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Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5] 

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

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5] 

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

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, racism, question 

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"?

Classic Doctor Who, racism, question 

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"

Classic Doctor Who, slight annoyance, fanfiction 

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]

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 

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

Classic Doctor Who, slight annoyance, fanfiction 

anyway I want to write fanfiction with The Doctor and my own companions, but there's no way for that to fit into cannon

Classic Doctor Who, slight annoyance, fanfiction 

heck, I just looked at this timeline:
cabletv.com/blog/doctor-who-ti

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 :: [Season 5 → The Abominable Snowmen] 

I am not enjoying The Abominable Snowmen very much, tbh

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] 

4. Intentionally send a yeti towards the monestary for no reason, causing you to lose one of the required items.
5. Send more yetis later to get it back
6. THEN send the person at the monestary with the final item.

What???

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] 

There are quite a few early Doctor Who stories that are anti-computer, and I'm not entirely sure where that sentiment comes from

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 (Season 1)] 

hmm, thinking about The Reign of Terror again.... maybe I should downgrade it from "Watch" to "Maybe"

It wasn't bad, I'm just not sure that people would enjoy it enough to keep watching through it

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)] 

The Gunfighters :: Yes → Maybe
I ranked this higher because I had fond memories, but they didn'thold up to reality

The Savages :: Yes → Maybe
While it was an entertaining watch, it also positioned the Doctor as inherently more "moral"

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: averylychee.neocities.org/doct

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Enemy of the World] 

Next up is The Enemy of the World.

I'm somewhat excited to see if this is any good, because this is a story that was found in 2013, *after* the last time I watched Doctor Who.

Also, it's set in 2018
o::

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Enemy of the World] 

Patrick Troughton is an incredible actor... Not only is he convincingly playing 2 different characters, he's also playing those characters imitating each other

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Enemy of the World] 

These episodes have some very weirdly timed cuts.... but they also have much better editing than usual for doctor who (there's almost no dead air)

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Enemy of the World] 

holy gosh that was actually really good.

I was expecting to hate it, because I heard someone else say they were disappointed with it and didn't think it was that great.

But....??? I don't know why they thought that???

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Enemy of the World] 

I watched that final scene several times over. It's.... so good...

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Web of Fear] 

They brought the yeti back for this story, which at first I was dubious about, but I'm liking it so far.

It's set in the London Underground, after the yeti menace has forced london to be evacutated. I love apocalyptic stuff that's centred around a train network – Metro 2033, Ghost Lines...

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Web of Fear] 

The cliffhanger at the end of episode 1 could have been better, if they just cut the episode 3 seconds earlier:

The doctor is nearing some explosives, when someone presses the button to detonate.
They could have cut here, but they didn't – they cut after the explosives fail to go off properly and the Doctor is mearly knocked aside.

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Web of Fear] 

The Web of Fear is only missing one episode.

And it just happens to be the first episode to feature Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart (later Brigadier), one of the most beloved characters from the classic series.

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Web of Fear] 

they're using one of the cyberman themes for the yeti

nooooooo

D::

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → The Web of Fear] 

the web of fear turned out to be pretty good!

next up: ...

wait, I don't actually know what's next, that's a first

Classic Doctor Who :: [Season 5 → Fury from the Deep] 

Fury from the Deep

I don't know anything about this one!
I do appreciate that it doesn't start with "the", though

Classic Doctor Who :: [missing episodes musing] 

Something I've noticed is this: when a doctor who story is missing all but 1 episode, the surviving episode is often the most boring one.

The evil of the Daleks only has episode 2 remaining, which is mostly faffing about with a side character, and only features the Daleks in the last few seconds.

Until 2013, only one episode of The enemy of the world survived, and that was the episode with a bunch of unnecessary filler

Classic Doctor Who :: [missing episodes musing] 

@lizardsquid it’s p sad that the old episodes are gone imo?
I watched the v old DW on tv and I kinda wish they’d rerun some of it :0

Hmm, perhaps it’s because the interesting ep was played more and wore out faster? I’ll admit I’m not familiar with the medium used to store v old tv shows

Classic Doctor Who :: [missing episodes musing] 

@Doggo the episodes are missing because they were intentionally destroyed, but a few of them have been recovered from behind bookshelves and from broadcasters outside the UK

Classic Doctor Who :: [missing episodes musing] 

@lizardsquid oooh, that’s like weird. Why were they distroyes if it’s ok to ask?

Like. The concept of destroying old videos like that is bizzar to me. Unless it’s just random vandalism not something purposefully tagated

Follow

Classic Doctor Who :: [missing episodes musing] 

@Doggo so the cameras at the time recorded onto tape, rather than film.

And tape is super expensive.... but you CAN erase a tape, and then record something else instead.

When Doctor Who started, pre-recorded TV was a really new idea – almost every single broadcast before then was done completely live, so the idea of re-runs didn't exist.

(continued...)

Classic Doctor Who :: [missing episodes] 

@Doggo Doctor Who tapes were only used twice:
1) for the BBC broadcast
2) to be transferred onto film for selling internationally.

After that, they were marked as "safe to erase", so they could use them for other shows.

So we still had film copies of the episodes… But the film storage areas had very very little space, and since archiving of programs was not yet a thing, a lot of film was destroyed to make space for newer (and more profitable) shows.

Classic Doctor Who :: [missing episodes] 

@Doggo so we ended up with 2 departments: the tape department, which didn't want to keep anything (for money reasons), and the film department, which didn't want to keep anything (for storage reasons)

And no obligation for archival existed at the BBC (until 1978)

Classic Doctor Who :: [missing episodes] 

@lizardsquid ahh! Thankyou for explaining, I really appreacte it and that was facinating to know abt how old shows were stored/recorded :D

I feel I should say more given how detailed you were on this subject but I’ve drawn a blank other then *projected vibes of thanks and interest*

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