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
Classic Doctor Who
The BBC just released this amazing trailer:
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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:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A4E8eI-6YM
Classic Doctor Who | Season 9
(and here is the new voice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxgTuhMxk14 )
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 | 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
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
My favourite scene from this story was definitely this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-dXZePMOX4
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 (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 | 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
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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Now with recommendations for 10 entire seasons!
Classic Doctor Who | Season 11 | Death to the Daleks (cw: racism)
(have I really made no comments about this season yet??? well, in short: the introduction to the Sontarans in The Time Warrior was great)
"The peruvian pyramids are one of the great mysteries of Earth – that no primitive man could have built such a structure. Well now we've solved it! [It was aliens]"
wow....
Classic Doctor Who | Season 11 | Death to the Daleks
I really don't like this story.
The Daleks don't feel threatening, and that feeling is amplified by the fact that lighthearted (and borderline comical) music plays every time they enter a scene.
On top of that, none of this story feels new or fresh. I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but I haven't been surprised by anything.
(except by what happenned to trap the Doctor and Sarah on the planet Exxilon in the first place)
Classic Doctor Who | Season 11 | Death to the Daleks
Something that Terry Nation always does in Dalek stories is make the environment a threat, and I feel like that makes the Daleks feel weaker.
To prove this, lets look at every Dalek episode up to this one:
The Daleks, by Terry Nation
— features a very dangerous swamp full of monsters
The Dalek Invasion of Earth, by Terry Nation
— features crocodiles in sewers, zombies on the streets, and a man-eating creature at the mines
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
@lizardsquid The pace really did pick up after season 4, hasn't it?
@BatElite there's half as many episodes per season, and the stories are really good, and none of them are missing bits
@lizardsquid And I'm guessing you have more motivation to get through it as a result?
@BatElite definitely!
I'm not dreading watching any of the episodes that are coming up, so it's easy to motivate myself to watch them.
Classic Doctor Who | Season 11 | Death to the Daleks (cw: racism)
@lizardsquid now I just want a DW episode that deals with that but like-
‘No of course it wasn’t built by aliens—I met the people that built it, they’d be frankly pissed off small minded racists in the future are claiming all their hard work and architectural advancement was ‘aliens’
Or the just go back in time and see people building said pyramids/ancient architecture.
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)