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.

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.

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?

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

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

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

I decided not to watch it today, and instead do something else for a bit

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

I was watching an episode, and I thought I found a plot hole, but then I realised that I had just gotten confused.

It's very strange that there are 2 cybermen stories in the same season, though!

Episode 1: "The hurricane is in the atlantic ocean"
Episode 2: "We've got to keep the hurricane in the pacific!"

h-how did they make this error?

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

aaAAAAAAA

holy heck that was a good twist

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.

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?

https://averylychee.neocities.org/doctor-who

Watching The Macra Terror

oooo, new titles!

oh yeah, I finished The Macra Terror. It was alright, but I wish the episodes still existed, instead of the reconstruction.

There's only 2 more stories left in Season 4, so I'm getting through this faster than I expected to!

The Faceless Ones includes new opening music, to go with the new opening titles.

Gosh, it's weird for these to change after 166 episodes of them being the same...

also, I just realised I'm 20% of the way through!

gosh!!

The Faceless Ones is really creepy so far...

oh jeez it's getting even creepier.... this is so good...

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...

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).

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)

wait, I don't have any way to watch the new season as it comes out, nevermind

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

I do like how all the early dalek stories are quite different from each other - they're not just repeating the same plot over and over again

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.

and that's the end of season 4!

time to make a new promo post

☄ 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!

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.

In The Tomb of the Cybermen, the Doctor claims to be 450 years old

I've uploaded my rating for Tomb of the Cyberman

it's the first Highly Recommended story in quite a while, and it.... really is very good

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

So far in my guide, I've used "blackface" and "yellowface" when actors have been dressed in those - but I'm considering replacing them with a term that's more generic.

Maybe "racial makeup"?

better idea: less generic, but more specific. Instead of

"This story contains an actor in yellowface", I can write
"This story contains a white actor in makeup to make them appear Asian"

I'd love to write fanfiction for classic doctor who.... except, I'd have to use the same companions.

For modern Doctors, there are periods of time where they are offscreen and have no companions (for example, after Rose slips into an alternate universe, the Tenth Doctor travels alone for an unspecified amount of time before finally meeting Martha).

[cont]

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]

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