The actor for Steven hated this story, because it had been originally written for the companions Ian and Barbara, and when it was rewritten for this season, Steven's lines were mostly barbara's.

He felt upset that his character had been "feminised".

Peter Purves, the actor for steven: I didn't like that my character was overpowered by Maaga, a woman. He's supposed to be a man.

me: hmmm.... that sounds like a pretty terrible thing to say, but maybe it makes sense in context

*watches the episode*

maaga: *is a highly trained military commander, overpowers steven because she has a gun and 3 guards*

me:

lets see if my source is recent enough to have the real version of episode 3, which was recovered in 2013

nope, it's the reconstruction

oh well

I found the real version on youtube, so I'm gonna watch both at once and see how it goes...

this is actually really fascinating...

it's interesting how good the reconstruction is, given how rediculously little they had to work with

the first 25 episodes of season 3 are missing....

jeez this is gonna be hard to get through

in season 3, there are 45 episodes.

28 of them are missing.

Mission to the Impossible.

I've never seen this one, and it's unique in that it doesn't include the Doctor or his companions at all

The problem with reconstructions: they require a lot more attention, otherwise you lose track of what's going on.

But they're also harder to pay attention to, because there's no motion, it's just telesnaps and sound

ah yes, the loose cannon opening sequences.... where they use literally every animated slideshow transition they can

todo tomorrow: figure out a more clear way of marking the reconstructions in my guide

The Myth Makers was a weird one - the story is a farce, the way they depict the trojans is a farce, the way they make Vicki fall in love with a random dude and run off with him is also a farce.

And yet it very clearly wasn't intended to be that. It's just garbage.

The third story to get a "Don't Watch" recommendation.

The Dalek's Master Plan

This one is sooooo looonnnnnggggg

it's 12 episodes....

also 9 of them are missing, so we've only got reconstructions

something that New Who does better than Classic Who: Cold Opens.

Classic episodes don't have them, and it feels.... wrong

oh no, the daleks are burning down the forest~

how will the Doctor escape thie one~

the answer: run into the dalek city, which is right next to the forest

so this story had a teaser episode earlier in the season - they cut away from the doctor and companions for a bit to show the daleks organising a meeting between a bunch of villans from across the universe.

Except between the teaser/cutaway and the actual episode, the actors for several of the villains in-explicably changed, so it's very confusing

one of the villains is a bunch of vines in a robe

I'm almost up to Katarina's death scene.

Not only is this the first time a companion of the doctor's dies, but it's also the first scene the actor recorded - the character was written and cast, but then they realised that they couldn't actually make her an interesting long term character, so they killed her off in her second story

holy frick that was way more intense than I expected it to be

The author of this story (Terry Nation) is one of the good authors.

But they also don't seem to know what the solar system is... they put a bunch of extra planets into it???

ah, we're up to the part where the author switched, because this story was so long they needed to get Dennis Spooner to write the second half

oh, I thought so!

one of the actors in the first part came back a few years later to play Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, one of the most famous characters from the classic series

I'm watching the christmas episode now...

what utter garbage

so much yelling...

hmm.... assuming the rest of The Dalek's Master Plan is good, I'm going to have to do a partial recommendation for this one..

as an aside: someone suggested that editing down the episodes would make people more likely to watch them. I'm sure that's true, but it's also a lot of work...

I'm starting to regret saying "maybe" for The Time Meddler - it's not a very exciting story, but it is very memorable.

*realises that the villain in this story is wearing dark makeup and some fake folds to make him look south east asian*

hmm....

looks like I really do need to add a content warnings section

episode 11 of The Dalek's Master Plan is interesting - the doctor goes missing right at the start, and isn't seen for the rest of the episode

I've updated the site to have a bunch of extra navigation buttons, which aren't super useful right now, but will be very useful when there are 38 seasons on the page

here's the link again, in case you want to see:

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

(I also rewrote the introduction a bit)

The War Machines is even better than I remembered it being.

(Although it is a bit weird that they write out Dodo, one of the Doctors companions, by hypnotising her and then just saying "she went to the country")

✨ 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 all of Seasons 1-3
✨ a much better introduction
✨ useful navigation buttons
✨ indicators of major plot changes