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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 Β£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!

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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 Chessβ„’ with one of the other guards

Follow

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 | The Mutants 

I like that this is a story about a collapsing empire, that's actually pretty cool

Β· Β· 1 Β· 0 Β· 1

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 | The Mutants 

one of the cameras in this scene is weirdly distorted:

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 | The Mutants (spoilers!) 

Hooray!

Cotton, the Black Characterβ„’, ends up in charge of the Sky base, and aims to do the right things and leave the native people alone.

That's much better than the previous stories with black characters, who are often the first to die.

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 | The Time Monster 

*starts watching The Time Monster*

Atlantis!
...again!?!?

this is the 3rd Atlantis!

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 

Season 9 has the honour of being the first season of Doctor Who where I recommend *every* story in the season.

I'm tempted to downgrade one of the stories just to make that not the case, but I probably won't.

Classic Doctor Who | Season 10 | The Three Doctors 

The Three Doctors is so good. It's a great story in general, but it's also a great season opener and a great anniversary story.

The major conceit is that there's a problem so big that the timelords have crossed the Doctor's timelines together, so the first 3 Doctors can help out.

Classic Doctor Who | Season 10 | The Three Doctors 

Seeing Troughton and Pertwee interact in episode one was really cool, but in the second episode they're seperated, and seeing their different approaches to things (both as actors and as different characters) is great

Classic Doctor Who | Season 10 | The Three Doctors 

I do wonder what the scripts would have been like, if William Hartnell had been healthy enough to participate more.

(As his health had degraded significantly in the 6 years since he left the role, he was only able to sit in a chair and read a few lines for the story, he wasn't able to be active or remember too much of a script)

Classic Doctor Who | Some stats 

I've now watched 333 episodes (39.17% of the total number), and recommended just over half of them.

Classic Doctor Who | Season 10 (death mention) 

Yesterday, I watched Carnival of Monsters – it's fun, but it feels like it should do something more with the political plotline.

Today I'm going to watch Frontier in Space, which is the last story to feature Roger Delgado as the Master before his unfortunate death in an accident. He was intended to show up one last time in the next season, but this never came to be.

Classic Doctor Who | Season 10 | Frontier in Space 

The Draconians are really cool aliens – they have a lot of political flexibility, unlike a lot of other non-human-shaped aliens.

My only frustration is that I was starting to headcannon them as a single gendered species, until suddenly one of them was pointlessly sexist.

Classic Doctor Who | Season 10 | Frontier in Space 

but yeah, look at this cool alien:

Classic Doctor Who | Season 10 | Planet of the Daleks 

"Courage isn't just a matter of not being frightened. It's being afriad and doing what you have to do anyway".

Classic Doctor Who | Season 10 | Planet of the Daleks, not what actually happens, food 

Spiridon: "Ah I see you've been infected with that deadly fungus... let me drizzle this on you"
Jo: "What is it?"
Spiridon: "Hot sauce... I do love having mushrooms for dinner"

Classic Doctor Who | Meta 

Thinking back over Season 9, and I'm probably going to downgrade The Time Monster to a "maybe", because thinking back on it in retrospect I'm realising that it was a confused mess and lots of things didn't make much sense or were boring.

Like the Master summoning someone from atlantis to help him control Kronos, and then immediately revealing that he can already control Kronos....

Or the Doctor creating a time interference device from some cutlery and a wine bottle...

Classic Doctor Who | Season 10 | Planet of the Daleks 

I finished Planet of the Daleks (after taking a couple of weeks off, I guess?)

I'm probably going to just give this a Maybe. It's fine, but I'm just kind of sick of 6 episode long dalek stories where the middle episodes feel like padding. This story definitely could have been told in 4 episodes, and it would have been much better.

Plus, they wouldn't have abandoned a few plotpoints partway through.

Classic Doctor Who | Season 10 | The Green Death 

ah, what a lovely vacation to Metebelis III

youtube.com/watch?v=OIV90Ezxzf

Classic Doctor Who | Season 10 | The Green Death 

ah gosh.... that scene where the Doctor says goodbye to Jo... I'm crying...

Classic Doctor Who | Season 10 

And that's the end of Season 10.

This season had THREE highly recommended stories. That's a lot!

Jo is almost definitely one of my favourite companions of the Doctor (and I actually have Katy Manning's signature, somewhere)

I'm excited for next season, though, as it introduces Sarah Jane Smith, a companion who I haven't seen any episodes of for years...

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Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 | The Mutants 

@lizardsquid The non-bald dude is the doctor, right?

Do people in-universe ever get confused calling him the doctor when there's a medical doctor nearby?

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 | The Mutants 

@BatElite there's an entire episode where the events only happen because someone calls for a doctor and The Doctor shows up instead.

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 | The Mutants 

@lizardsquid I hope that got highly recommended. :3

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 | The Mutants 

@BatElite I'm not up to it yet in my recommendations (it's a 12th doctor episode, and I'm only up to the 3rd doctor), but it's probably not going to be highly recommended, mostly because it needs a whole bunch of other episodes as context.

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 | The Mutants (spoilers!) 

@lizardsquid oooh! I don’t remember that ep, but awesome! :D

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 | The Mutants (spoilers!) 

@lizardsquid hooray indeed

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 | The Time Monster 

@lizardsquid brace yourself, there'll be two Loch Ness Monsters

Classic Doctor Who | Season 9 | The Time Monster 

@lizardsquid Well they kept sinking.

Classic Doctor Who | Some stats 

@lizardsquid You must have started recommending a lot more of them.
(I know you recommended everything from last season, but...)

Classic Doctor Who | Some stats 

@BatElite yeah, my recommendation rate before the third doctor was around 40%

Classic Doctor Who | Season 10 | Frontier in Space 

@lizardsquid
Oh yeah, the dragon people

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