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☄ Classic Doctor Who ☄
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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 the first 5 seasons! That's 209 episodes!

Classic Doctor Who :: [ meta ] 

"How long did it take you to watch each season so far?"

Season 1 — 17 days
Season 2 — 18 days
Season 3 — 29 days
Season 4 — 39 days
Season 5 — 35 days

Seasons 3, 4, and 5 were hit the worst by the missing episodes, which is why they took so much longer to watch (the reconstructions truly are a slog, and I honestly can't recommend very many of them).

Classic Doctor Who :: [ meta ] 

In the next season, only 2 of the 7 stories are missing episodes, so I should get through it faster.

And the seasons after that?

Well, they stopped making ~43 episodes a season, and reduced it down to ~25

Additionally, from Season 7 onwards, there are no more missing episodes.

So these timings will most likely get shorter

Classic Doctor Who :: [ Season 6 ] 

Currently watching The Dominators, the first story of Season 6

I loved it as a child, but now I'm rewatching it and it's boring. The only good thing about it is the Quarks:

Classic Doctor Who :: [ Season 6 ] 

Gods, the people on this planet are so intolerable – their answer to everything is to wait.

They're intended as a parody of Hippies - they're peaceful, but completely useless.

And it just makes the entire story frustrating

Classic Doctor Who :: [ Season 6 ] 

"Not to worry, the planet is safe. There's just going to be a localised volcanic erruption on the island."

"Aye, maybe so, but we happen to be ON the island"

Classic Doctor Who :: [ Season 6 ] 

The Dominators gets a "maybe" from me – it's not awful, but also it's not great.

A tangent: The Dominators is better than The Keys of Marinus, which I gave a "Highly Recommended" rating. I consider "Highly Recommended" to answer the question "if you only watch 1 story from this season, which should you watch?", rather than say which story is the best.

Next up: The Mind Robber, which is a story I know I've seen but I remember nothing about it.

Classic Doctor Who :: [ Season 6 ] 

In the second episode of the Mind Robbers, they had to add a scene at the last minute – the actor for Jamie was ill, and so they replaced him with a different actor. But they needed to explain why his face changed between episodes.

Luckily, the story is already set in a weird hallucinatory reality, so it's relatively easy to explain.

Classic Doctor Who :: [ Season 6 ] 

Aside: I've stopped putting the story name in the CW, because the Content Warning was getting too long. If this site was structured more like Tumblr, where the posts are rather wide, then I'd definitely make the post title the full thing, but this UI isn't wide enough

Classic Doctor Who :: [ Season 6 ] 

"yes, we saw 2 women walk into the building - one fair, one dark"

heck, you wouldn't hear that nowadays – people would think you're describing their skin colour!

Classic Doctor Who :: [ Season 6 ] 

The villain in The Invasion has a huge moving wall that hides a secret machine, and the wall takes several seconds to open or close. I'm surprised he hasn't been caught with it open

Classic Doctor Who :: [ Season 6 ] 

Did you know: they didn't copy the footage from the previous week's cliffhanger scene for the start of the next episode. They re-performed the scene, on a new tape.

Earlier on, this was very obvious, but it's been much less obvious with the last 2 seasons!

Classic Doctor Who :: [ Season 6 ] 

Interesting tidbit I just read about The Invasion (which I've nearly finished watching now) – this was the last story to feature the cybermen until 1975 (7 years later)

Classic Doctor Who :: [ Season 6 ] 

Both The Invasion and The Seeds of Death have women being proactive – it's interesting to see the progress between 1963 (where the women were mostly screaming and running away) and 1969.

Classic Doctor Who :: [ Season 6 ] 

I'm not enjoying this season as much as I hoped I would...

If I had skipped the reconstructions, I probably would be enjoying it more, but now? It's starting to feel formulaic.

Interestingly, this matches opinion of the time – none of this season is particulary bad, it's just starting to feel same-y

Classic Doctor Who :: [ Season 6 ] 

I'm watching The Space Pirates.

It's the only story of Season 6 that's mostly a reconstruction, and gods... I had forgotten how miserable it is to watch these.

Classic Doctor Who :: [ Season 6 ] 

The Space Pirates is one of the worst combinations:

* a relatively slow paced story
* full of clichés
* that is mostly missing, so you have to watch it as still images

Classic Doctor Who :: [ Season 6 ] 

The last episode was better than the others, but still... not worth watching.

On to the last story of the 6th season (and of the 2nd Doctor): The War Games

💫 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 recommendations for all the first and second doctor stories!

Doctor Who | Season 7 

I'm 3 stories in to season 7, and while I really like Petwee's Doctor, and the Brigadier, and liz shaw, and the concepts behind the stories...

they're really way too long and slow paced.

Spearhead from Space was great, but both The Silurians and The Ambassadors of Death are 7 episode stories that really should only be 4 episodes.

It took until Season 12 for them to realise that 4 episode stories worked much better

Doctor Who | Season 7 

Also: I don't understand why the stories are 7 episodes instead of 6.

A 6 episode format would aleviate at least some of the pacing problems

Doctor Who | Season 7 

a 4 episode story is 1.5 hours total, which is a reasonable amount.

A 6 episode story is 2 hours and 24 minutes, so it's already longer than a feature film.

A 7 episode story is nearly 3 hours long.

Doctor Who | Season 7 

The Ambassador's of Death is really a good example of why you shouldn't make a story that long – for example, there's a whole plotline where, after Liz is captured, she attempts an escape, only to be caught and re-captured just before she can get back to the Doctor.

And the story spends at least 5 minutes on these scenes, which do not progress the story at all – the situation at the end of the scenes is exactly the same as what it was at the start.

Doctor Who | Season 7 

I finished Season 7!

Inferno was much better than I remember it being, but still felt one episode too long.
I really enjoyed the parallel universe stuff this time around.

Thankfully: no stories after Inferno are this long (unless you count trial of a timelord as 1 story instead of 4)

We're now up to the danger zone: the last time I tried to watch through the classic series, this is where I stopped.

Doctor Who | Season 7 

(I won't make a big announcement post this time, since it only took me 2 weeks to get through this season)

Doctor Who | Erasure 

In the early seasons, the theme music (and much of the stock incidental music) was arranged by Delia Derbyshire.

But because Ron Grainer composed the main melody, she was not allowed to get co-writer credit "just" for coming up with the iconic sounds.

So she remained uncredited for her work on the theme until the 50th Anniversary episode.

Doctor Who | Season 8 

This season introduces The Master.

And heck, I had forgotten how sinister Roger Delgado's portrayal of him was...

Doctor Who | Season 8 

I've now watched a third of the episodes!

Doctor Who | Season 8 

There's so much more violence in the classic stories – in one scene from "The Mind of Evil", UNIT attacks a castle prison that's been taken over by convicted criminals.

There are 15 onscreen deaths from the firefight, and it's implied that there are more off screen.

You'd be hard pressed to find a scene in the modern series that contains more than 5 deaths*.

*that aren't like... something explodes and kills everyone

Doctor Who | Season 8 

The Brigadier: *just manages to save the doctor*
The Doctor: Thank you, Brigadier... but do you think for once in your life you could manage to arrive BEFORE the nick of time?!

Doctor Who | Season 8 

I'm now up to The Claws of Axos, which is the last classic doctor who serial I watched *before* doing this whole watch-through thing.

I remember it being very good!

Doctor Who | Season 8 

Speaking of memory: this is the extent of my recent memory.

With the exception of a few stories, I haven't seen any of the remaining classic episodes since 2004, so my memories go from being "remembers most of what happens" to "has vague recollections of a few frames"

Doctor Who | Season 8 

Both Terror of the Autons and The Claws of Axos have been given a Highly Recommended rating. It's been quite some time since there have been 2 Highly Recommended stories in one season

Doctor Who Guide 

I've decided to retroactively change the rating for The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

It was "Maybe", and now it's "Watch"

Mostly because: I still remember it strongly, several months later. So even though it's a bit too slow, it's worth watching

Doctor Who | Season 8 

I'm partway through episode 2 of The Colony in Space, and I'm worried this is going to end up being really racist...

Doctor Who | Season 8 

.... it starts getting super weird in episode 4

Doctor Who | Season 8 

I can't tell whether the Master being in this story makes it better or worse

Doctor Who | Season 8 

And sadly, The Colony in Space breaks Season 8's streak of recommended stories.

It's meandering and not that interesting, and would have been much better if they had removed the plotline about the Master and cut it down to 4 episodes (instead of 6)

Doctor Who | Season 8 

it feels weird that I'm simultaneously 20.27% of the way through and 35.05% of the way through the series

Classic Doctor Who, money 

gosh hecking darnit.

I saw the blu ray special edition of Season 12 available at a local store for $80, and thought that was a bit steep.

But now I find out that they're selling for over £250 in the UK, and my local store has just run out of stock ::<

Classic Doctor Who | Season 8 

I just finished watching The Daemons. It was good!

And that concludes Season 8!

Wooo!

💫 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 recommendations for the first 8 seasons!

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 

The copy of Day of the Daleks that I have advertises itself as having new special effects and new dalek voices.

I was initially very concerned about the replacement of the dalek voices, but then... I heard the original:
youtube.com/watch?v=2A4E8eI-6Y

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 

And "Day of the Daleks" gets a Highly Recommended rating from me!

I had to remind myself that "Highly Recommended" doesn't mean "the best story of the season", it means "if you only watch one story in this season, this is the story to watch".

(Of course, now there are a couple of seasons with multiple highly recommended stories, so that idea kind of breaks down a bit... hmm)

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 

So yeah... Day of the Daleks is not the most amazing story. But it is an enjoyable romp.

It's also incredibly difficult to come up with a synopsis for it

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 

heck, I didn't realise it had been 8 days since I last watched any Doctor Who.

But today I'm watching The Curse of Peladon. This is the first story since Claws of Axos that I remember watching as a child.

I'm enjoying it!

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 

I also am really glad the Master isn't here...

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 

The Curse of Peladon is really, really good.

Except the first episode is a bit too slow, so I can't give it a Highly Recommended rating.

Classic Doctor Who | The way I'm thinking about things 

By default, every story gets a "Maybe" recommendation.

If it's not very good at all, then I downgrade it to "Don't watch".

If it exceeds my expectations, then it gets upgraded to "Watch".

If it exceeds my expectations AND the answer to the question "If I only watch one story from this season, should I watch this one?" is yes, then it gets upgraded to "Highly Recommended"

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 

I'm really enjoying that the stories have gaps between them now.

They've moved away from what the early episodes did ("We have to show every moment!"), and are letting there be spaces of time that aren't shown, where the Doctor and companions could be doing all sorts of things

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 

The Sea Devils has another instance of someone using "dark" to refer to someone, where nowadays we'd say "dark haired"

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 

a "problem" for my guide:

Seasons 8 and 9 have been so much more watchable than Seasons 1–7, which means there are more recommendations for these stories.

Perhaps I need to increase my standards, to make sure I don't end up recommending basically everything from the 3rd and 4th doctor...?

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 

I'm really enjoying The Master's presence in The Sea Devils – if this was done without The Master, it would probably be just "The Silurians.... but in the ocean instead of a cave". But because The Master is there, the story has a lot of extra depth and interest...

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 

My favourite scene from this story was definitely this one: youtube.com/watch?v=a-dXZePMOX

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 | The Mutants 

Now I'm watching The Mutants...

Oh, an actor who isn't white!

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 | The Mutants 

Here he is, playing Space Chess™ with one of the other guards

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Classic Doctor Who, money 

I'm still really upset about this...

it's now a month and a half after I saw it in a store for $80, and the cheapest I can find it now is OVER $1000.

I hope they do another set, but I'm not holding out hope...

Classic Doctor Who, money 

I'm pre-ordering the next ones as soon as I get paid...

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 

@lizardsquid I thought they started with Invasion of the Daleks, and now they're down to Day of the Daleks?

Can't wait for Barbeque Party of the Daleks. :P

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 

@lizardsquid this is where the fanfic really gets started

Or did, when the Classic Who fandom was big on tumblr

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 

@DialMforMara I'm probably going to write some of my own fanfiction soon, tbh!

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 

@lizardsquid you can recommend everything from the Third and Fourth Doctor. I'm fairly certain you won't, but there's nothing wrong with recommending more stories from the best seasons.

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 | The Mutants 

@lizardsquid I forget whether he dies first (the two times before this there was a black actor, his character was the first or only person to die)

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