the last Dalek story ever – Terry Nation wanted to pitch a Dalek spinoff show to American TV statiosn, so this was written to get rid of them.
The daleks would return, of course, but not for 5 years. (prior to this point, there had been at least 1 dalek story every year).
Classic Doctor Who, timing
hmm, I'm either going to have to watch 688 episodes before October, or.... skip ahead for a bit and then jump back
Because I haven't seen the last season of the 12th Doctor (Peter Capaldi) and I want to see that before I watch this years season, featuring the 13th Doctor (Jodie Whittaker)
Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4]
The Evil of the Daleks is surprisingly slow-paced so far.
It's not monotonous, but it is slow.
The reconstruction team went to a lot more effort for this one, too - they've filmed new segments, they've created a cgi version of one of the sets, in order to animate daleks in it... it's quite impressive
Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 4]
I actually really liked The Evil of the Daleks, even though it's mostly missing.
I've updated my guide to have a review for this, and also to downgrade The Highlanders to a "maybe" – not because it's bad, but because it's not as good relative to the other episodes I gave a "watch" rating to in this season.
I'm somewhat worried that I've become a little gentler and forgiving on the episodes than I was in the last season, but maybe this season is just better.
☄ Classic Doctor Who ☄
====================
Want to watch Classic Doctor Who, but don't want to slog through the boring episodes?
Check out my guide!
https://averylychee.neocities.org/doctor-who/
Now with updated recommendations for the first 4 seasons! That's 169 episodes!
Classic Doctor Who
I think I figured out the reason why most of the early stories start with "The"
It's because, internally, all the scripts were named "Doctor Who and <story name>"
So even though "Tomb of the Cybermen" is a perfectly good title, it would look weird to have a script called "Doctor who and Tomb of the Cybermen", so they put a "The" at the start.
Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5]
The Abominable Snowmen was set in the Himalayas, and so was scheduled to be filmed on the Welsh mountain of Snowdon during a snowy period.
But the week before (and the week of) shooting, it didn't snow - it rained. So the outdoor shops are not as snowy as was desired, and the ground was muddy which made filming difficult
Classic Doctor Who, slight annoyance, fanfiction
The official novels/audio plays/comics often introduce their own characters, who go on adventures with the Doctor in these in-between times. It means the authors can write their own unique companions and have their own adventures. Fanfiction does this too, of course.
But in the classic series, the companions are always continuous
[cont]
Classic Doctor Who, slight annoyance, fanfiction
heck, I just looked at this timeline:
https://www.cabletv.com/blog/doctor-who-timeline/
Aside from the revived series doctors, only the 4th doctor has a gap that you could theoretically use to put your own companions in
Classic Doctor Who (meta)
One thing I worry about with my guide is that my ratings are different to other people's.
Doctor Who fans generally want me to put more things into the "watch" category, whereas people who haven't experienced much Doctor Who generally want me to put less...
(Although, there has been one instance where I put a story into "watch" originally, because of nostalgia, but a fan was like "uhh.... no? That's one of the worst stories" and they were right)
Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Abominable Snowmen]
This.… doesn't make sense?
The yeti are being controlled by The Great Intelligence, which has this really complicated plan:
1. Have the 5 items required to complete the plan.
2. Give one of them to the monestary for safekeeping
3. Set everything else up over centuries, until finally ready for the item from the monestary.
ok, makes sense so far? And they have someone at the monestary who is following their commands, so it should be easy
Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Abominable Snowmen]
wait hold on, I just remembered that there were 2 spheres:
the one that the great intelligence lost in step 4, and one that Jamie stole (unintentinally) at some point.
But the one that was stolen was left in the monastery, why not just get the monk who follows orders to bring it back too?
Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Abominable Snowmen]
I finished The Abominable Snowmen. Surprising no-one, my recommendation is "Don't Watch"
Next is The Ice Warriors.
Petty complaint: "Ice Warriors" and "Abominable Snowmen" are concepts that are too close together, mentally, and I keep having to take a moment to figure out which one I'm watching.
Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Ice Warriors]
ok, this is getting really obnoxious.
I'm all for not blindly trusting computers, but at one point the Doctor does some maths on some pieces of paper, and is offended that they would double-check his results with a computer.
That's exactly the situation the doctor SHOULD be ok with – because if there's a descrepancy, then we know that either the original maths was wrong, or the computer was wrong, and from there we can fix things.
Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Ice Warriors]
(Spoilers below)
Episode 3 cliffhanger:
The Ice Warriors are aiming a gun at Victoria
Ice Warrior 1: we are ready to fire
Episode 4 begins:
Ice Warrior 1: we are ready to fire
Ice Warrior 2: ... not yet.
Wow. What a great cliffhanger. Thanks. /sarcasm
Classic Doctor Who :: [an aside (re-rankings)]
I went back through the first 4 seasons, and choosing to re-rank a few of them:
The Reign of Terror :: Yes → Maybe
It's really not that good, and I'm unsure why I ranked it so highly in the first place
The Crusade :: Yes → Maybe
As I was scrolling through the list, I realised that I had forgotten this story even existed - any story that forgettable is not worth a "Yes" (even if it does have one of the best acted scenes from the early show)
Classic Doctor Who :: [an aside (re-rankings)]
I'm still thinking about The Keys of Marinus.
Because in the context of "all stories told"? It's kinda bad. Like.... quite bad.
But it's also the best example of the stories being told in Season 1, so if you said "I can only watch one story from this season", I'd say "The Keys of Marinus", regardless of its many flaws
Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Ice Warriors]
It's been a week since I watched any Doctor Who, and tbh taking a break was a good idea, if unintentional.
I both love and hate The Ice Warriors. I love it because it's well done, but I hate it because it's constant moralising is grating.
I gave it a "maybe" in my recommendations: https://averylychee.neocities.org/doctor-who/#season-5
Classic Doctor Who, slight annoyance, fanfiction
@lizardsquid seems like this is less of a problem with classic doctor who and more of a problem with jamie, specifically
Classic Doctor Who, slight annoyance, fanfiction
@00dani 2nd doctor has the simplest example, but it's a problem with the first as well:
* Ian, Barbara, and Susan all join on the first adventure
* Susan leaves
* Vicki joins
* Ian and Barbara leave; Steven joins
* Vicki leaves
* Katarina joins then dies; Sarah joins then dies
* Dodo joins
* Steven leaves
* Ben and Polly join; Dodo leaves
At all points there are companions
Classic Doctor Who, slight annoyance, fanfiction
@lizardsquid Is there that much of a problem with prefacing the thing with "I had to depart from canon in X way to make room for this to fit"? Aside from not wanting to?
Also, as I understand the stories are linear in how the doctors experience them (but not at all through time) but are they continuous? Is it not possible for the doctor to be faffing around while the companion(s) have some down time?
Classic Doctor Who, slight annoyance, fanfiction
@BatElite in the classic series, the companions couldn't leave the TARDIS without also leaving the Doctor forever - the doctor didn't have control of the destination, so could never go back to pick them up, even if they wanted to
Classic Doctor Who, slight annoyance, fanfiction
@BatElite but yeah, I could be like "this fanfiction isn't cannon", but that feels less fun
Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Ice Warriors]
@lizardsquid Symbols of big impersonal bureaucracy, which was on the increase in the post-War years of growth?
Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Ice Warriors]
@lizardsquid Or just anti-humanist in general - coldly calculating, associated with the kind of impersonal science that created the atomic bomb.
Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Ice Warriors]
Maybe simply "Sucking the life out of people who are interested in them." because non-nerds didn't understand what could be so fascinating about them. *shrugs*
Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Ice Warriors]
@CheshireEmber @lizardsquid I don't think computers as an interest was really in the public consciousness in 1967, though.
Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Ice Warriors]
Well, I just outed myself as non-(classic)-whovian, I guess.
I'd really profit from this thread, tbh.
Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Enemy of the World]
@lizardsquid
And partly in Australia iirc
@lizardsquid There’s been speculation that the Great Intelligence is a Lovecraftian Elder God (probably Nyarlathotep, given the name, but I can’t remember). If you want help suspending your disbelief, think of it as “it doesn’t make sense because you’re not supposed to be able to understand it.”
Of course, this doesn’t work when the plots get wacky *without* Elder God influence. By the ‘80s you’ll be in full MST3K mode.
Classic Doctor Who, slight annoyance, fanfiction
For the Second Doctor:
* Ben and Polly are companions from before
* Then, Jamie is introduced
* Then, Ben and Polly leave
* Then Victoria joins
* Then Victoria leaves
* Then Zoe joins
There's no space there for the Doctor to have a writer's own companions, because Jamie is always there!
The only time the 2nd doctor doesn't have Jamie as a companion is in the one story when Ben and Polly are the only companions